While joining any community college club can help boost your chances of employment after graduation, students participating in debate clubs tend to possess even greater hiring odds!
A community college’s debate club teaches members how to research, articulate arguments, and clarify ideas. Subsequently, individuals actively engaging in debate club activities are often more prepared to speak clearly during interviews, demonstrate a professional presence, and clearly explain concepts and abilities. Indeed, there are many reasons why debating in college can lead to you debating all the job offers on the table post-graduation!
Matthew Lynch, writing in The Advocate, states: "Research, reasoning, and even public speaking skills are just a few of the many benefits that come with learning to be a good debater. From planning your argument – even if it’s one you disagree with – to choosing your words with care, debating can prepare you to take on any challenge life may present to you.
Debating is, by no means, the same thing as engaging in a full-blown argument. Instead, you will have to prepare a compelling, concise argument, which will gain support and backing, rather than simply attacking your opponent blindly."
Networking with the Professional Community
While each community college’s debate club may focus on its unique topics, most debate clubs strive to boost students’ investigations of community and social issues.
For example, Gulf Coast Community College (GCCC), located in Panama City, Florida, is one of the many community colleges providing students with socially relevant debate club opportunities. As GCCC explains, the campus debate club strives to create academic and educational opportunities for students who are particularly interested in issues about politics, social change, and community topics. By engaging in these issues, members of the debate club are required to research and find out details about the various topics at hand.
As a result of this research process, debaters find themselves communicating through public forms. Engaging in the debate club can give debaters greater access to social and community networks. If focusing on an issue about public school teaching, for example, debaters may need to leverage information obtained through personal interviews with school leaders. By establishing these contacts and connections, debaters can establish their broad professional network before graduation. Depending upon one’s career pathway, these unique networks can later prove very powerful.
Personal and Professional Development
In addition to allowing students to broaden their professional network and connections, the debate club experiences also help students improve their personal and professional attributes and skills. Specifically, as Gulf Coast Community College explains, the debate club allows students to take advantage of activities that are helpful to the development of one’s personal and professional growth.
Additionally, as Spokane Falls Community College in Washington reveals, debaters have challenging opportunities to enhance their communication and speaking skills. As Spokane describes, the debate club consistently promotes standards of “excellence in public speaking, presentation, and argumentation and debate via intercollegiate competition.”
By providing students with the venue to speak and clarify thoughts, research, and ideas, active participants of the debate club gain incredible experiences and critiques to improve their personal and professional communication skills. As many employers require applicants to attend and engage in multiple interviews, one’s speaking skills and communication abilities are imperative to helping students gain better odds of earning a potential job.
Resume Depth and Experience
Today’s job market continues to become increasingly competitive. Subsequently, it is significantly important for applicants to include all relevant work and extracurricular experiences on their resumes. Most notably, if an applicant is seeking employment but has minimal to no prior work experience, extracurricular activities can become the main focal point to boost an applicant’s chances of employment.
As Mass Bay Community College, located in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, explains, a resume should list all professional and volunteer experiences that can highlight a candidate’s strengths. Additionally, when listing experiences, Mass Bay suggests that students also include a brief and positive summary of the work experiences and responsibilities of each experience and activity. In the case of the debate club, applicants can explain how their responsibilities of debating included group communication, public speaking, accurate research, meeting deadlines, and so forth.
Ultimately, with the debate club experiences, applicants can show employers how they have successfully communicated, worked under pressure, and engaged in critical thinking to achieve the goals of all tasks. These unique attributes are highly appealing as employers reviewing applicants seek out individuals who can, without a doubt, work hard with intelligence, experience, and grit.
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