Extracurricular Activities for a Resume

As a college student preparing for your first “real” job interview, you might be wondering about extracurricular activities for a resume? Do they have any place on there? Or should you leave them off? Or should you pick only a few? Lots of questions. The fact is, activities that range from intramural sports to the school paper to charity work have all helped you develop marketable transferable skills. You'll be able to pull stories from these experiences to help demonstrate to employers what you can do.

We'll show you how to list extracurricular activities on a resume and how to select the proper ones.

Where to Put Extracurricular Activities on a Resume

You can see in this sample resume for a college student how the extracurricular activities section appears beneath the education section. You can call the section Leadership Activities if you held leadership roles, or simply Extracurricular Activities. Use a bullets to list each activity. Start with the role you held, followed by the club/activity/event name, and include a highlight of your tenure. For example:

• Staff news writer, College Paper: contributed two 500-word articles per week; interviewed sources (students, faculty, administration, school vendors, special guests) and reported on campus news and events
• Treasurer, Environmental Club: oversaw fundraising activities and bookkeeping duties

How to Choose Extracurricular Activities

1. Hiring Managers Prefer Quality Over Quantity

When it comes to extracurricular activities for a resume, quality trumps quantity—ask any hiring manager or college admissions officer— plus, your resume only has room for so much on one page, the standard length for college students.

Although it’s fine to pursue extracurricular activities of all types, it can be attractive to employers to match technical experience with your intended job or field. For example, if you are crafting a resume to apply to be a computer programmer, list your involvement with programming and engineering clubs. This way, you’ll boast relevant extracurriculars but also be able to speak confidently about them (as opposed to that film club you joined for one semester).

2. Prioritize Leadership Positions

There is no better time to develop your leadership skills than in college with extracurricular activities. If you were part of a fraternity and organized chapter meetings or proposed a new type of charity work, those are pivotal. Were you a part of student government? Did you organize a forum to talk about an issue that students were passionate about? Include that, along with the results. Those are the types of valuable extracurricular activities for a resume.

Not only will this show the hiring manager valuable leadership experience, but you will also show him or her that you can manage more than just your course load. And when it comes time for the interview, have a few prepared (true) stories in your pocket about the times you demonstrated leadership within your extracurricular activities.

3. Show Community Involvement

Employers like to see volunteer experience on your resume since it may indicate that you could transition more easily toward becoming a part of their community at the company.

Community service or professional and academic societies that volunteer for a cause are great to highlight on your resume. Mentoring and tutoring youth or peers are also terrific options since they illustrate teaching skills—important in some respect to almost any job.

Get Ready to Get to Work

Knowing the best extracurricular activities for a resume isn't always black and white. There's plenty of gray area to throw you for a loop, especially if you're relatively new to the workforce. Need some more job-search help? Head over to Monster's grad site for helpful answers to your many questions.