What are the coolest, most authentic interests you've seen in a resume?

And did it make any difference in terms of recruitment. While prospective investment bankers get the short stick for sometimes being finance robots and prestige whores, some of the most talented and interesting people also go in the field. Curious to know about the later. Cheers!

16 Comments
 

Used to read non-target resumes for my company. Probably went through thousands over the years. My favorites have always been oddly specific interests (e.g., spelunking in the eastern side of central Thailand or vegetarian Turkoman horse nutrition).

Entertaining interests usually gave people a small leg up but usually not enough to make me choose a philosophy major from Middlebury over an econ major from Princeton.

 

Yup. The key is to be passionate enough about the interests and involved long enough that you clearly hadn’t done something impressive sounding just to get into college/to seem interesting on a resume. The weirdly specific ones is a perfect example.

Interests can set you apart which is key in the interview process. Also, any person ever would prefer hearing about what it’s like to scale Everest (exaggerating, but you get it) than why investment banking is your dream job.

Array
 

Some cool interest I have on my resume are Rock Climbing, Tough Mudder, Cycling and then some typical finance stuff.

I try to stay away from being too specific because the goal for me is to find something we could connect on

 

I like hearing about applicants' experiences in atypical parts of the world. I don't especially care if you spent a semester in Barcelona. I'm much more interested if you spent time in Qatar, the UAE or some part of Africa.

 
 

I've lived in Qatar & have family that has worked in the UAE. Wouldn't really call either of them atypical. Doha & Dubai are essentially Western metropolises. You barely have any contact with local culture.

To infinity... and beyond!
 

Guy I know who's path was BB->EB->CSO of a small MedTech did an MSc in Genetics before getting into banking and spent some time doing fauna and flora research in the Galapagos Islands. Pretty cool. If by interests we mean extracurriculars, the same guy was in the band who made 6 figure profit and was signed by a mid-level record label - pretty cool.

 

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