Tips From a Recruiter: How to Let Your Extracurriculars Inform Your Career Path

Making the decision of where you want to start your career can be extremely intimidating. This is especially true if you haven’t yet declared your college major or your major doesn’t have a defined career path, and if you haven’t held a few internship roles in the same industry or have your heart set on working at one company. How do you begin to decide what you want to do without the experience of working in an industry? How do you know what your strengths are if you haven’t yet had a job? And how can you make yourself appear competitive in the labor market without having mastered any specific industry skills?

We spoke to Hillary Robbins, a Senior Recruiter and Talent Acquisition Specialist at Success Academy, a nationally renowned network of public charter schools in New York City, about how extracurriculars and campus leadership experience can serve as a guide for you as you embark on your career path, and how you can leverage those skills as you interview for a variety of roles at companies you’d love to work for.

Here are four steps to help you land your dream job.

1. Determine What You Enjoy & the Skills Those Activities Require

You may not have realized it yet, but your involvement in campus groups and organizations have already shed light on what you enjoy doing, and where your strengths and skills lie, Hillary said. For example, if you are captain of an intramural soccer team, you probably enjoy building strong relationships, and managing a group of people. You are most likely a strong communicator, learned how to give constructive criticism, and have a knack for boosting morale when things get tough.

Maybe you are an active member of a student group dedicated to local charity work, and have helped organize a food drive on campus for homeless shelters surrounding your school. That most likely means you enjoy mission-driven work, and have strong project management skills to bring ideas to fruition. You likely work well as a member of a team (as you collaborated with other volunteers), have strong communication skills (that shone through as you discussed collection and delivery logistics), and are extremely organized and detail-oriented (which led to the success of the drive). You may also have discovered that you have a passion for marketing as you got the word out about your event, and enjoy social media management.

And finally, say you play the flute in your campus orchestra. Committing to endless hours of practicing your instrument shows that you are disciplined, hard-working, and focused. Your commitment to your fellow musicians and the orchestra as a whole might also mean you enjoy collaborative projects and working toward a greater goal, as well as learning and perfecting a new language or process.

2. Identify Jobs That Celebrate Those Skills

Now that you’ve identified your strengths, it’s time to start looking for roles that are seeking candidates with your skillset — even if you don’t have experience in a specific industry. “You can be an excellent fit for a role without having done the role before,” Hillary shared, adding that as you look at a job description, you can match the skills the company is looking for to any prior campus experiences you have had.

For example, Hillary said, recruiters looking to fill education roles are often seeking candidates who are receptive to feedback as they develop their teaching style, which is a skill you can develop in many different extracurriculars, such as by writing for a campus publication in which you receive edits to incorporate from a more senior student writer.

In addition to determining what skills you can already bring to the table, you might also want to seek out positions that will allow you to continue to build your personal brand by broadening your skills even further, Hillary added. For any role in education, she explained, you will learn to build strong presentation skills, the ability to time manage, and how to analyze data — which are all skills that will serve you well throughout your career.

3. Tailor Your Resume to Highlight the Skills You’ve Gained

Every company is looking for candidates with leadership qualities — regardless of wherever they’ll actually be tasked with managing a team. As you decide what experiences to highlight on your resume, remember that you didn’t have to be president of a campus club to have served a leader in some capacity. For example, as a member of a music group on campus, maybe you took on the responsibility of arranging part of a charity show, or helped take down sets after performances. When drafting or updating your resume for any role, be sure you explain exactly how you contributed to your campus group (in addition to your title), and any measurable impact you had on the organization in a few bullet points.

To highlight the skills you gained from those experiences, you can create a “Skills & Interests” section and/or a “Leadership” area on your resume, Hillary suggested. She added that it would also be wise to tweak your resume for different roles you apply to, in order to highlight the skills mentioned in job descriptions. That could meet omitting or adding certain experiences, or changing the bullet points under each position you’ve held. For education-based roles, Hillary explained, it would be excellent to highlight a summer campus experience or peer tutoring jobs.

4. Nail the Interview With Examples From Your Campus Leadership Roles 

When you interview for jobs, be sure to come prepared with a “toolkit” of examples from your campus experiences to illustrate how you perform in different situations, Hillary suggested. For example, you may be asked questions about a time you led a team or a project, what your goals were for, what challenges you faced along the way, and what the outcome was. Don’t be afraid to highlight a time or point during the process where you failed, or when things did not go to plan. In fact, Hillary shared that companies aren’t looking for “perfection” when they ask these types of questions, but rather for candidates who are able to identify ways to improve and implement changes. “If you are open to coaching and feedback, you can be successful in many different roles that are available,” she said.

Notably, the example you provide, or story you tell, does not have to relate to the role you’re applying for, Hillary added. “Recruiters appreciate hearing different experiences,” Hillary said. “As a recruiter for an education organization, I have heard excellent responses that highlight experience working in a lab or an extracurricular in a musical group. Any experience is valuable so long as you articulate it clearly and confidently!”

As you get closer to looking for your post-grad job, it’s a good idea to take a step back and take inventory of the campus clubs and organizations you enjoyed leading and participating in throughout your college career. What drew you to those groups? What kind of role did you take on, and what did you enjoy about your involvement in those clubs? What skills did you both bring to the table and gain through those experiences?

After you’ve answered those questions for yourself, you should have an idea of what you are passionate about, what kind of responsibilities you enjoy, and what your strengths are. Just as important, you can also identify what you don’t enjoy, or areas in which you’d like to grow. Maybe you’ve learned that while you have strong organization skills and attention to detail, you struggle when it comes to public speaking. Now would be a great time to take a college course in that subject, or ask your peers to help you hone that skill.

Looking for open opportunities for student leaders? Click here to learn about how Success Academy hires and develops student leaders. You can also check out the replay of our webinar on how to let your extracurricular skills determine your career path.