Fraternities And Sororities

Everything I said about personal interests also goes for social Greek organizations, and also most service fraternities. Yes, but: Aren’t fraternities and sororities great for networking after college is over – including job-market networking? Yes, they’re definitely great for networking. And I must confess that I never joined a fraternity, so I don’t have personal knowledge of exactly how far a frat-brother connection will go in the way of landing you a job. My conversations with Greek friends and acquaintances, however, indicate that such a connection is sometimes enough to get your foot in the proverbial door. In light of that, I might make one exception to the above rule: If you’re applying for a job where you know that one of your fraternity/sorority members works and has hiring discretion, then you may want to sneak your affiliation onto your resume. Again, I emphasize this approach only for jobs where one of your Greek brethren has some pull. Otherwise, in a normal job-opening situation where you’re going in cold, fraternity and sorority membership won’t impress the person reading your resume.
Yes, but (Part II): “Greeks do lots of charity work, so my association with a fraternity or sorority is relevant for that reason.” It’s true that Greeks do a lot of charity work, but charity work is not the reason for their existence. So you can’t claim a “halo entry” for a fraternity the way you could for, say, working at Habitat for Humanity. Most of your employers have been to college, and whether we were Greek or not, we know that the primary reason a person joins a fraternity or sorority isn’t to do charity work. There’s plenty of charity work out there that doesn’t require pledging, hazing, and dues. And that’s not a knock on Greek life at all – to each his own – but let’s call a spade a spade.