re: Employers to New Grads: We Don't Care About Your Grades, Classes, or College

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Id like to speak to anybody who goes around telling engineer students that they shouldn't worry about GPA because it doesn't matter. You might get lucky like I did, but the guys with 3.8's don't need to worry about getting lucky. They're going to turn down more jobs and more money than the 2.5 guy could ever dream about accepting.

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Fair enough. I'm a slacker and lucked out because the industry I was going into...web/multimedia..was relatively new and even an afternoon spent perusing a few technical books at Barnes & Noble was enough to make me look like superman in interviews.

also by teaching a few software classes at night at the local community college on 3D design & multimedia, i also rubbed elbows with the higher ups at NASA and lockheed martin in houston who were just dabbling their toes into this at the time. i developed a reputation as an 'expert' because i had a job doing multimedia full time and the adjunct job was related to what i did already.

This probably won't apply to established career paths such as engineering where things are very well organized and systems for hiring people are very thorough.

The 'new economy' is a boom or bust thing..you hit upon the right startup at the right time and even the secretary is retiring in 10 years.

You could also go to work for someone who goes belly up in a year and you're out looking for a new job.

So yes, one size does not fit all. I chose a 'riskier' career by bouncing around from one tech career to another.