5 Ways Extracurricular Activities Can Help Your Job Search
An extracurricular activity is simply anything you do outside your main purpose in school – academics. It could be sports, departmental politics, campus journalism, social and religious groups participation, and many more.
Here are the ways extracurricular activities could benefit your job search and career when you graduate and begin to look for job:
1, Network building: Extracurricular activities help to build a strong network that could be useful after school. You tend to meet many people within and beyond school who could help you in your job or career quest. For example, as President of your departmental association, you are likely to organize events that will involve meeting and talking to corporate executives and other successful people, like alumni of your department or speakers at your events. You can easily establish relationship with these big shots who could have your CVs when you graduate. The network building can also be internal, within school, as a campus journalist for example, you are likely to know and relate with other campus journalists. You could need any of them in your post-school endeavour. Some of them could become professional journalists outside school and you can easily use them to make in-roads into the press.
2, Exposure: Extracurricular activities expose you to a lot of things. It exposes you to successful people you may ordinarily not have access to, and that could motivate you. It forces you to study other people, read their profiles and get the needed motivation to study hard to be like them. Some activities also involve you seeking corporate sponsorships and that exposes you to corporate workings which could be helpful in your career at some point.
3, Situational Interview Cases: In job interviews, it is very common to be asked questions like, “Have you been in X position before? What did you do?”, “Tell me a time you needed to do Y?”, etc. If you were a student that participated in extracurricular activities while in school, you have a lot of experiences to easily draw from. You can easily remember some interesting experiences you have had while being the Secretary of your departmental association, or while being the editor of the biggest campus magazine on your campus, or while being the Chairman of the Orientation Committee for fresh students. Interviewers find such narrations interesting and that could boost your chance.
4, Leadership and Team Skills: Extracurricular activities boost your team working skills which could aid your career. Whether as team lead or just member, most of such activities involve you working as a team. This could also be used as an example if an interviewer asks you to describe a time you have worked as a team in the past. Many interviewers and job candidate assessors like candidates who have some leadership skills. This gives a clue into your influencing skills or charisma. You could gather this through extracurricular activities. Extracurricular activities could also help your public speaking and other social skills which could be helpful in job presentations.
5, CV Building: Extracurricular activities help in adding flesh to your CV. As a fresh graduate, you may not have much on your CV other than your bio, educational history, awards, and a few more sections. Non-academic activities you engaged in school can fill sections like Leadership Activities and Extracurricular Activities. That’s better than a bland CV.
Ultimately, while pursuing these activities, do not forget to make a good grade. Many students make the mistake of abandoning their studies in the name of these extracurricular activities. There is a reason it is “extra”. Many prospective employers bin your CV they see a bad grade on it, which means you may not even get the opportunity to be interviewed, where your extra activities could have come handy.
