What do search committees think of consulting?

On Twitter, Jeremy Davis (postdoc, University of Florida) asks:

Search committee members: What are your thoughts on a candidate mentioning their outside consulting work during an interview? (Context: it's relevant to their research, could be construed as 'outreach', and informs interdisciplinary teaching approach.)

This is a great question, and I'm curious to hear what readers think. While I suspect consulting might not be particularly appealing to search committees at R1's (who presumably focus primarily on a candidate's research), I wonder whether it would look neat to committees at other kinds of institutions. First, it's a way for a candidate to stand out from the crowd. Second, search committee members might be interested in hearing more about it, and perhaps even want to get involved in some form of consulting themselves! But I'm really just speculating here. What do you all think, particularly those of you who have served on search committees?

Comments

[R1 Postdoc]

I think that the AI ethics consulting work I did helped make me a strong candidate for the postdoc I have now. What tenure track search committees think of it, I'm less sure. I suspect that mentioning it doesn't hurt, so long as it's closely aligned with the AOS listed in the job ad and doesn't detract from a focus on research and teaching. If search committees don't care about it, probably the worst they'll do is ignore it.

[SEC postdoc]

I could see this being an asset, all other things being equal, if the department wanted to prepare students for non-academic careers.