Achievements in business, but useless to your desired career

Does it make sense to include on your CV/resume/motivation letters the achievements and skills you worked on extensively and may be somewhat useful, but are not really part of the main activity you want to do in the future?

To sum up my story:
I took a break from undergraduate/college to "transform my hobbies into business", but after more than two years I realized that's not really what I want to do with my life. I would like to pursue a career more relevant to my degree.

The problem is that by focusing so much on the various businesses and other projects I was heavily involved with, I kind of neglected my exams and grades. They aren't really bad, but I think they don't meet the requirements to get into a top graduate school, or even an internship with the typical employers of my desired career path.

Specifically, my degree is in International Affairs/Economics and I would like to work for something like UN, WHO, diplomatic relations or think tanks.

My self-employed activities were in web design/marketing and entertainment (music production).

Any advice would be highly appreciated!

I wonder why nobody replied.

Could it be the wrong forum, as I see that everyone else is from the USA?

Thanks

Generally, you want to tailor your CV/Resume to the position you're applying to.
If you've got experience in an unrelated field and it's not relevant to the position, you should still list it as a time-gap-filler on your resume but, only give it limited "shelf-space" since it's not your top seller.

My resume used to be three pages long.
Page 1; introduction and highlights
Page 2; detailed work experience and education
Page 3; technical qualifications

Now, my resume is one page and I only highlight the skills that an employer specifically looking for.
In fact, my resume looks more like a one-page ad brochure with graphical highlights to draw the reader in.

Hi, definitely tailor your CV to each and every job, no mass sending. In fact you should only be going after jobs where you know that you'd be great if given a chance, and you carefully research so you know who they think they need to fill that job. And what you will do in the job.

Then you need to bridge the gap for the employer between you and the job. Take what you have and position it so it is described in the most relevant way to the post. I think you have a great thing with the entrepreneurship stint; it shows that you are a self-start, have dealt with clients, had to come up with marketing/strategies, networking skills... you need to package that in a way that sounds perfect to the person reading your cover letter/cv for the intl affairs job. Grades are really irrelevant if you can show how much of an asset from day 1 you will be on the job.

cheers :)

Hi Hotdiggity and RisaR,

thank you very much for your very elaborate advice!

Just to clarify a little thing:
I was concerned in particular about the low grades because during the application process to most jobs at my level (graduate/entry-level), most employers do emphasize "academic success" (in the UK they even specify top grades) as a MINIMUM requirement, and then everything else is like the add on.

Would you have any insights on this?

Thank you once again!

Not sure what to advise education-wise since you are in the UK. However I would start getting involved with international organizations so you can start making connections with people who can give you advice about how to get to where you want to be and could possibly help you with getting a job. Being in London I'm sure there are a lot of possibilities. I just did a quick google search and I see there is a UN Association in the UK. www.una.org.uk. That may be a good place to start.