Motivate Me to Be Successful

"To think about your life is to create it. You have to take ownership of where you are right now and know where you want to go before you can get there. Keep collecting evidence for your success. You can believe it, and you can be it."
~ Ali Vincent

Entries in Recruitment (1)

Wednesday
Jul262017

What your hobbies and interests say about you and other clues as to your success potential

Elon Musk has them listed on his one page resume, but should you put them on yours?

Well before we answer that question, let me say one thing. You can tell an awful lot about a person by looking at someone's list of hobbies

So what would my list of hobbies say

If I list them at their basic, this is what my list would look like...

Exercise, Reading, Home decorating and Writing

To be fair as a writer you could argue that I shouldn't need to include writing as a hobby. But I consider writing fiction, poetry and most of the blogs I write for Motivate Me not part of my what I would call my "job" I write these things for fun and in what little spare time I have - hence my need to add this as a hobby or interest

The same can be said for exercise. I love to walk, I go to the gym 3 times a week - mostly whether I want to or not. Exercise as a hobby? Not really but I am interested in keeping my body and mind healthy, so a potential employer might be interested enough to ask what kind of exercise and am I going to train for the next series of Australian Ninja? - That would be a no by the way.

Unless a job application asks you to list your hobbies and interests I would leave them off your resume.

But what if the interviewer or member of the interview panel asks what your hobbies are, try to link one (or more) of your hobbies to an aspect of the job you are going for.

Of course any savvy recruiter will look for other clues as to what you get up to in your spare time (which may impact on your ability to do the job.

Email addresses:

Cutesy email addresses are a big give away. Surfzup@, thevodkaqueen@ and jesseatscake@ were all real email addresses of people I've assisted over the years. My first recoomendation is to get a standardised email address of FirstName.LastName@

Social Media Feeds:

There are 2 options - tie down your feed so only "friends" can see your news feeds.

Remove the bad images / posts.

I would recommend the latter, with a further caveat - don't use your social media feed to ruin your future career. Believe me it's happened. Don't be one of the people who gets a job offer rescinded because your social media profile has things on there that can cause you and your new employer embarrassment.

Google / Search Engine Search:

Google your name and see what comes up, and while you are at it, check the images tab as well. If you are lucky you won't have any compromising pictures of you lurking to bite you on the rear. As with social media feeds it's important to clean these up. Contact the "owner" and ask them politely to remove them. It isn't an instant fix, but you'll eventually come off the cached feeds.

So - your key to success may lie somewhere in your list of hobbies and interests, but unless they directly relate to a job that you are applying for. Please leave them off your resume.