Could college application process be leveraged to check the health of the business in workplace?
Parents, with high school children, have different level of involvement in the college application process. Most strive for the match of their children to the best college for their path. There goes this industry of SAT preparation, college admission, and all kinds of consultation, with prices that could go as deep as an expensive consultant in the workplace.
Like many other parents, we soon find that we are hearing a bit of the same thing over and over again – GPA (Grade Point Average
), SAT and extracurricular. Do these factors weigh the same? They are all important in some ways. GPA and SAT are more the entry criteria to be met, and extracurricular is relevant for those who meet the entry criteria. If SAT is the more of an absolute standard, GPA is a bit relative to the peers in the school. Unless your extracurricular is super unique, there is that entry criteria of GPA and SAT. There is also that natural selection process where students would filter colleges based on their GPA and SAT to some extent. Without the natural selection, the public and private Ivy would get far more revenue just from the admission application fee.
How does it relate to the workplace? Many companies have strategies to sell in different markets. In health care, many companies would like to get the business of IDN (Integrated Delivery Network of facilities and providers that work together to offer a continuum of care to a specific geographic area or market.). In high tech, many companies may offer security products, cloud services or big data analytics. In other companies, they may want to get business from particular customer segments, be in being SMB (Small & Medium Business) or Enterprise customers. What are the GPA, SAT and extracurricular equivalent of the markets the company wants to get to?
Unlike college admission, where the GPA, SAT is well defined, it is not that obvious what their equivalent means in the workplace. Yet, the similarity is that until it is clear on the entry criteria of the market, any effort to spare on “extracurricular like” is not going to yield much return on investment.
In the company you are in, how do they stack up?
- Does it know enough about the market segments to tell the GPA and SAT basic filter and entry criteria?
- Where is it in terms of those criteria? Is it a GPA 4 out of 4, SAT 2400 out of 2400 where it is r
eady? Or is it GPA 3, SAT 1800 while the market is expecting GPA 3.5, SAT 2000, and there is work to be done? - For company not in position to meet the basic, are the next generation investments in line with meeting the entry criteria, or are they focused on improving the extracurricular areas?
When a company is clear and honest about what its GPA and SAT equivalent are for the markets, it is probably already winning half of the battle.
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