KODA. The Community Blog

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Why You Should Put Random Stuff On Your Resume Posted: 31 Mar 2011 04:32 AM PDT My first job after graduation was teaching surfing.  After that summer, when I was applying to "real" jobs in communications, I ran into a predicament: should I include it on my resume? On the one hand, teaching surfing was the hardest job I had ever had. Every day, I biked twenty miles to the beach and spent six hours dragging students out to the middle of the ocean so I could push them into the waves and drag them back out again. 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 you No 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 different I'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 Proud Your 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 Mechanics If 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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The Work Buzz's Latest News: Will Millennials always be preceded by their reputation at work?

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Will Millennials always be preceded by their reputation at work? Posted: 30 Mar 2011 01:16 PM PDT Every time a generation rises into the workforce, there's a negative stereotype that goes with them. Baby boomers, for example, were authority-questioning, free-loving hippies. The latchkey kids of Generation X, on the other hand, were a bunch of cynical loners. Millennials (or Gen Y), the newest generation to enter the workforce, are no different. As "60 Minutes" once put it: "[Millennials] were raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little leagues with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating, and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you persist in that belief, you can take your job and shove it." As a result of their "coddled" existence, when it comes to their careers, the common perception is that Millennials are needlessly impatient, demanding and fickle, and that they come to the workforce with a set of unrealistic expectations in terms of salary, advancement opportunity and flexibility. Though generational stereotypes are typically exaggerated, they also don't appear out of thin air. Given the following attitudes expressed by Millennials in various surveys, for example, it's not hard to see where the perception of the Gen Y groupthink came from: According to a report by Johnson Controls, 34 percent of Millennials expect to stay in a job between one and two years. Fifty seven percent expect to stay between two and three years. The same study reported that 56 percent of Millennials prefer to work flexibly and choose when to work. According to a survey by Mr. Youth, Millennials cited the No. 1 reason for switching jobs as "I just needed a change." Seventy-three percent say that a quality of a good workplace is one where managers give  "continuous, ongoing and informal feedback," according to a 2010 study by Career Edge. While all of the above certainly emphasize the Millennial "it's all about me" stereotype, there may soon be a shift in this way of thinking, since thus far the job market hasn’t really lived up to Gen Y’s rosy expectations. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 37 percent of Gen Y is currently unemployed, the largest percentage in this age group in more than thirty years; one-in-ten has recently lost a job; and, while 79 percent of Gen Y has completed at least some college to date, 41 percent are currently employed in jobs unrelated to their fields of study. This recessionary reality check will certainly color the way Gen Y sees their respective career paths going forward, right? According to a new study by DeVry University's Career Advisory Board called "How the Recession Shaped Millennial and Hiring Manager Attitudes about Millennials’ Future Careers," Millennials might think so, but managers don’t necessarily see a change. It seems there remains a discrepancy between Gen Y's view and the way they're viewed from the outside. For example, while 71 percent of Millennials reported in the study that "meaningful work" was now one of the three most important factors in determining their career success,  only 11 percent of managers said that they felt meaningful work was most important to Millennials. Managers overwhelmingly believed that Millennials were most concerned with money, followed by having a high level of responsibility. The study also found that older managers tended to have the most skewed perception of Gen Y. For example, 32 percent of Millennials ranked "time spent at work" among their top three priorities when choosing a workplace. In comparison, 52 percent of managers over age 50 believed that “time spent at work” was most important to Millennials, but only 31 percent of managers under the age of 39 felt this way. The one area where the generation gap didn’t exist? Pointing out Gen Y’s flaws. Both managers and Millennials felt that their top three weaknesses were "inability to receive criticism from leaders," " impatience with established processes," and "ineffective communication." What do you think about Generation Y? Do they live up to stereotypes in the workplace? Has the recession changed their outlook?

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