When going about the process of writing a resume for Singapore (or even when talking about themselves in job interviews), people often dismiss their ‘non-work’ activities and interests.
The reasoning is that they are typically not relevant from the career point of view. When writing a resume, while it is important to keep the content as relevant to your job target as possible, I think an exception can be made for your activities/interests.
Why activities and interests should be considered writing a resume for Singapore
My thoughts are as follows:
- Adding an Activities & Interest section will not take-up much space in the resume
- Providing information on your various pursuits outside of work, shows that you are a well rounded individual
- Accomplishments in this area (such as being captain of your university football team, or winning a music competition) are often seen as a reflection of competence in other (work related) areas as well. This is backed by research conducted by Amy Cuddly at the Harvard Business School, who says that “Many acts can indicate competence: scoring well on a College Board exam (SAT), for example, or knowing how to handle a sailboat, or deftly navigating through a software application. Demonstrating a single positive-competent behavior tends to broaden into a wider aura of competence: someone with a high SAT score, for example, will be viewed as generally competent. In contrast, a single negative-competent behavior—not knowing how to sail, for example—does not generalize into a perception of overall incompetence: it will simply be dismissed as, say, an unlearned skill. “Positive competence is weighted more heavily than negative competence”
Do keep these points in mind when writing a resume for your job search in Singapore.