no long-term correlation between GPA and employee performance<\/a>. Google’s former SVP of People Operations, Laszlo Bock, said “I think academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they\u2019re conditioned to succeed in that environment.”<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nX Factors<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
With a lack of measurable outcomes for recruiters to assess candidates, they must take a much more subjective approach. ‘Potential’ has become somewhat of a blanket word that recruiters use to simplify an incredibly complex system of judgement points that they use to <\/span>assess an applicant. Potential according to a focus group report Acadiate conducted in 2016 with HR Professionals from Microsoft and other leading recruitment firms showed that recruiters see potential as is a collection of \u201cX Factors\u201d (or characteristics). By definition, an \u201cX Factor\u201d is a noteworthy special talent or quality.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat makes X Factors problematic is that they are not well defined and they change on a job to job and recruiter to recruiter basis.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nRecruiter A may view a high potential candidate as the individual who shows the best combination of communication skills, ivy league education, relevant internship experience, and some service based retail experience.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nRecruiter B may view a high potential candidate as the individual who shows the best combination of high GPA, strong mentors and references, a strong portfolio of work examples, and a history of volunteerism.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen you remind yourself that ‘potential’ is one of the most important things recruiters are looking for when assessing students and new graduates, it becomes clear why students and new graduates are struggling to articulate their ‘potential’ to employers. Nobody has ever told students what potential is and this is only amplified by the fact that they have been conditioned in the educational environment where they are always told how they will be measured. When a student leaves the school environment and starts to apply to jobs, they quickly realize the applications don\u2019t come with a rubric, and there is no getting it graded to see if you are strong, average, or weak. Every job a job seekers applies to is left to interpretation, and unfortunately, your average student struggles with making the correct interpretation.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nRoom for Growth in Student Job Applications<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Career centers across the continent are focused on showing students how to write a presentable resume and cover letter. Most students should be able to put together one good, accurate, spelling and grammar checked resume and cover letter job application; the problem is that employers aren’t going to see much potential in it. As we mentioned earlier, employers are looking for individuals who stand out amongst their peers and to do that they are looking for “x-factors”. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nThere are three points I\u2019d like to make around this. First, to stand out, you must be different. If everyone is utilizing a resume and cover letter in their job application and you do the same, you are unlikely to stand out. Second, since students struggle to interpret what employers are looking for, it means they do not position their resume and cover letter to show the potential employers are looking for. Third, even if a student correctly interprets what an employer is looking for, the resume typically does a poor job at highlighting X-factors – reading about a skill or quality is much less effective than seeing the skill or quality first hand.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nFor today\u2019s job applicant, understanding what employers see as potential is a vital component in putting together a successful job application. Unfortunately, the exact meaning of potential is elusive and changes from job to job. Which means most students and new graduates focus on building one good resume first then apply to all of their job postings with the same resume. This is backwards. To hit on potential today, students need to first correctly analyse and assess the job posting to figure out the core needs of the employer, then second, utilize that knowledge to craft a job application that clearly highlights the \u201cX factors\u201d that matter the most for that employer. This small shift can make a massive difference in the quality and potential seen in candidate\u2019s applications. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Potential is one of those concepts that means different things to different people, and is therefore difficult to get any real actionable meaning out of it. This concept is coincidentally…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2,10,23,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11673,"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions\/11673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}