Countless amounts of time spent working well into the night.

Countless cups of coffee guzzled while cramming for exams.

Countless words arranged and rearranged for papers due the next day.

Countless hours spent perfecting class schedules and pre-calculating GPA.

But if a student is planning on going straight into the workforce after graduation, all that work may not count for anything. According to some employers, grades aren’t heavily factored into the hiring process.

“It’s more about how you present yourself in a marketplace than what your GPA is [when looking for a job],” Frank Pennucci, an engineer for Withers & Ravenel, an engineering consulting firm in Cary, said.

Representatives of a national retail company who said they wished to remain anonymous said one’s college GPA is only asked for on an application when applying for an executive position. Even then, they said it still really isn’t considered a factor in the application process.

According to the resume-posting site Monster.com “hiring managers are more interested in what you can do for them than what you did in school.”

The site suggests students use their resume to convince employers they can transfer academic success to the workplace.

CNN.com reports that 28 percent of hiring managers named experiences like extra-curricular activities, part-time jobs, internships and volunteer work as being the most important thing they look for when analyzing applicants.

Nineteen percent of those hiring managers said one’s educational background was most important.

Things like the college or university an individual attended, his or her major and the degree earned were siad to have the most emphasis. Employers also evaluate special courses taken relevant to the job for which the individual is applying.

CNN.com also suggests simply excluding GPA from one’s resume all together unless it’s above a 3.0.