Hobbies on resumes

[John Renish <John -dot- Renish -at- CONNER -dot- COM>]

my $.02:

Some managers use hobbies to discriminate among candidates for totally
unexpected reasons. Solitary hobbies may say to the hiring manager, "not a
team player," for example. You can't entirely predict hiring criteria: I
once lost consideration for a bank management trainee position because I
aced a pathetic little arithmetic test. The HR gnome commented that someone
who did so well at an intellectual task was perhaps not as socially-oriented
as the bank wanted.

Also, someone remarked earlier that hiring managers don't follow the
single-page rule. Several managers I know do, as do I unless the candidate's
cover letter is very strong, in which case I'll read two pages but not
three. This rule does *not* apply outside the US, where the so-called CV
(somewhat different from our document by the same name), rarely runs less
than three pages.

Someone else remarked that he or she couldn't get several jobs during a long
single employment onto one page. In such a case, you can use a functional,
rather than chronological, resume. It generally doesn't pay to go back more
than ten years, period. For older job candidates it may even be unwise to do
so, despite laws against age discrimination.

Bottom line: tailor your *brief* resume to the particular job.

John -dot- Renish -at- Conner -dot- com
My comments are my own and do not represent Conner Peripherals