<p>There is a volunteer group on campus that I want to get involved with but it is completely unrelated to my future career. If I were to get a master's degree in my field, would this EC be relevant at all? I know grad schools don't care about ECs but I've always heard that employers care a lot about them. I guess what I am asking is how relevant undergrad ECs are after a graduate degree, especially if I probably won't be in a leadership position.</p>
<p>(I am not doing the EC just to boost my resume; I was just curious how it might be perceived)</p>
<p>A lot of college ECs aren’t really relevant to the type of information you’d want on a resume. If you’re a physics major and you were the president of the physics society at your university, then it is definitely relevant. Put it on your resume. </p>
<p>If you’re a physics major and you were president of the Harry Potter fan club or a volunteer group that goes around picking up garbage around campus…then no, it’s not relevant and should not be on your resume. </p>
<p>I have heard people say that the interviewer only wanted to talk about their EC/study abroad/volunteer position etc. How would the interviewer find out about those things then? Do they just ask something like, “You have a high gpa. Did you do anything else in college?”</p>
<p>Only put relevant things on your resume, if you can. If you need to fill up a page, then you can put things that are less relevant, but try to emphasize how it makes you a stronger candidate. As you get more and more experience, you won’t have room for things like unrelated undergrad ECs so this will be irrelevant (probably by the time you get to grad school and almost certainly after you get your master’s) on your resume.</p>
<p>That being said, you should still do it if it’s something you’re interested in. Not everything has to be directly related to your future career. Some things are just great experiences. You could have fun, meet new people, or even learn or strengthen skills that will help you in the future.</p>
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<p>To answer that, we’d have to know the context of the person applying and what they were applying for. It’s not that you can never include an EC in your application. It’s just that you should emphasize what makes you a good candidate for the position that you’re applying for. Sometimes, an EC can do that and can be included on a resume. Sometimes, it’s not relevant and should be excluded in light of better experience. Alternatively, it can come up in conversation during the interview (which is how it has happened in every instance that I know of). It can sometimes be included in other application materials.</p>
<p>Your resume has limited space. Don’t fill it up with fluff if you don’t have to.</p>
<p>I think that would really depend on the position. If those things happened to be somehow relevant to the job description, then they would be good on the resume. If someone is a business major, and is then applying for a job in business management of some kind, studying abroad could be relevant, because you’re cultured and more aware of cultural variation, which is going to make you more likely to be more adept at dealing with clients who may be overseas or otherwise foreign in some sense. </p>
<p>I think your college activities, even if unrelated to your major, belong on your resume. Just a simple list under the education section labelled activities and listing all your clubs. People want to know that you were engaged in your college community and listing all your activities shows that.</p>
<p>Employers don’t really care about your community involvement for the most part. I would put it on any resume (work or grad school) only if it relates somehow to your field of study OR if you built skills that could be helpful in a business environment. An example of something that I would put on is if you coordinated a two day volunteer effort with 100 volunteers, for example. Or if you planned and hosted a day that included speakers, panels, refreshments, etc. for a significant sized group. </p>
<p>I’m against the grain of the thread here, but it depends on what the activity is and on your level of involvement. There were two activities I did in college that had nothing to do with my major, but I couldn’t imagine leaving them off my resume, and they came up naturally both in interviews and in my discussions with professors. One of them was a Division 1 sport and the other was a volunteer group that I was very involved in all four years of college and was president of by the end. If you can tell a story about your activity, one that would interest an interviewer or a reader of your application, then include it. I leveraged my activities to show leadership skills, diligence, persistence, commitment, and to illustrate myself as someone with interests outside of the nerdy ones usually ascribed to students from my college. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that resumes evolve over time. Once you have your first real job in college, you drop your High School information, at some point you drop your college information (except for listing your degree which you should always have). My feeling is that as long as you are still including college details - you should list all clubs and ECs you participated in during college.</p>
<p>I would include it in the “Activities” section like kiddie says. Also if you were a leader in the EC, that would be transferable skills. Show community service won’t hurt.
Also if you had an interview an they said “Tell me about a time where you overcame an obsticle” this may be a great source to draw from. </p>
<p>I would include it under “Activities” or “Interests.” It makes you look more interesting, plus you never know if it will prompt an interviewer to ask you more about it, which gives you an extra chance to connect with the person.</p>
<p>^Yes! My husband put “sailing” under activities, and that’s all his interviewer wanted to talk about. The company ended up hiring him AND me - that’s how we wound up in Maine. Mainers take their sailing seriously!</p>