Is getting elected to student body of your college impressive on your resumes?

[Anonymous]

Or fairly meaningless? My daughter is VP of her high school class and I was wondering if she'd ever run in college. I never really got it. Why do certain kids get so obsessed with running for college office? It never seemed like the best and brightest, more so grubby and annoying kids. I just looked up my class president on linkedin and he never accomplished much. Less accomplished than the average grad, actually.

[Anonymous]

It is for your first and possibly second job out of college.

[Anonymous]

Yes. It demonstrated an ability to work with other people, popularity and leadership.

[Anonymous]

As an employer, it wouldn't impress me. It's usually a popularity contest.

[Anonymous]

Do they even have student body positions in college?

[Anonymous]

Not really. Well I guess it depends on your field. In the medical field, no.

[Anonymous]

Depends on your field. Anything related to the position you held, possibly. Anyone aspiring to the political, public administration, or PR fields, maybe. Otherwise, it probably won't be much benefit but on a resume for your first job out of college it likely wouldn't hurt.

[Anonymous]

I can still remember a friendly face introducing himself in the college cafeteria as running for Freshman class president. He later became a Rhodes scholar and is now serving in Congress.

[Anonymous]

It seems impressive to me. Obviously, you still have to have the GPA to get on the short list but I doubt anyone could get elected Pres/VP of a student body and not have a great recommendation from a Prof.

With a competitive GPA and recommendation, it is hard to think of a job in which having the ability to get people to vote to have you lead them, wouldn't be a BIG PLUS.

If I was an interviewer and was going to have to personally work with the person, my guess is I wouldn't click with someone who would run for such offices, but I still think holding the office would be in my PRO column for that person.

[Anonymous]

It would be impressive to me. Most of those position require a decent amount of work, so it would show dedication/commitment. Also, no matter what your field is, your ability to work well with your colleagues and clients is imperative. This would demonstrate to me that the candidate is likable.

[Anonymous]

If it was something my kid wanted to do then I would support it. As a parent, I would not see any reason why -not- to support it. As a professional, if I read a resume from a job candidate with Student Body President listed I would be impressed with that candidate. I also would think about how the skills translate to the job at hand. Usually there will be a strong correlation since we voluntarily do things we are good at and that we like - and we want to work at jobs where we see a good opportunity for success, which usually requires that we're good at it and we like it.

[Anonymous]

Former student body president here. I can tell you from comments received over the years that winning that election was helpful in providing career options. It helped in getting a law school scholarship and was important to my early job searching post-law school. Forget the helpfulness of the resume line, there are a lot of skills that you develop in that position: public speaking, negotiations, meeting supervision and regular interface with decision makers and alumni at the college. Yes, you will get grief from some of your friends. So what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an employer, it wouldn't impress me. It's usually a popularity contest.

It would impress me, because it means the person was engaged with her institution, and voluntarily took on a whole lot of thankless planning of events. It woudn't impress me as much as good grades, however.

[Anonymous]

for college, yes. for grad school, perhaps. It certainly provides you with opportunities to develop a very useful skill set - and the key is how you've used that skill set.

But for a real job...I highly doubt it thought YMMV. In my field, we rarely look at candidates w/o a graduate or advanced degree. So even if someone did list HS class officer, it would not make any difference to us - though we probably would question why it was on the resume in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:for college, yes. for grad school, perhaps. It certainly provides you with opportunities to develop a very useful skill set - and the key is how you've used that skill set.

But for a real job...I highly doubt it thought YMMV. In my field, we rarely look at candidates w/o a graduate or advanced degree. So even if someone did list HS class officer, it would not make any difference to us - though we probably would question why it was on the resume in the first place.

OP was talking about college student government.