Professional Affiliations in Resumes

I recently received a question from a gentleman that I thought would be good to include in this blog for more people to read. I was helping him create a resume targeted to a new industry. The question is about including information from one's past that looks good, but isn’t quite relevant to the current resume or the job being targeted.

Question:

I want to list a professional affiliation on my resume even though it isn't related to my current career path. I'm proud of the work I have done with this group. What do you think?

My response:

Does it positively affect your "bid" for the new position you are targeting? Will most hiring managers even know what that membership is? If I were a future employer of someone in your current chosen field, would it matter to me that you were a board member of that particular organization?

I'm asking these questions because it is my job to focus the resume on a specific job target. If you were targeting employment in the specific field that the professional affiliation would support, then absolutely, that would be essential. Because you are targeting a different field entirely, it is not important. Well, that isn't exactly true. Yes, it is important to you, but it's not important to prospective employers.

Your resume MUST be tightly focused on one field - one target - one goal.

Each resume must be refined not only to include everything that leads an employer to conclude that you are perfect for the job, but it must also exclude anything that prevents the employer from reaching that conclusion.

~Carla Vaughan
Professional Resumes