Free Advice
How Sports and Clubs Can Help You Get a Job
Maybe you’re a fourth-and-long, miracle-making quarterback. Maybe you just inspired your tennis team to make it to the national championship. Or maybe you’re simply the president of ‘Club Kramerica’, devoted to all things Seinfeld. None of these things have any relevance to your job hunt, right?
WRONG!
When it comes to getting that sweet job or internship, students think experience comes only from working at a paid job. The truth is you can get great real-world experience from a variety of areas including extracurricular activities and sports.
It’s all about taking what you’ve done, and pulling out the relevant, transferable experiences and skills. Almost every company out there is looking for college students with leadership, initiative, and interpersonal skills. They can teach you the details and hard skills for the job; they want to find students with strong raw materials.
How you say it on your resume makes all the difference.
Were you a team/organization leader? Did you increase membership? Did you overhaul the finances? Did you create a publicity plan that generated coverage by a local paper?
These are the types of skills employers are craving. Don’t be afraid to tell them what you accomplished.
Most students who have clubs/organizations/teams on their resumes have them listed like this:
Captain, NCAA Women’s Tennis Team, 2007-2008
• Responsible for team of 20 women
• Help lead practices, workouts, and general team preparation
• Key liaison between players, coaches, and athletic department
The fact is, ANY captain in the history of the athletic system can write this exact same statement. All you’ve done is tell the reader what a team captain does. And guess what? The reader probably already knows that!
Instead, demonstrate to the recruiter what specific accomplishments go along with the title, and how those accomplishments will transfer to the “real world”.
Captain, NCAA Women’s Tennis Team, 2007-2008
• Selected by peers and coaches as one of two captains from a team of 20 players
• Lead team to highest conference ranking in more than five years by creating new practice regimen
• Helped team raise over $30,000 to fund international invitational in Paris
• Rose from Junior Varsity walk-on, to full scholarship by senior year
• Practiced and played more than 40 hours/week while maintaining full course load
If what is written in a resume can be written by the person who did the job, before, with, or after you, then you haven’t done yourself justice.
Your sports and extracurricular activities ARE experience – you just need to highlight how your success on the field will translate into success in the business world.