Earlier today, as I was in the information area on the third floor of Gordon hall, an interesting thought occurred to me… well, interesting in the resume-writing-obsession type of sense. What does a resume really say about you?… i.e. When you put all the effort into writing a clean, polished resume, tailored to its job description so creepily well that the employer starts asking people around the office whether or not they’ve been talking to you… When you put all that effort in, what kind of information do you end up conveying? Your first thought might be, “Well, everything about myself.” – but that is highly unlikely. You probably give a thorough account of your past work experience (the relevant stuff, of course..), perhaps your extracurricular involvement, and of course flaunt the fact that you are a Queen’s student (which there is nothing wrong with). Now if I was asked to describe myself to you and I had gone through all that, I suspect you would have one big nagging question and would be highly disappointed that I hadn’t answered it. “What do you do with your LEISURE TIME??” Now let’s talk about what kind of answer I should give you, and why it would be a good question to answer on your resume.


1) Think about YOURSELF. First, think about the things you do that are not academic or work-related. Second, think about how much time you spend doing these things.

2) Pick up a PEN (aka. open up a blank Word document). Hopefully after following my first instruction you would be able to write a fairly long list of activities/interests. I’ll use music and sports as examples since they apply to pretty much everyone. With the second order I’m just giving you a basis to narrow down the things you might want to mention on your resume. Just like a job, if you haven’t devoted much time to it you will probably have a hard time conveying the value of the experience to the employer.

3) Use EXAMPLES! There, you’ve made a list, there’s just describing your leisure activities. Writing down that you are interested in music and sports won’t tell the employer much. So do the same thing you did all throughout your resume: use examples. Have you played in an orchestra/team? Did this not take hours and hours of practice for weeks/months/years on end?? Discussing this in your resume essentially serves the same purpose as discussing your work/skills/education earlier on: it tells the employer something about you and gives a bit of concrete information to back it up.

4) Is this REALLY important? Let me break this answer down into two parts. A – Yes. Your employer, afterall, has lived at least as long as you have, and understands the value of dedicating time and effort to pursue something that interests you in order to get better at it. In the very least, you’ve talked about how much time you put into it and 5 hours/week is 5 hours/week. B – Yes! The obvious benefit of dedicating time to things you enjoy is BALANCE – didn’t all your professors in first year discuss the importance of mental health and BALANCE? Employers are looking for people they will enjoy working with so there’s no disadvantage in having them feel they know about you on a slightly more personal level.

One last thing… Now I’ve probably gotten you excited about the creative license you can now add to your resume, but like for everything else there is an appropriate place to include your activities and interests… If you want to dedicate a section to it (which you should do!), this is usually at the END of your resume. Think about it: you covered your relevant job experience first, then discussed some other job experience, then extracurriculars, so it looks like you’ve moved from things most closely related to the job you’re seeking – to things that are still important but a little more generally related. You’re leisure is really important, but so is order and organization!

So now if someone ever asks you what the resume is supposed to say, you can now honestly answer (with a hint of a smile on your face), “Everything about yourself.”

Until next time, Matt Florczynski, Peer Career Educator