[xorcist]

> Employers are obviously interested in grades that reflect the objective skill level of the to-be-employed.

Employers are hardly interested in grades at all. Do you know anyone that does? Society uses grades as a selector for higher education pretty much exclusively. This is a goal for which we can objectively measure its relevance. I suspect there's a thing or two to learn from that.

[lotsofpulp]

Employers are interested in grades, just not directly. The higher education institutions from which they hire from are the proxy for grades. The target schools for attaining employment at certain firms and other graduate schools do the job of weeding out those with low SATs or grades or the wrong type of background.

An invididual's letter grades are not important, but selecting from a cohort of individuals that outperform others is important (also why it's important to be from that cohort). You're not aiming for every single hire to be successful (probably not practical or possible to invest enough resources to be able to evaluate that), but you can make the odds tilt in your favor.

[lagadu]

Pretty much my impression too. My CV doesn't list my grades and I never got a transcript of records from my university because I've never been asked for one, including in my first couple of jobs. Hell in fact I've never even had to prove to an employer that I finished my studies, it's pointless now that I'm an experienced professional in my mid-thirties but I feel that anyone could get away with it too.

[pc86]

If you're in the US, degree verification happens constantly but it's always in the back-end of HR. The folks that don't pass (or have a questionable degree from an institution that may or may not exist) are removed from the process without much fanfare.