4 ms·

I wouldn’t put “chess” onto my resume unless I was at least titled. Otherwise, what is a signal that it sends to the hedge fund crowd of overachievers? That you

I wouldn’t put “chess” onto my resume unless I was at least titled. Otherwise, what is a signal that it sends to the hedge fund crowd of overachievers? That you have a hobby that you managed to not get good at?

beaconstudios 6y ago
I have chess on my CV even though I stopped seriously playing at 15 and ~1700 OTB ELO - not to showcase my competitiveness but to add some flavour/personality to what is otherwise a very dry career oriented document and maybe get an anecdote in that I can use to break the ice or relate to somebody.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
I have cycling on my CV but I have no intention of doing tour de france
jameshart 6y ago
Is the objective of hobbies to ‘get good’ at them? That sounds exhausting. If someone lists ‘skiing’ as a hobby I’m not expecting them to have Olympic medals to back that up. ‘It says here on your resume that you play guitar. Well, let’s see how you fair in a guitar battle with Slash from accounting’ This is just more of that hyper competitive ‘well rounded college applicant’ performative high school stuff, isn’t it? It’s not enough to just have an interest - you need evidence of performing at a competitive level.
- behringer 6y ago
  I would not list guitar playing on my resume unless I was prepared to entertain a crowd at my job interview. Likewise I wouldn't list chess unless I was good enough to at least entertain a grand master for a few minutes.
  - lupire 6y ago
    Nonsense. Entertaining a crowd is nothing like entertaining a grand master. A 1400 USCF player could organize a chess tournament as a company social event. Guitar is a performance art. Mediocre people are entertaining. Chess (and skiing) mostly isn't.
  - jameshart 6y ago
    I love this game. I wouldn’t put down ‘travel’ as a hobby if I weren’t prepared to take the interviewer on a quick day trip to Paris. I wouldn’t list ‘reading’ as a hobby unless I could do a professional audiobook-level reading of a book for the interviewer, including doing all the voices.
- fractionalhare 6y ago
  Hobbies don't have to be maximally mastered, no. But what's the point of putting something on your resume if you're not particularly good at it? In my opinion that's the only kind of thing that should be on a resume. I think if you put a hobby on a resume for the purpose of signaling some kind of orthogonal skillset ostensibly related to the job (like in this example, "strategy"), it stops being just about your personality and becomes explicitly performance-oriented. And I would even argue your resume is not the play to round out your personality, because it's such an overly subjective and bias-inducing thing.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    Resumes are meant to be highly subjective and bias inducing things - you're trying to convince someone to hire you. Your resume is a brief summary of why you're a good fit for the company in general and the role in particular. An extremely large portion of that fit is your personality. Hobbies and interests are an excellent way to convey the type of person that you are. Putting down that you enjoy camping doesn't mean you are trying to convey that you will be useful in a survival situation, it means you'll probably get along well with Dan in accounting who is also quite the outdoorsman. There might be some jobs out there where you are highly siloed and your skillset is really the only thing that matters, but this is rare. It's dumb to lie and say you enjoy chess when you don't, just like it's dumb to put any other lie on a resume, but if you do enjoy it then there's nothing wrong with communicating that you're the type of person who enjoys chess, which means you are probably a person who enjoys somewhat adversarial situations where you need to win with your logic and you are comfortable with taking short term losses for long term gains, a personality which would likely be both comfortable and familiar in a hedge fund environment.
    - fractionalhare 6y ago
      > which means you are probably a person who enjoys somewhat adversarial situations where you need to win with your logic and you are comfortable with taking short term losses for long term gains Sure - to which my next question becomes, are you actually good at it? If you're not, I don't professionally care if you personally enjoy it.

beaconstudios 6y ago

I have chess on my CV even though I stopped seriously playing at 15 and ~1700 OTB ELO - not to showcase my competitiveness but to add some flavour/personality to what is otherwise a very dry career oriented document and maybe get an anecdote in that I can use to break the ice or relate to somebody.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

I have cycling on my CV but I have no intention of doing tour de france

jameshart 6y ago

Is the objective of hobbies to ‘get good’ at them? That sounds exhausting. If someone lists ‘skiing’ as a hobby I’m not expecting them to have Olympic medals to back that up. ‘It says here on your resume that you play guitar. Well, let’s see how you fair in a guitar battle with Slash from accounting’ This is just more of that hyper competitive ‘well rounded college applicant’ performative high school stuff, isn’t it? It’s not enough to just have an interest - you need evidence of performing at a competitive level.

behringer 6y ago
I would not list guitar playing on my resume unless I was prepared to entertain a crowd at my job interview. Likewise I wouldn't list chess unless I was good enough to at least entertain a grand master for a few minutes.
- lupire 6y ago
  Nonsense. Entertaining a crowd is nothing like entertaining a grand master. A 1400 USCF player could organize a chess tournament as a company social event. Guitar is a performance art. Mediocre people are entertaining. Chess (and skiing) mostly isn't.
- jameshart 6y ago
  I love this game. I wouldn’t put down ‘travel’ as a hobby if I weren’t prepared to take the interviewer on a quick day trip to Paris. I wouldn’t list ‘reading’ as a hobby unless I could do a professional audiobook-level reading of a book for the interviewer, including doing all the voices.
fractionalhare 6y ago
Hobbies don't have to be maximally mastered, no. But what's the point of putting something on your resume if you're not particularly good at it? In my opinion that's the only kind of thing that should be on a resume. I think if you put a hobby on a resume for the purpose of signaling some kind of orthogonal skillset ostensibly related to the job (like in this example, "strategy"), it stops being just about your personality and becomes explicitly performance-oriented. And I would even argue your resume is not the play to round out your personality, because it's such an overly subjective and bias-inducing thing.
- jjk166 6y ago
  Resumes are meant to be highly subjective and bias inducing things - you're trying to convince someone to hire you. Your resume is a brief summary of why you're a good fit for the company in general and the role in particular. An extremely large portion of that fit is your personality. Hobbies and interests are an excellent way to convey the type of person that you are. Putting down that you enjoy camping doesn't mean you are trying to convey that you will be useful in a survival situation, it means you'll probably get along well with Dan in accounting who is also quite the outdoorsman. There might be some jobs out there where you are highly siloed and your skillset is really the only thing that matters, but this is rare. It's dumb to lie and say you enjoy chess when you don't, just like it's dumb to put any other lie on a resume, but if you do enjoy it then there's nothing wrong with communicating that you're the type of person who enjoys chess, which means you are probably a person who enjoys somewhat adversarial situations where you need to win with your logic and you are comfortable with taking short term losses for long term gains, a personality which would likely be both comfortable and familiar in a hedge fund environment.
  - fractionalhare 6y ago
    > which means you are probably a person who enjoys somewhat adversarial situations where you need to win with your logic and you are comfortable with taking short term losses for long term gains Sure - to which my next question becomes, are you actually good at it? If you're not, I don't professionally care if you personally enjoy it.