Are you preparing your application and trying to give a good impression to your recruiter? Be sure to personalize your request. Your interests, for example, can reveal some personality traits and give you a valuable advantage over your competitors.
It is therefore important to know when and how to highlight your interests and hobbies to reveal the hidden face of the candidate you are!
Contents
Think like a recruiter
Put yourself in the shoes of the recruiter. Experience aside, employers seek candidates with strong technical skills and advanced soft skills. If your centers of interest indirectly meet these requirements, they probably deserve to be highlighted.
Remember that your activities must create a single conviction in the recruiter: you are, thanks to your personal characteristics and your attitudes, the right person for the position offered.
Be honest
Very often, when it comes to a first interview in your professional life, it is your hobbies and personal interests that will create conversation ideas.
One or more of your passions might intrigue the recruiter enough to contact you for an interview. To break the ice, a specific activity could be the main topic of the interview. If you provide incorrect information, your recruiter could easily find out.
Choose the right activities to highlight
Only consider activities that may be related to your professional life or the position to be filled. In other words, always ask yourself if your hobbies reveal the good mad skills needed for the position in question.
To properly filter your hobbies, here are some steps to follow:
Identify all your hobbies or interests
Start by listing all your activities, even the most trivial ones. Each of your activities may have a particular interest and best reveal one or more of your qualities for a specific position.
Taking an interest in associations, for example, will give an idea of your ability to communicate, your interest in group work or your helpfulness. Extreme sports such as skydiving, kitesurfing or free diving will make your employer understand that you are capable of taking risks and pushing your limits. The photography clearly demonstrates your sense of creativity and detail.
If you apply, on the other hand, for an architectural firm, you can mention your skills in painting or sculpture.
Your recruiter requires more managerial skills but you don’t necessarily have the appropriate professional experience to prove it? Think about talking about your extra-professional activities, where you had the opportunity to manage a team: student association…
Find out about the company culture
Your recruiter may have a special interest in a specific cause. To choose the most suitable area of interest, it is important to learn about the activities that the company supports the most.
A corporate citizen interested in associations, for example, would be tempted to recruit a profile that shares the same values.