I've had to write a different sort of CV recently, because I'm hoping to change career after 27 years in teaching; and the advice I've stumbled upon has encouraged me to add something that I have consciously neglected to include since I was in my 20s and that is a section on my 'interests'.
I think all of us find this aspect of a CV quite a challenge, sceptical that it could bear any relevance to a job we might go for, anxious that we'd be judged more harshly about what we like doing in our private lives than what we have achieved in our professional ones and self-deprecatingly embarrassed about the fact that our limited range of interests reads so pathetically on paper that we end up confronted by the sheer utter futility of our own existence.
I don't think any of my CVs as an adult have demonstrated any improvement on something I once wrote as a 7 year old at school (in a First Holy Communion Book, which I still have) in response to the question of what things I am good at. I claimed to be 'good at running, jumping, making people laugh and reading people's names.' But of course, these weren't interests. Ask a 7 year old what his or her interests are and you'll get a list of a hundred hobbies. Ask that person ten years later and you'll get 'going out, socialising, watching TV and films' and a puerile attempt to add something to mark you out from every other teenager on the planet, like 'Badminton'.
I played badminton possibly 3 times. I did, however, buy a racket, so I considered that evidence enough of a serious hobby. I could argue that this racket got regular use throughout each summer for many years, but to be candid about it, that was for swatting flies around the house rather than for badminton. When I started at university, I joined one club. With dozens of opportunities to exploit and broaden my interests, expand my horizons, meet new people, learn new skills, keep myself busy, etc... I chose to join just one club, the badminton club. And I went once.
Nonetheless, I put 'badminton' on my CV every year thereafter and I like to think that my first job in teaching was nailed not due to having interviewed well, but purely because I was an interesting person for having a hobby like badminton (to go alongside 'going out, socialising, watching TV and films, reading people's names, running and jumping').
I did of course have interests, but like I say, they would not have marked me out in any way from your common garden human being, not even if I added a minor detail or elaboration. For example, I enjoyed reading. Sounds boring. So I added what sort of books I enjoyed reading. On a couple of CVs therefore, I wrote, 'Reading about Irish history'. Given that my CV indicated that I went to a Catholic school, I eventually started to worry that a line of logic might lead someone to assume my support for the IRA. So I considered adding a disclaimer like 'by moderate authors, non-sympathetic to terrorism' but thought it best just to change it to 'Reading about history' and remove the line saying that another interest was 'making things with wires and Semtex'.
I also spent a stupid amount of time going to Highbury to watch Arsenal and in the years before the gentrification of football, such a hobby carried a stigma that Nick Hornby and SKY TV had yet to help reduce; so putting that on a CV wasn't doing me any favours. Later on, when I was writing for a fanzine and contributing comic strips, I felt I could add that detail as something more middle-class to rid myself in the eyes of potential employers of any misconceptions that I was just another foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, tribally-minded football fan. I was in fact all those things, because I contributed foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, tribally-minded content to the magazine.
Fearful of being found out if I lied on my CV about interests, by being questioned about any of them (which never happens), I avoided the temptation to fabricate excitingly unique pastimes, like sky-diving or surfing or ski-jumping or something wanky like that. I did once add 'travel' which we all do once we've had more than 3 foreign holidays.
And so, roll on to being aged 49, writing a new CV and reflecting on my current interests. Well, some things have definitely changed. 'Going out, socialising' won't find its way onto the CV, because I am too much of a grouchy misanthrope to want to go out and mix with people having a good time, bloody annoying that is. And the only running I do these days is the bath, the only jumping is 'to conclusions' as I apply prejudicial scorn on people based on how they look and 'reading people's names' has become increasingly difficult as my eye-sight has deteriorated from all those other interests (no, not THAT one!) such as looking at computer screens and my phone. Hmmm, maybe I can put 'going on my phone' on my CV. We all should, shouldn't we, if we're honest.
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