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Posted: 31 Mar 2011 04:32 AM PDT ![]() Some days after work, I'd collapse on the floor of my scantly furnished apartment still in my bathing suit, still crusted with salt, and eat spoonfuls of peanut butter because I was too exhausted to cook. I was proud of my hard work, and I wanted to show that on my resume.But on the other hand, surf instruction wasn't even remotely related to the types of marketing, PR, and communication opportunities I was on the hunt for.I turned to Google for guidance, and found a slew of top ranked resume experts insisting that I should absolutely not include things like surfing on my resume. It wasn't related to my career goals, and it was a waste of space. Recruiters would hate me for putting random stuff on my resume, and they would toss it out the window. So I deleted it. And then one day I was meeting the head of a PR department for a media company that I was interested in working for, and I mentioned that I had spent the summer after graduation teaching surfing. The PR Director's eyes lit up. "Really? He picked up my resume and started scanning the page. "I didn't see it here." I hesitated. "Well, it's not directly related to the job I'm looking for now, so I left it out." "Oh." His voice dropped, tinged with a note of disappointment. And that's when I vowed never to trust spoon-fed corporate career advice again. Of course teaching surfing wasn't relevant on my resume, but it didn't matter. Surfing was interesting. Surfing was a pleasant break from the same buzzwords and resume-speak that employers see all the time. It was something that this PR guy could picture, touch, and grasp. While my surfing gig alone wasn't going to get me hired, it was going to help me stand out from the other applicants. After all, there was a human reading my resume, and humans inherently are curious about other humans. You tempt a person with an interesting fact about your life, and they want to know more. Maybe that helps you get a call back. After that meeting, I marched to my computer and inserted surfing back into my resume, and it's been the icebreaker and conversation starter with every employer ever since. I've learned so much from this experience. 1.) Only take advice that works for youNo advice is ever perfect, especially on page one of Google search results. If that advice was perfect, there wouldn't be 67 million other pieces of advice.2.) Don't be afraid to be differentI've said it once, and I'm saying it again, hold true to the values you're looking for in an employer. If a company ditches your resume because you had three lines about surfing on the very bottom, forget them.3.) Be ProudYour resume is a collection of your life's greatest achievements, make sure you add one that you're proud of. Even if it's not directly related to the job you're applying to, an employer who values the accomplishments and achievements of their employees will enjoy reading about it.4.) Figure out MechanicsIf you're worried about an unrelated accomplishment seeming too random, then maybe you divide your resume into two sections "Relevant Experience" and "Other Experience."I don't use more than a few lines of space for my surfing gig, but it's an important part of who I am and the path I have decided to take since graduating. I also try to figure out the one great transferable skill that came from teaching surfing and highlight that in my work experience. What do you think? Should you include random stuff on your resume? Photo by Frédéric de Villamil |
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