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!
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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.
I have 2 unusual (and very specific) hobbies that definitely interested my interviewers and gave me a leg up during recruiting. Completely changes the tone of the interview.
Curious to know what they are but totally understand if you don't want to share.
PM me
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.
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'm a big fan of a guy I interviewed who had "food" as an interest. Also had "music," so you know he had some diverse passions.
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.
Ha, 60-70% of our group's applicants list travel to Europe as an interest/hobby.
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.
Interest section on resume advice (Originally Posted: 03/21/2015)
Hello Wall Street Oasis,
I'm looking for advice on how to word the interests section of my resume. I currently have it listed as:
Interests: Taekwondo black belt who placed third at nationals; explored Machu Picchu and Amazon rainforest
I did all this in high school, but is this how you're suppose to word it? or should it be more like Taekwondo (blackbelt), travel (Machu Pichu and Amazon rainforest)
The latter
The bracket approach.
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