Effect of Extracurricular Activities on Career

Gender and Career Success On many resumes, the applicant will list their extracurricular activities and interests. If nothing else, it gives the interviewer something with which to break the ice, a conversation starter that is not all that relevant to the job for which the applicant is being interviewed. Or is it? People put down their extracurriculars in part because they think that companies want to know those things. It can look good to say that you help the homeless, or referee youth soccer.

But does any of that actually matter in terms of career success? There has not been much work done to measure the link between extracurricular activities and career success. A lot of the research that does exist comes from the education field and relates to students. At that level, at least, there is evidence to support the idea that extracurricular activities are beneficial. Students who participate in extracurricular activities do better in school, when other factors have been accounted for.

IN particular, students who struggle with interpersonal competence seem to benefit the most from extracurricular activities (Mahoney, Cairns and Farmer, 2003). But what about adulthood, and career success? Obviously, if one does well in school this will enhance their career success, on average, but do the benefits of extracurricular activities mean anything to adults who are in the middle of their careers? Chickering (1994) argues that there are benefits. They may not be as profound, but they still exist.

This may be because extracurricular activities often encourage physical fitness and often encourage social interaction. They remind people of a life outside of work, can improve their sense of well --being and overall can put them in a better frame of mind and with more motivation when they are at work. Extracurricular activities also convey something about you. The point of putting them on a resume is because the people at the new company do not know you.

But the people within your current company do -- they can easily be made aware of what you do outside of work. This is important, because the extracurricular activities you engage in say a lot about you. They can convey that you are a leader -- if you're not one at work you might still be on in the community, and that will become part of your reputation. People will see you as a leader, and that will definitely enhance your career possibilities.

Furthermore, if you do things like volunteer work, that shows the kind of person you are, and this is an important part of the ethical culture of many companies. Moreover, some such activities can actually prove important to the job. You might be learning Chinese just for fun, but that is a handy skill in this world - some extracurricular activities enhance career potential by giving you skills that many people lack. It is also important to convey that you are a lifelong learner. Many organizations respect this.

They might not need somebody who knows Chinese, but it will still reflect well on someone that they are not going to stop learning. That is a trait of successful people, and again engaging in such activity can change the perception that people have about you (Career Building, 2014). This is not to say that one builds a resume solely on their extracurricular activities -- far from it. In some lines of work, they do not matter in the slightest.

But in other lines of work, they can be an important method by which you communicate things to potential employers, or even your current employer, about where your ceiling is (Fabricant & Miller, 2014). It is interesting that there has not been any empirical research about this --.