A-level results do matter, but City firms shouldn’t put all their stock in top students
Today, students up and down the country receive their A-levels results. But as important as they are, these shouldn’t be the key deciding factor for future employers, writes Chris Hirst
I have only one recurring nightmare and though thankfully infrequent I emerge each time with the same sense of relief. So much so that it always takes a moment of unblinking wakefulness before I am reassured it has receded. The dream has its variations, but the theme is always the same – that I haven’t revised for the following morning’s exams and therefore failure, nay humiliation, await.
My A-levels were a very long time ago, yet so profound was their effect that I’ve come to consider their echoes through my subconscious as a kind of PTSD-lite. I therefore have full sympathy with those who await their results this morning and disdain for the annual humble-brag (at most charitable) postings from the “I screwed up my A -levels and look at me now” crowd.
Qualifications matter. If you want to be a jet engine designer, you need to know something of thermodynamics. Nobody would argue with the principle of a doctor needing to have passed a few exams along the way. This is a perfectly reasonable position for employers to take. However, neither candidates nor employers should regard them with the gravity with which they are commonly treated. Good A-level results are no more a measure of an individual’s suitability for a particular career than bad suggest unsuitability – even in very vocational roles such as the sciences. Einstein was a famously unsuccessful student.
For employers exam results are essentially a proxy, a means of making a judgement about a potential employee when nothing else exists. Qualifications are useful to employers, but mostly because at that early stage in our careers no other information is available. This is understandable, but there is also an increasing recognition that they are a blunt tool and this mindset serves to exclude many otherwise excellent candidates. It is for this reason that there is a growing desire by talent-starved employers to widen their net by questioning the primacy of qualifications when selecting candidates. In my own case for example, in a previous role we went as far as removing all reference to school, university and qualifications from the application process with very successful results.
Irrespective of how good we are at exams, what we all need to succeed in our careers is a balance of aptitude and attitude. Aptitude can, and usually must, be gained over time and on the job – even the most highly qualified new joiner will possess only the most rudimentary of directly relevant skills when they begin work. Attitude however, is all us.
Therefore, the ideal candidate for any job is not simply the person who knows the most. Skills, even difficult skills, can be taught. In all jobs learning is a prerequisite for success and those who feel they do not need to do so are a hazard. The most successful people I have ever worked with have been those most willing (I use that word deliberately) to learn. And the primary determinant is attitude. But while attitude drives aptitude, it does not always work in reverse. Indeed in some instances a perception of established competence constrains willingness to learn and grow.
The most successful and employable people are those who have an insatiable curiosity to understand and learn paired with the preparedness to keep going when the knocks come along. For such people disappointing A Level results, or getting fired or even greater crises are simply speed-bumps. For anybody who wishes to achieve anything in any field: banking, sport, the law, writing – failure is not simply an occupational hazard, it is a pre-requisite for success; no greatness was ever achieved without it.
It’s very fashionable to talk, even boast about past failure or disappointments, nevertheless it is deeply unpleasant when it’s happening right now, to you. However, as Winston Churchill, no stranger himself to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune observed, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”