From the article, “5 Unusual Facts About Google’s Odd (and Wildly Successful) Management Practices“(read the whole thing):
5. When hiring, high GPAs and test scores don’t matter
Relying heavily on data crunching, Bock told The New York Times a few years back that GPAs and test scores are worthless as a criteria for hiring, unless you’re an entry-level grad. Google found that they don’t predict anything.
As Bock tells the Times, “After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different. You’re also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow; you think about things differently.”
Consequently, it’s not uncommon to find 14 percent of some Google teams are people who’ve never attended college.
High test scores in school do not equal success in that area. There are so many other factors that need to be considered. I have met many leaders in education who know all the theory but can’t connect with people. If you know all the best leadership strategies but you do not have the emotional intelligence to connect with people, does it matter what you know in leadership?
I have said this over and over again if we focus on improving scores in schools from our students, we are trying to fit students into a box they might not want to be put in. If you focus on finding the strengths and talents of your students, you can do that tomorrow. Don’t get this mixed up with the idea that I do not believe we shouldn’t teach students content or have some type of standardized assessments. I am saying that school should be much more than that, and how we see “success” is an extremely personal venture. There is more to life than “test scores”, and school should be no different.