Extracurricular Activities of Passionate People

One part of college admissions is the extracurricular activities section. Some colleges, such as MIT, can place high value in the interests a candidate has outside of their school’s general requirements. Many gifted people are underachievers, since school doesn’t challenge them, and they self-educate around other things they find interesting.

This idea of using outside activities as a measure of worth is becoming popular among startups and will eventually be utilized by all companies. This isn’t just for recent graduates, but includes those who’ve already established their careers. Startups are using common stomping grounds, like Github and Stack Exchange, to identify talented people. If someone is truly passionate about something they focus on that passion.

GPAs don’t mean anything anymore. I know many people who are great students who don’t think for themselves and many great thinkers who never went to college. The extracurricular activity can be utilized to identify applicants who are passionate and motivated to self-educate.

In the developer world both Stack Exchange and github are being looked at by potential employers. They’re even reaching out to candidates with job offers who have large reputations in these communities. Kevin Carey recently wrote this piece on Stack Exchange status badges:

One of the most important functions of college degrees is signaling knowledge and skill to potential employers. Yet degrees and certificates often do a poor job of communicating detailed information about graduates. Grade inflation has steadily obscured the meaning of G.P.A.’s, and there’s no easy way to know what someone who got, for example, an A-minus in Econ 206 actually learned. A badge, on the other hand, is supposed to indicate specific knowledge and skills.

Stack Overflow, an Internet forum with 1.4 million registered users, awards members “reputation” points and a variety of badges based on answers to questions posed by fellow computer programmers. Some members devote hundreds of hours to writing and editing posts that are judged by the Stack Overflow community to display high levels of expertise. Tomasz Nurkiewicz, an Oslo software engineer and one of only 88 users to earn a “Legendary” Stack Overflow badge, writes, “I received numerous job offers from people who either saw my profile with reputation and all the badges, or were particularly impressed by one of my answers.”

From an employer perspective someone who participates in these communities can help with recruitment. Respected individuals already have large networks due to their extracurricular participation and companies create incentives for employees to recruit others. It seems reasonable that a respected member of a tribe can recruit others to a company just by working there. Github and Apple have created cultures and hired people whom others want to work with.

What types of things are you doing currently which can make you a more well-rounded individual? Everyone should have something, outside of their job, that can benefit their employer. But the activity needs to be directly connected to your current position or the company being applied for. Being a home brewer doesn’t mean anything to Chevron, but it could be beneficial to Sierra Nevada Brewery.

Think about it from the employers perspective; Given two developers of equal caliber, would you rather hire the developer with a well-respected github project or the developer with no github profile? Having this extracurricular actives demonstrate to employers you’re passionate about what you do because you do it without getting paid.

Your off-time activities demonstrate your expertise and passion. When you have a reputation as being an expert, doors open for you automatically.