<p>Hi parents or anyone of CC,</p>
<p>How much did ECs during college impact your job hunt after graduation?</p>
<p>Edit: I mean ECs in regards to on-campus such as clubs, Greek Life, professional organizations, etc., not a job.</p>
<p>Only if it related to your field.</p>
<p>^ So a leadership position in a community service club or a minorityrepresentation club doesn’t look as good as membership for a professional org (ie; if I’m in a business-related field and I join a business fraternity vs. being VP of the Black Students Association)?</p>
<p>Just wondering because I am trying to weigh my options on what EC to focus on next semester. I’m not sure how employers look at volunteer work versus professional development ECs.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of talk in high school for it to get into a college, but not much talk about ECs in college getting a real job.</p>
<p>Depends a lot. Investment banks will sometimes favor students with certain high-profile, high-commitment ECs when hiring from the Ivies. If you put in 100 hours a week organizing literacy programs at Phillips Brooks House or putting together Let’s Go guides, I guess it shows you can do 100 hours a weeks putting together IPO materials or whatever. </p>
<p>In most other cases, I doubt it matters unless it’s specifically related to the career field. Or if it shows a specific career skill, like the job you’re applying for requires experience handling a decent-sized budget, and the organization you were an officer for had a decent-sized budget. Or if the position involves event planning or fundraising and you planned a lot of successful fundraisers, that kind of thing. Definitely not like ECs for college admission where you just have to Show Leadership in a generic sense, though.</p>
<p>Certainly ECs won’t hurt. And they could give valuable experience. </p>
<p>I worried because DD, and econ major, really didn’t have any college ECs. But for the last 2 years she did have a campus job (10-15 hrs/week, sometimes more) on the IT support help desk. It included some shift lead responsibilities. That experience was a real plus when she interviewed for a real job.</p>
<p>Depends a lot on the field. For example, my company really likes to see technical types with a lot of time in technical EC’s - it suggests a real interest in the field, beyond the pleasantly plump paycheck.</p>
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<p>Wouldn’t playing lacrosse be the EC that investment banks like?</p>
<p>[Wall</a> Street’s Lacrosse Mafia - Businessweek](<a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg)</p>
<p>It depends. My son did a lot of “social” things on campus that developed real-world job skills. It’s not being in any particular activity that is important–it is what you do with the activity that matters. Not just having a title–but what skills are you developing that an employer will find attractive?</p>
<p>For example, he joined a fraternity, and he held various leadership positions in the fraternity, among them Alumni Relations Chair=nurturing relationships. This translated into demonstrated ability to work with a customer base.</p>
<p>He played club soccer, ended up being captain. A lot of that translates to the real world.
he also refereed (sp?) in the intramural league and also for various soccer leagues off campus–the skills from that translate as well.</p>
<p>He was involved in the business fraternity on campus as well–and believes that while he really enjoyed it, it didn’t add much to his resume. Still, he would do it again, because he enjoyed it.</p>
<p>Not everything you do needs to add to the bottom line of your resume. Do things because you enjoy them. And a lot of time, doing the things you enjoy can lead to resume enhancement, just because…</p>
<p>And I just wanted to add that my recent college graduate ended up with a dream job with a start up. He loves every minute of what he does every day, even though he is putting in insane hours. He already received a crazy promotion and the raise to go with it, and feels that some of the experiences he had on campus and in various internships have really paid off big time for him.</p>
<p>I did screening of applicants for jobs for years, as well as interviews. The very last thing we looked at (if we even looked at all) were college ECs. And as noted above, we only looked at ones which related to our field. Since I was in education, something like literacy volunteers would have been viewed favorably. But something like treasurer of your sorority would not have mattered. For PE positions, coaching or referee ECs would have been viewed well, but being on a club team not really so much.</p>
<p>Most applicants did NOT include college ECs on their resumes unless they were very relevant to their majors. There was NO PLACE on our employees job application to list college ECs.</p>
<p>Ah… good you mentioned internships. I hear that hiring theme more than ECs.</p>
<p>My daughter had a liberal arts major, and didn’t take even one course in what became her career field. However, she had strong ECs which I think led to good internships which probably led to her first job. </p>
<p>If you’re majoring in something like engineering or computer science, your skill set learned in school leads to your first job. For a social science or liberal arts major, I think ECs and internships can be very important.</p>