Priyanka Jain, co-founder and CEO of vaginal microbiome test and care company Evvy, is very involved in her company’s hiring process.
“Nothing is more important than who we hire,” she told CNBC Make It at Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies Gala and Summit. “I interview every single person before we hire them.” Evvy currently has 25 employees.
Jain also looks at candidate resumes, and there’s one section in particular that she believes can indicate some level of success at a startup like hers: the Interests section.
It shows you go ‘above and beyond’
An Interests section could give a sense of your passion and motivation. Listing outside of work activities like nonprofit volunteering shows that you are a person “who goes above and beyond just what your job title tells you to do,” said Jain.
And that’s critical for a nascent company. Working at a startup “very much requires you to be feet on the ground, rolling up your sleeves, getting things done,” she said. A person who’s hungry to learn and do more fits right in.
Career experts agree with this approach, even if you’re not looking to work at a startup. “I love former athletes. I love people that do triathlons. I love parents,” ex-Google recruiter and current podcaster and advisor Nolan Church previously told Make It. The Interests section helps show off “passion or creativity that makes you unique, that makes you who you are.”
Passion ‘points to a curiosity that I think is really important’
If you feel like you don’t have enough outside of work accomplishments or activities to include an Interests section, don’t despair. Jain can pick up on passion for what you do in other ways, too.
“I think people who are really driven and really curious tend to have some way that that is coming through” in their resume, she said, even if it’s just through “a theme in the types of jobs” they do that proves they want to improve in that field.
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