23.09.07
There are signs that leading graduate recruiters are beginning to abandon degree class and A-level results as a means of predicting the abilities of candidates
The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) regularly surveys its members (who between them account for the top 5% or so of the graduate employment market), and, in this summer’s survey, it is clear that more employers are questioning the relevance of qualifications to their selection criteria.
Change in criteria
Some employers report that they are reconsidering or removing the use of A-levels to screen candidates (a practice which is controversial because it discriminates against university entrants from non-traditional backgrounds) while three other employers are considering dropping their criteria to include people with 2.2s).
‘It is clear that for many AGR employers, the days of academic criteria as the be-all and end-all are long gone,’ the report says. ‘Despite this fact, the extent to which some of them appear to be reducing emphasis on this side of things is interesting – particularly against the background of the ‘grade inflation’ phenomenon. One participant explains the idea behind allowing 2:2 as being to “widen the pool and select on other criteria”.
Soft skills
Another organisation is “considering lowering the academic requirements for one area of the business to focus more on soft skills and to put more faith in the selection process” – and hence, one might infer, less faith in the ability of degree classes to accurately mirror the graduate competencies that matter?’
What this means for HE
Less emphasis on academic qualifications is obviously bad news for universities, and, in their place, employers are putting their faith in psychometric testing. This was well-trailed in the summer when the report was published, but many commentators missed the story, misreading psychometric testing as being about personality profiling.
In fact, it is not really soft skills that employers are testing in this way but hard skills such as verbal and numerical reasoning. What is really going on is that employers are creating their own exams, because, as one employer put it: ‘degree qualifications are not a reliable indicator of this aptitude – unfortunately…’