Photo courtesy of Amtec Photos via Flickr.
By Carla Morales
TAMPA, Fla. — As soon as a freshman begins college, within the first few weeks it tends to dawn on them that their primary focus is their major, on-campus involvement, grades, and overall future. It can slowly develop into a hyperfixation instead of a simple “focus.” This hyperfixation on resume building causes on-campus clubs to lose meaning, turning opportunities for community and connection into another bullet point on a resume.
Alicia Ambra, student government president, saw this firsthand while reviewing applications for new student organizations. She said students who join or create organizations solely for their resumes can take away from the purpose of campus involvement.
“It creates this lifeless culture where you’re not invested in the organization, and therefore you’re not truly contributing. You’re doing the bare minimum,” said Ambra. “It misses the personal aspect, the passion, the drive; it misses the want to put effort in it.”
Seattle Times reporter Ed Taylor spoke with Langston, an incoming University of Washington student, who was curious about strategies for resume building. One can see how students who have not even set foot on their university’s campus are automatically thinking about their resumes.
“Langston and his classmates are entering a world increasingly shaped by machine learning. They will live alongside technologies that can retrieve information, write prose, analyze data, generate images, and perform tasks that once required years of training,” Taylor said. “They will need to know how to use these tools.”
Machine learning is a relatively new term in today’s vocabulary as artificial intelligence quickly develops into an increasingly influential part of everyday life. According to the UC Berkeley School of Information, machine learning refers to allowing computers to mimic human thought and decision-making without direct programming.
This “machine learning” style could cause students to try to seem “perfect,” as these computers seem to be. This could lead students to fill resumes to the brim and feel the urge to prove themselves on a one-page document instead of shifting their focus to in-person connection.
Although resumes are a necessary aspect within the hiring industry, it can get confused with the idea that resumes are strictly what takes people far in life or guarantees better opportunities.
According to Medium, the statistical chance of getting hired when one applies cold to a job posting is 2.7%. One spends hours tailoring their resume, crafting the perfect cover letter, threading every keyword through an ATS filter, all for a 2.7% chance. This pressure to make every experience count can lead students to approach organizations with one question in mind: “How will this look on my resume?”
Networking can be a more valuable tool than simply adding another organization to a resume. Building genuine relationships with professionals, classmates, and alumni can create opportunities that a list of titles and positions on a page cannot.
Molly Milton, President of business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi, said the relationships students build through organizations can create opportunities that another line on a resume cannot.
“Who you know goes the furthest, and how do you treat the people that you know?” said Milton. “Following up with people, remembering their names, remembering their interests, sending thank-you letters is an unbelievable game changer.”
In addition, according to LinkedIn, networking surpasses resume optimization because it allows real connections to be built, work to be shared, and opportunities to seek guidance.
An overly packed resume can also raise questions about the legitimacy of a student’s participation in each organization. When a student is involved in an excessive number of clubs, organizations, and leadership positions, it becomes difficult to know how deeply they are actually contributing to each one.
Rather than being genuinely invested in each organization, some students may simply be collecting positions and titles to make their resume appear more impressive. At what point does involvement stop being about contributing to a community and start becoming about having another bullet point to list?
“If you’re involved in too many organizations, one, depending on the level of the role that you have, it can affect your ability to contribute the best you can to some of your roles,” said Ambra. “It looks better when you have less involvement in a smaller number of organizations, but you’re more involved in each of the organizations that you do commit to.”
College is meant to be a time to explore interests, build relationships, and find communities that extend beyond the classroom. A resume can document those experiences, but it should not become the reason students pursue them in the first place. Joining multiple organizations just to list them on a page may look impressive, but meaningful involvement comes from the time, effort, and relationships built within them.