When you start applying for jobs after you graduate college, it can feel like your résumé is light on skills and experience. Perhaps you’re short on real-world work experience or your previous jobs aren’t relevant to the new career you’re hoping to launch. Writing your résumé for those first job opportunities can feel daunting, but there’s no need to worry. Your college journey provides plenty of useful, relevant experiences to include on your résumé that can help you stand out from other applicants. Let’s discuss how you can turn campus leadership roles into marketable skills for your résumé, highlight the best types of extracurricular activities, and see how you can use these experiences and transferable skills in any career.
Clubs and societies that look good on college résumés
The first step in creating an impressive postgrad résumé is joining and participating in campus activities. The following types of clubs, societies, and student groups are ideal places to gain skills and experience in college:
- Student council or government
- Honor Societies
- Social action clubs
- Sports clubs
- Political clubs and associations
- Campus media groups
- Resident hall associations
- Debate clubs
- Academic major associations
The best leadership roles for your résumé
Any extracurricular activity is likely to be valuable and relevant on job applications, but as the career experts at Jobseeker know, there are numerous volunteer positions and leadership roles you can take on to boost your résumé. Here are just a few campus leadership experiences that can be useful when you’re applying for jobs:
- Club president: Leading a college society or club is a great asset for any résumé. Being president or vice president of a group covers a range of skills that can serve you well in your wider career.
- Event organizer: College offers plenty of opportunities to socialize, and taking on an events organizing role, such as a social secretary, can showcase a range of useful skills like planning and time management. You could also volunteer to organize awareness events or fundraisers for charitable or political causes.
- Campus journalist: Involvement in student media can give you useful experience for jobs in digital media, publishing, journalism, and more. It can also give you skills for a variety of things in your professional life, like marketing, editing, and writing.
- Student representative: There are many student representative roles that can help you build and strengthen important skills like communication and conflict resolution. These positions typically involve acting as a liaison between faculty offices, college staff, and students.
- Tutor: Working as an on-campus peer tutor can be a great boost for your résumé. It shows that you’ve not only excelled in your studies but also mastered those academic skills and put them to good use in helping fellow students.
- Athletic captain: Being captain of a college sports team is a prestigious accolade. Regardless of the sport and its status, team captaincy showcases in-demand skills and qualities like confidence, teamwork, and commitment.
Related: The Best College Extracurriculars to Stand Out to Future Employers
Useful résumé skills from college roles
Taking on a leadership role in college is one thing, but explaining how your experiences provided marketable skills for your résumé is quite another. In a competitive job market, you have to find any and every way to stand out from other candidates. It’s not just a case of listing your involvement in clubs and societies—you need to show how your extracurricular activities helped you develop valuable skills that you will use in the workplace. Here are the key skills employers want that are cultivated through college leadership roles:
- Leadership (obviously): Showing you can lead a team with confidence will mark you as a strong candidate with great potential for the future. While leadership can be taught in a professional setting, companies often favor candidates who show previous leadership experience.
- Organization: College leadership roles require strong organizational skills to balance your studies with your leadership duties. Showing you can organize both your schedule and that of a group or organization shows promise for your career management.
- Responsibility: Leading a group requires a high degree of responsibility to keep things running and successful. This shows employers that you’ve reached a level of maturity not all students have achieved.
- Commitment: While it would be easier to cruise through college without getting involved on campus, candidates with experience in extracurricular activities and leadership roles show a level of commitment beyond the minimum.
- Teamwork: Joining and leading a group or society in college requires the ability to work closely with other people. Most jobs demand teamwork in some form, so this experience will serve you well anywhere.
- Interpersonal relations: Communication and relationship building are critical skills for leaders, and they’re in demand across most careers and industries. Use your college leadership experience to show how you’ve built strong working relationships through effective communication.
Where to include campus leadership roles on your résumé
Where you place your college leadership experience on your résumé will depend on your other relevant experience. If you’re short on work experience, you might want to reference some of your leadership roles at the top, depending on the level of responsibility you had and how much of an impact you made. If you’ve built up some relevant employment, consider adding your leadership roles to the following résumé sections:
- Résumé objective: If your college leadership role is one of your main résumé assets, you could include it in this introductory paragraph by linking it to one of the key skills the employer is looking for.
- Education: Your education section can be a suitable place for listing society memberships, academic clubs, and volunteer involvement.
- Additional information: You could add leadership roles to the final optional sections of your résumé, which might include “achievements,” “volunteer work,” or “hobbies and interests.”
How to maximize the impact of your résumé
Remember, your résumé isn’t just what you put on it but how you present it. An impactful résumé should follow a professional, structured template with clear headings and highlight your involvement in as concise a manner as possible. Be sure to use active over passive voice to describe your experiences, which creates a more engaging tone. Focus on your achievements in each role and how you made an impact on the group or organization, and connect the key skills mentioned in the job description to these experiences.
Related: How to Write a Great Résumé That Will Get You Noticed
Incorporating campus leadership roles into your résumé helps you stand out in a competitive job market. Focus on showcasing transferable skills like organization, commitment, and teamwork to align with employer expectations. By highlighting your achievements and impact, you can effectively demonstrate your readiness for professional success.
Looking for even more résumé tips and tricks? Check out our Internships and Careers section to help you land the job of your dreams with your college experiences!
