David Demic told students last Friday to get busy padding their resumes or else. My advice: Don’t listen to him.
In his Op-Ed “Start Resume Hunting Today,” Demic made bold assertions, gave terrible advice and despite good intentions, I’m sure, missed the point completely.
First, Demic asserted that only one type of student stands a chance in the post college hunt for a job: the “resume hunter.”
If “resume hunter” sounds awkward to you, that’s because it is. Wicked awkward, in fact. But you can loosely define it as the type of student signing up for advanced classes, joining clubs, groups, etc., for the sake of their resume and their resume alone. In other words, the hyper-motivated-for-all-the-wrong-reasons kind of student.
If this is not you, if you’re not hagridden by thoughts of failure and disappointing your parents, if you haven’t bought into the idea that the only path to success is through the list of arbitrary clubs and leadership roles that you put on your resume, Demic says you’re doomed.
His advice, naturally: be this type of student. But don’t listen to him.
While these may be the mind numbing steps to get you into grad school, they are not the steps to get a job and definitely not the steps to create one.
His advice is outmoded. It’s passivity disguised as motivation, and like most of academia, it’s better suited for the industrial era from which it came, not the ever-changing world in which we live.
Don’t get me wrong, I encourage you to get involved, but be selective; your time is finite just like your resume. So, take the classes that truly excite you. Join clubs only if you care about them, if you are passionate about them or potentially could be.
After all, isn’t that the point?
They’re not there to fluff up your resume, though people use them that way. Clubs exist as an avenue to explore your interests, your passions, and to see where in this world they can take you.
Don’t look at clubs as a means to an end but as the end in-and-of-themselves that they have the potential to be.
Demic mentioned that if a “resume hunter” and a “regular student” where in contention for the same job, the resume hunter would get the job 99.99% of the time. But would they?
If the regular student used their time in college to get passionate, truly passionate about something and then monetized that passion, however creatively, then no way.
So, my ultimate advice is this: Find a passion and find a way to turn it into a career.
If you do, your resume will grow on its own. And then when you go for an interview, your employer won’t care that you didn’t participate in torchlight or any other type of academic flatulence. They will, however, care about that awesome app you built or that business or NGO you started.
Our economy needs people like that, people who can create, and our world needs people who can solve problems. But we’re not going to get either by mindlessly going through the motions. Save that crap for machines and automation. To do anything else is a waste.
And if you really want to do something solely for the ol’ resume, learn to code or some other skill. But whatever you do, don’t join a club just because. Be intentional about things.
