Gaining an Eagle Scout award is an impressive accomplishment, but does it belong on your resume? A perfect resume should fit onto just one page, which doesn’t give you much room for error. What you choose to exclude from your resume is just as important as what you choose to include.

Let’s take a look at when an Eagle Scout award might be beneficial for your resume and other ways to highlight and showcase the skills you learned along the way.

Should you include Eagle Scout on your resume?

The short answer is: probably not.

Unless you have no previous employment history or are a young candidate applying for an entry-level position, scouting and similar non-work related activities are less relevant than job-related education, qualifications, hard skills, and previous work experience.

Personal achievements, interests, and hobbies can be mentioned in an interview or cover letter, but are not a crucial part of a high-performing resume.

When to include Eagle Scout on your resume

That being said, when a young candidate has little or no previous work experience, is still in school, or changing careers, experiences like scouting can help to showcase skills beyond scholastic achievements.

When you have no previous work experience

Extracurricular achievements such as volunteering or scouting can be helpful for young candidates just starting their job search. When you are still in school, or recently graduated, and looking for your first job, an Eagle Scout award can highlight soft skills such as critical thinking, leadership, time management, and independence that might be otherwise lacking from your resume.

When applying for entry-level positions

An entry-level position requires no specific pre-requisite training or experience. Any prior experience from a recognized training institution, including the Boy Scouts, can help showcase both hard and soft skills for these types of positions.

Teaching and similar sectors

There are quite a few industries where scouting and similar experience would be highly relevant to an application as the job requires similar skills to those learned while earning your Eagle Scout award.

Examples of these industries include, but are not limited to:

• Teaching and mentoring
• Working with children
• Outdoor, wilderness, and guiding positions
• Positions involving community engagement or outreach

How to decide if your Eagle Scout award is relevant to your application?

If you are unsure whether or not scouting would be relevant to your application, scan the job description using a keyword finder to find out what skills the employer is looking for. Then use our Resume Scanner tool to find if these keywords are missing from your resume. If you find a necessary skill that is not represented in your employment history, consider including your Eagle Scout award to highlight this specific skill.

Consider both hard and soft skills when making your decision. Soft skills like leadership and mentoring can be relevant to most disciplines, while hard skills such as first-aid training are beneficial for a large number of fields.

When to exclude Eagle Scout from your resume

Scouting experience, though valuable for a young student, does not carry as much weight as relevant paid work experience.

Unless the job you’re applying for is related to scouting, such as wilderness and survival training or an outdoor guiding position, prioritize paid work experience to demonstrate a skill or accomplishment over a scouting experience.

If you’re wondering what else, like your eagle scout experience should be included or left off your resume, upload it to the tool below — it’ll scan your resume and give you detailed feedback on what to remove or add into your resume.

When you have enough previous experience

Once you have a few years of work experience under your belt, you will likely be struggling to fit your resume onto one page rather than looking for ways to fill the space.

When choosing what to include, always highlight your most recent work experience and qualifications, skills that are specifically relevant to the application, and achievements directly related to your career goals. This ensures your resume is targeted specifically for the job in question.

When applying for senior and experienced roles

For senior or experienced roles, a recruiter is looking for relevant, quantifiable experience. Unless you are applying for a position within a scouting organization, scouting experience will likely not be relevant at this stage in your career.

When applying for technical positions

Technical roles require specific qualifications and experience, and an Eagle Scout accomplishment will likely not be relevant in more technical fields.

When applying for remote or overseas work

When applying for remote or overseas work, it is important to note that many non-standardized accomplishments, such as an Eagle Scout award in America or a Duke Of Edinburgh award from the UK, are not internationally recognized. An international recruiter will not know the education or training involved in the award and will not understand your inferred experience or skills.

For this reason, it is better to expand on these types of accomplishments through detailed examples, so someone not familiar with the program can understand your training and why it is relevant to the position they are hiring for.

Where to list Eagle Scout on a resume

If you decide that an Eagle Scout award is a good fit for your resume, you can list it in your Education section or in an Additional section. Group your accomplishments under the subheadings of volunteer experience, achievements, qualifications, or honors and awards depending on what other achievements you want to highlight.

Here is an example of how to list an Eagle Scout award in an Additional section, under Awards.

This section should be located at the end of your resume after higher priority sections such as contact information, work experience, and education.

Alternative ways of highlighting your Eagle Scout skills

If you choose not to include your Eagle Scout rank on your resume, you can list skills and expertise you learned through the process in other areas of your resume and application process.

Consider transferable skills

Instead of simply listing your Eagle Scout rank under accomplishments, consider transferable skills you gained during your experience and list these as hard skills. Possible examples include:

• Project planning and organization
• Leadership roles
• Survival and wilderness skills (for outdoor-related fields)
• Mentoring and coaching

Quantify your experience

Further quantify hard skills and experience by detailing the specifics of your Eagle Scout program. This could include listing total service hours completed, names of projects undertaken, leadership positions held within the organization, number of awards earned, or years spent completing the achievement.

Here is an example of a candidate listing specific community projects under volunteering experience, and detailing what was involved to further clarify their expertise.

In your cover letter

Your cover letter is a great place to talk about the relevance of your Eagle Scout accomplishment and how it relates to the position you are applying for. Mention how the achievement demonstrates the specific skills the recruiter is looking for and what the award means to you.

During an interview

Scouting experience provides great examples to use during interviews. Common interview questions such as “Describe a time when you demonstrated leadership and the ability to think on your feet” or “Tell me about a time when you had to trust your judgment to make a tough decision” can be the perfect opportunity to talk about your Eagle Scout experience.