Dr. Seegers, what does your company do?
We compare educational qualifications. Ten years ago, we initiated a research project at the university to investigate why grades are not predictive of the labour market. So, we started collecting data. On the one hand, locally, to assess whether a grade in a specific course at a particular university is good or bad. On the other hand, we collected students’ performance indicators to compare across different courses. We have conducted more than 30 studies in the context of this research project.
Over time, this has grown into a company. We now automatically pre-select educational qualifications for large companies. We also do this for students, who can use our services to assess themselves.
Which companies approach you?
Firstly, large companies like DHL and Porsche receive many applications from different countries. Then there are consultancies, such as Simon Kucher and large accounting firms. Thirdly, there are the universities themselves which use our services for admission to their master’s programs.
Your statement “Education is important, grades are not” is quite provocative, considering that your work revolves around grades, isn’t it?
Not really. Education is excellent, but our company wouldn’t exist if grades were good. Students’ performance must somehow be translated into a number, which is grades. However, cross-contextually, you can no longer determine their actual performance because, for example, we have different grading standards: At some universities, a ‘two’ is the best grade; at others, it is the worst.
Accordingly, grades are only predictive of success in a homogeneous group—that is, for students who have attended the same course at the same university. However, a company almost always receives applications from various contexts and universities. Due to all the noise, grades no longer carry meaningful information.
Is that also important in a globalised labour market?
Yes, absolutely. However, even within Germany, we have 30,000 degree programs and almost 500 universities offering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. The diversity is immense. Abroad, the grading and education systems are even more diverse.
Thanks to the case, companies can, therefore, easily assess how a candidate has completed his or her studies, regardless of university, course of study, and degree.
Instead of conducting further aptitude tests, existing test results from the studies are compared using a lot of data and statistics. So, we can put them on the same scale. A valid measured value for the young person’s performance is created.
Does the system also work for soft skills not graded at university?
The term “soft skills” is often too vaguely defined for me. However, from a scientific perspective, studies do reward certain traits, such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, or openness to new experiences. These traits are also important in the labour market, so it’s not just about cognitive abilities.
What will participants take away from your webinar?
Why is education excellent, and grades are not – as the title suggests? We now have 40 million students in China, about 40 million in India, 20 million in the USA and another 20 million in Europe. That is half of all students worldwide, totalling 240 million.
The promise of education continues to work because education enables economic and social advancement. Despite the shortage of skilled workers, applicants from countries such as India are often sorted out immediately. Yet some universities in India are more selective than Harvard or Oxford. It’s just that nobody knows them here.
Should employers be more open?
Yes, that would benefit our economy as a whole. Of course, there are arguments against it, such as language proficiency, as Germany is still very focused on the German language. But I would also like it if we just spoke English more often.
If we are more open to international profiles, we must also be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Initially, there was an information deficit here because we did not know the educational landscape abroad, for example. We help to reduce this deficit.
How do you assess the development of the labour market for the future?
You only have to look at the data of the Statistisches Bundesamt on population development. The cohorts with the highest birth rates will leave the labour market in the next ten years – cohorts of 1.2 to 1.3 million people. The cohorts following them are the smallest, with 600,000 to 700,000 people. That means we are missing a good half a million people every year.
Accordingly, I hope the trend towards the international labour market will also become increasingly apparent in Germany, even if politicians do not support it and instead put up enormous bureaucratic hurdles. We should be more open to the migration of educated, motivated people.
What are you curious about?
I hope we will make recruitment processes more objective, fairer, and understandable. Whether the ATS or the algorithm helps make better decisions, technology is crucial in this.
What do you expect from the webinar tage?
I am looking forward to an exciting exchange, meeting nice people, and, of course, to many exciting questions!
Webinar Tage
This article is written by Lydia Stöflmayr.
