How Do I Find a Job? Computer Engineering/Low GPA Edition

You graduated, that means you made it through. There is no need to put your GPA on your resume... most people don't. After your first couple of years in the industry, nobody will even ask what your GPA was. Mine was sub-3.0 with a story similar to yours, and I've had a happy 15+ year career of high achievement. Only the largest companies will even ask for your GPA (on a form somewhere), and frankly, I'd just leave that blank. Might you miss some jobs because of it? Yes, but you'll miss more putting a low one on there. If it comes up in an interview, I wouldn't mention a number, I'd just say something like well, there were a few rough patches, but I got back on track when I started working on <insert interesting project here>.

I've been hiring for "Google Sized" Silicon Valley corporate software engineering jobs for a while. GPA is rare on resumes and kind of unnecessary. There are some folks (Google) who will take your college GPA into account but a ton of small startups who it won't even cross their mind to ask. Not having your GPA on your resume never even tickled my radar. I will say ironically that I did have one guy fresh out of school who put his 2.5 GPA on his resume. I hired him anyway 5 years ago he's now a director level engineering lead. YMMV If you want to get a job. Work on stuff. Have side projects, contribute to OS projects etc. There's tons of ways to gain relevant coding experience without having a job. Those kinds of things will get you a job way more then a GPA will.

Speaking as a senior embedded systems engineer, welcome to the fold. It's a great field to work in, but the work can be highly specialized and sometimes an invisible cog in a larger company ("Firmware? What the hell is that? Just make the USB Keyboard work!") But embedded work isn't high-visibility startup-y VC web server work like working on "Uber for [X]", you need to sniff out the companies doing the down-and-dirty electrical engineering. With a lack of real work experience it might be hard to get a foot in the door in a lot of places - especially when the job description lists the exact knowledge and experience of Joe, who just quit earlier this month and had 15 years under his belt. Among the other great answers you'll get here, I'd make two suggestions to think about as you start to look for work: 1) Like others have said, start tinkering with hardware. Get a BeagleBone Black, not a Raspberry Pi. Read the technical documents. Learn to get Linux running on it, then learn to compile a new kernel for it. Change one line of code, compile it, show it runs. Get some confidence in playing with the board. Think up a small little project you can begin to play with and work on in your free time. Buy an Adafruit kit and make the board do something. The goal here is to build confidence in working with a modern system and talk about your little project in job interviews. 2) Look for embedded firms needing lab technicians. This is a good foot in the door in a lot of places. Embedded shops need people to build the boards and make them run. They also need test equipment and factory fixtures. Prove yourself in the lab,some some self-starting skills, show you can make a system FLY and you'll quickly be promoted up to an engineering-level position. Unfortunately you're gonna need to build some momentum to get into the kind of job you really want. And that's gonna take some patience and time. You'll get there, don't worry. It's an exciting field to be in these days and, in my opinion, a lot more interesting than the 99% of the other programming out there. After all, what's a web programmer other than someone finding new and interesting ways to concatenate strings?

Outside of my internship, I've never applied for a job with my GPA. Once you have the degree it doesn't matter. Remember... "D is for Degree!" thats what we used to say at university. (I am in tech.)

Why were you rejected from the jobs you applied for? Do you have a reason to believe this has to do with your GPA, or are you just inferring that? I think the best thing you can do is apply at companies you are interested in and if they reject your application ask for some feedback on why they made that decision, how you could improve your application, etc. Then you can stop making this a guessing game. But frankly I would be surprised if they came back with, "Well, Jim, you're obviously talented and great and we'd love to hire you, but a 2.4 GPA? Come on." Employers don't care about your grades all that much, they're just trying to use it as a predictor of whether you would be a good fit for the position. As far as explaining your grades, I think you just need a story. Lots of people have mars on their resume. You just have to be honest (to a degree) about why that happened in the past and how you have overcome it now. After you land your first job and stick it out for a year or two, nobody will care all that much that you failed a course ten years ago.

Most definitely keep your GPA of the resume. If asked tell the truth, "I've had both As and Bs as well as Fs and as a result my GPA is low. But I know the material and I'm pationate about this field. I'm eager to prove myself if given the chance." if I heard something like this in an interview and the person seemed like he knew what he was doing I'd give them a chance. Meanwhile, work on your own projects, freelance or work on open source as much as you can.

The good news is that it's never been easier to get a job without a degree at all. The market (at least in Silicon Valley) is hot due to a huge amount of early stage venture funding. There are multiple "Uber for laundry" startups with serious money behind them, for crying out loud. Github portfolios are the new résumé, so get some of those projects up. The other thing is to start your own startup. It costs almost nothing to register a domain and set up a https://www.digitalocean.com/ where you can do whatever you want and start soliciting customers. Motivation is the tricky part here. School is so structured compared to the wide-open space that is startup world. But even if you don't strike it rich, you'll gain some skills and maybe find that a customer wants to hire you as a developer.

I'm a software engineer. I can't speak for other companies, but at my current employer, in order to hire someone right out of college, there's a hard requirement of a 3.0 GPA. If we interview the candidate and he or she is wonderful, we send a hire recommendation to HR. If the candidate is unfortunate enough to have graduated with a 2.9999, we're not allowed to hire -- they get rejected by HR. I don't understand the requirement, really, because a student with a 2.0 from World's Most Difficult University could very well be a better student than another with a 4.0 from Easy Breezy College. In my opinion, any college worth its salt would not award the degree if you can't hack it as a professional in the field of your major. A college friend of mine used to tell this joke: What do you call a med school student who graduates with the lowest possible GPA? "Doctor." Point being that "graduates" is the most important word. Unfortunately, HR departments, particularly those at large companies with automation and inflexible, poorly-thought out metrics as hiring requirements, don't seem to share that view. I suspect this was why I had so much trouble finding my first job out of college; my GPA (from an Ivy League school no less) was just a hair above 3.0, and this was in 2000, when reportedly tech companies were hiring STEM graduates as long as they could successfully fog a knife. Most companies probably have that same silly 3.0 requirement without an eye toward the rigor of the applicant's educational institution / major studies program. Once I had had it with that job, finding another job was easy because by that point I'd had six years of professional experience, and a Master's degree with a higher GPA. This is not good news for you, but probably not a show stopper. It just means you'll have to work a little harder to get your first job. In your position, I'd concentrate on smaller companies. Maybe I'd also go to a headhunter like KForce. Does the university from which you graduated have a career services office? Make use of that office's services. Best of luck!

For sure, leave the GPA off of your resume. Now that you've graduated, no one gives a shit about your GPA. It's a non-issue. FWIW, mine was 2.0 and I dropped out, went back and it took me 7 years to complete my BA. D for Done was my motto for a LOT of classes. While applying for jobs, can you get experience in Code School/Boot Camp, or interships, or something of that nature? My company hires interns, no one cares where you went to school, or what your GPA was, as long as you can pass "the test." It's a pattern recognition thing. So see if there are any internships available. Getting any job is an issue of applying and applying and applying until you find something. Lots of things on LinkedIn. Get a profile, with a good picture of yourself (nothing crazy, a nice headshot), that will help a LOT. I'm contacted by recruiters pretty frequently through Linked In. If you want resume help, MeMail me and I'll see what I can do.