Job Hunt Diary 2023: WTF with High School Questions?

January 24, 2023

I was just applying for a role with Canonical, makers of the Ubuntu Linux distribution along with other tools and products. Honestly, I was tempted not to complete it when I saw this section.

It asks for my college GPA and how well I did in two academic concentrations in high school. My answers are in the image.

College GPA: I said this is not relevant unless you’re focusing on recent grads with no job history. I was on the Dean’s List for the bulk of my college career, had a 3.85 in my major courses, but I don’t tell them. Why? Because it’s not relevant. People grow, mature, find their calling… and many do most of that after college.

If you’re more than 5 years out of college, your professional resume is more important. By the time I was 5 years out of college, I had tech edited “Marketing Online for Dummies,” was an MPAA accredited entertainment journalist, worked as a Courseware Developer for Nortel, and was the Senior Editor for IMDb.com (which had been acquired by Amazon about a year earlier). And those are just some of the things I achieved.

High School: I got kicked out of AP English for insubordination in high school. The difference between my high-school performance in English classes and professional accomplishments as a writer is vast. On top of that, it’s possible that “cannot recall” will be taken as a sign of high school being far off in the distant mists of memory and lead to unconscious age bias.

These are standard questions in their application: I looked and they’re asking them on every application, even for roles requiring significant professional experience.

It just seems like someone in Canonical HR is not competent enough to know that these questions are not only irrelevant, but could indicate age bias.

Maybe they didn’t do well in language studies in high school.