Putting your marathon time on your CV: healthy fun or cringey flex?
Runners and other sports enthusiasts in the US are humble bragging about their workout wins. But does it help them to get across the line in the job market?
Brad Thomas, a New York City-based recruiter, reads hundreds of CVs every month. Lately he has noticed a trend: Along with schools, skills and past employers, people are listing their fitness achievements.
Take the machine-learning engineer who boasted about 20 ultra-trail-running events, 15 marathons, a 100km walk — and a sportswear sponsorship.
Her sporty pursuits demonstrate a work ethic and resilience that can matter to employers, Thomas says, and that helped land her an interview. (She didn’t get the job.)
More than a conversation starter, sports achievements can be a way to highlight workplace-valued traits, many fitness fans and recruiters say. Just don’t get carried away: Noting your personal best times can be a little much, says Thomas, who mainly works with tech and leadership candidates at the firm Orange Quarter.
Eliot Kaplan, a career coach in Philadelphia and former vice-president of talent acquisition with Hearst, says job seekers tempted to humble brag about their fitness endeavours should make sure it’s relevant to the job — and build it into their career narrative.
“If you’re applying for a job at Equinox (the fitness company), it’s obviously a different story, but if you’re just applying for a normal job, what are you trying to say with that stuff?” It could easily be seen as showing off, he says, “and it could offend me if I’m a sedentary-type person”.
Kaplan coached a man going out for jobs in the health technology space to put his years as a professional player with Major League Soccer on his resumé to help explain the gap in his work history. If you put yourself through college as a scratch golfer that, too, could show you’re a self-starter, he says. Same goes for saying you ran your first marathon at age 60: “If you’re applying for a job, it also shows your vitality.”
Jaclyn Amaro, 36 years old, works part-time in public relations in New Jersey. She says her fitness accomplishments helped balance her stay-at-home mum career gap when she was applying for her latest job. Her resumé includes that she’s a six-time marathon finisher and notes her ACE group fitness certification, which helped her teach pilates in Stockholm and help run a boot camp for Lululemon.
“I want to show a little bit of my character and personality, to show that I’m hardworking and ambitious,” she says. “I put it in there as a way to show that I have passions and am working towards something.”
Jacob Travis, 29, sparked an online debate when he posted a hot take on Instagram about weaving “marathon runner” into a resumé. The Nashville-based physical therapist says he was shocked by the response — 72,000 likes and counting — and strong opinions.
Travis filmed himself selfie-style as he ran shirtless: “You’re going to learn so much more about me from seeing that I’ve trained and ran a marathon than the fact that I was secretary of my fraternity my junior year of college,” he said in the video. “You look at ‘marathon runner’ and the employer immediately knows this dude’s an idiot. But he’s a determined idiot and I want him on my team.”
People piled into the comments to say that they were adding bodybuilding competitions or taekwondo second-degree black belts to their CVs. Others snarked back to say marathoners should wear their finisher medals to interviews. A few athletes who were opposed to the idea said bosses might worry they weren’t available to go above and beyond because they spend so much time on sports.
Kamille Fajardo, a 32-year-old tax adviser, recently ran the Chicago Marathon, but says she would never disclose it on a resumé.
“It’s a very private and personal achievement” as opposed to a professional one, she says.
There’s another worry that nags her: Marathon running could create an overachiever narrative that makes a boss assume you will do literally anything to get the job done, even if it’s unfair or means taking advantage of you, Fajardo says.
The more senior the job candidate, the less likely they are to include fitness – or any nonwork interests – on their résumés, says John Major, 30, vice president of Norgay Partners, an executive search firm in Los Angeles.
“It’s a little bit of a new-wave thing for junior, midlevel and blossoming senior-level individuals to include,” he says, adding: “It shows that you have the ability to be intrinsically motivated to do something that you’re not being told to do.”
In certain sectors — for instance, finance — work can be tedious yet require high attention to detail, Major says, so it can be good to demonstrate your ability to put yourself through unpleasant tasks.
Dylan Shrier, a 28-year-old creative who lives in New York, added his Boston Marathon run to his resumé when he was looking for a new job a couple of years ago. He also spelled out that he played college tennis and completed Spartan races, which are muddy obstacle course runs. The purpose, he says, was to show that he likes to be competitive and takes a work-hard, play-hard attitude toward life.
“I have hobbies outside of work that are more active,” he says. “Adulting, but having an inner-child feel.”
It paid off. He landed a role he enjoys as a designer with LIV Golf. “I have always wanted to work in sports.”
The Wall Street Journal
