Are You Investing Your Effort In The Wrong Places?

I’m going to start this one out with a story, because stories are fun.

Commander Brutus looked up at his head of military research with an expression torn between incredulity and sadistic glee.

He always liked having a legitimate reason for throwing someone off of a cliff.

“You wanna run that by me again?”

The lieutenant stuttered for a moment, then regained his composure: “Archers, sire. We should train every man in our military to be an archer.”

“Explain yourself.”

“Well, sire, our scouts have confirmed that the city we’re planning on invading has many guards on top of the walls. So if we train every man in our army to be an archer, we’ll be able to pick them all off easily!”

The lieutenant beamed.

“And what of the gate? How will our men breach the city if we don’t provide them with siege weapons? What if a ground unit flanks our force while they’re shooting at the walls? How will the men defend themselves at close range with bows?” Brutus asked.

“I’m sure we can just figure that out when we get there, sire. But we should do archers now. Definitely archers.”

The lieutenant learned that he could not fly that day.

“Alright, what’s the point of this?”

This story is a simple parable. While it’s ridiculous, it nicely illustrates a point that I want to make clear, which is this:

Your GPA is only one factor among the many that will help you land a job. Don’t invest all your effort on it. | Tweet This

I think most students these days know that the old “Go to college, get good grades, and you’ll land a great job” advice is antiquated and practically useless now. It’s now pretty common knowledge that you should be doing internships, gaining experience outside of class, and getting involved on campus.

However, there’s still a major problem with how many students invest their effort. Put simply, they still put way too much effort into their grades, and not enough effort into other important factors in the job-hunting process.

Case in point: I know people who will put 10+ hours into one homework project. When it comes time to apply for a job they really want, however, they’ll just spend 30 minutes updating their resume, emailing it out, and calling it a day.

See the problem here?

There are a lot of factors that go into whether or not you’re going to land a specific job. Here’s a sampling:

• Networking with the right people
• Having relevant experience
• Building an effective personal brand
• Tailoring your resume
• Learning how to write a proper cold email
• Having a decent GPA
• Researching the company and knowing their business well
• Going to conferences, career fairs, and other events
• Honing your interviewing skills
• Learning to dress well

…and the list goes on. Notice that “Having a decent GPA” is only one factor in a list of many – and honestly, only a certain percentage of companies will actually care about it these days.

So why do students put so much effort into school projects, and basically exert the bare minimum effort when it comes to the other factors?

When I ask students to sit down and develop well thought-out goals for their life, I usually don’t hear things like:

“I want to get a perfect GPA.”

If grades are a goal, they’re usually a sub-goal that leads up to some ultimate goal that extends beyond college.

• “I want to move to San Francisco and work for Facebook.”
• “My goal is to own my own coffee shop.”
• “Travelling the world and being able to work from anywhere is my ultimate goal.”

These are examples of real, life-defining goals. A good GPA doesn’t actually mean much to your life; it’s simply a measure of your ability that might unlock further opportunities.

A New Perspective

In the context of your “college life”, an individual assignment can seem like a pretty big deal. You only take 4-5 classes per semester, and a bad grade on a big project can mean that semester’s grades don’t turn out so well.

But what happens when you look at it from the perspective of a person with well-defined life goals? Let’s do some math:

• One big assignment might be worth 10% of your grade in one class.
• Assuming your degree requires 120 credits (mine did), and most classes are 3 credits, then that class’s grade is 1/40th of your GPA.
• It’s almost impossible to estimate how much weight a recruiter will place on your GPA, but assuming you’re doing everything else right, we’ll ballpark it at 5% of decision.

See how small that one project looks now? Aside from the actual educational value of your project, that’s what you’re getting out of the 10 hours you spent working on it.