Are You Participating In the Gig Economy?
More and more people nowadays are diversifying their work portfolios. Whether it’s a hobby, a side hustle, or a passion project during a career break, there is a way to showcase that to your next employer.
For example, many graduates got impressive extra-curricular activity achievements. They are definitely evidence of valuable job skills!
Yet, it’s your responsibility to translate your experiences into meaningful implications to the employers.
One way to highlight them on your resume is to identify the underlying patterns/ themes of your experiences, then group them together, and name it as your resume session heading. So instead of using a general heading as “extra-curricular activity”, you can describe them as:
- Project/ Leadership Experience (e.g. your management roles at student clubs, events, trips, sports competition, high school alumni group)
- Volunteering/ Community Engagement (e.g. self-initiated activity, service learning initiatives, community and church service)
- Competition & Awards (e.g. business case competition, Hackathon, design campaign)
- Start-up Experiences (e.g. online shops, entrepreneurship competitions, freelancing)
- Public Speaking/ Performance Engagement (e.g. school and alumni events, conference, part time, toastmaster)
- Event Management (e.g. Fun Fair, inter-university dance competition & performance, cultural festival, ceremonies, dining events)
The possibilities are endless. The objective here is to put all non-academic and non-employment activities into your work portfolio to demonstrate your job-related skills (e.g. Public Speaking for a client facing role), passion, strength of characters and work ethics. There are many outstanding student clubs like AIESEC which are internationally recognised by employers so don’t skip these achievements in your resume.
Ask yourself: What were your reasons for choosing these activities back then?
For example, there are people who purposefully took people-facing activities to overcome their shyness. There are also people who just wanted to try something new and test drive what h/she is interested in, and discovered his/her strong interests in events planning.
What were yours? and how much growth you’ve gained in the past 4 years? These gigs give you stories to tell at job interviews on your self-discovery and learning journey.
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