If students can't demonstrate strong interpersonal skills, leadership or an ability to communicate with people from diverse backgrounds, they won't be successful as consultants. Only the First Hurdle Grades serve as initial screening tools for other recruiters as well. If students meet the threshold GPA, then the company looks at attributes of success, such as summer work experience, experience related to the industry and extracurricular activities. For many of these employers, work experience is at least as important as grades. I've interviewed students with 4.0 GPAs who would not succeed at National Instruments because they didn't demonstrate the behaviors necessary to thrive in our culture.
Some employers are suspect of grades, and with good reason.
Grade inflation has undermined the value of academic marks overall, causing students' grades to be skewed towards A's and B's instead of being evenly distributed across the grade spectrum. Since an A or B at one institution doesn't correspond with rankings at another, it's difficult for employers to compare grades across institutions. The mean GPA at Duke University rose to 3.3 in 1998 from 2.7 in 1969. The average GPA at the University of Washington rose to 3.12 in 1998 from 2.31 in 1964. This means that an employer who uses a 3.0 GPA as a cut-off could screen in students from the bottom half of the class, defeating the purpose of using grades as a screening device.