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There’s more to a good employee than good grades, says Google

When running a background check on a possible executive, you might naturally look at how much they have excelled in different areas of their life. This makes sense, as businesses rightly should demand only the best for their own enterprises. 

But is it possible that one measure of excellence, specifically the grades that someone received in school, could be overrated? Re-evaluating how relevant a person's grades really are to their value might change the executive recruitment mindset for your search. Just ask Laszlo Bock of Google. 

In a recent New York Times piece, writer Thomas Friedman recalls an interview with Bock in which the senior vice president of that company's "people operations" described how an applicant's academic performance wasn't the deciding factor for employment. It could be important, but to Bock it is far less important than the innate skills to perform well.

"When you look at people who don't go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings," he said. "And we should do everything we can to find those people." He also dubbed college "an extended adolescence," at least in most cases, that doesn't teach relevant skills or information.

At a time when, as the Boston Globe reports, money is going back to the Academy but not necessarily to the aid of the education's quality, companies should be thinking more seriously about the criteria they hold out for their executive positions.

Straight A's might look good on paper but not fully represent the capabilities of a person, and YES Partners' recruitment consultant services can help businesses find the real value different executive candidates have to offer.

Finding people is easy, but finding the RIGHT people is not. YES Partners helps companies FIND the right people – for all company functions, across many industries and globally.

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