Should You Put Hobbies and Interests on a Resume?

The interests section is the most reliably wasted space on a resume. Not because personal interests are irrelevant to being a good colleague, but because the version most people write — three broad nouns on one line — communicates nothing that distinguishes them from anyone else applying.

The Default Is to Leave It Off

If you have several years of relevant experience, the three lines an interests section occupies are better spent on an achievement with a number in it. A hiring manager deciding between candidates is weighing demonstrated capability, and "enjoys reading and travelling" does not enter that calculation.

Three specific reasons to cut it:

• Opportunity cost. The same space could hold a result you produced — the categories worth looking for are in quantifying achievements.
• It can introduce bias. Interests can signal age, religion, political alignment, or family status, none of which should be part of a screening decision and all of which you lose control of once they are on the page.
• Generic entries actively weaken the document. A line reading "Reading, travelling, socialising with friends" reads as filler and suggests the page needed padding.

It also tends to be the last remnant of an outdated template, sitting alongside the other items on the list in the common resume mistakes — the objective statement, the references line, the full street address.

When It Genuinely Earns a Place

Note the pattern: the interest has to be doing work. Either it connects to the job, or it demonstrates something — commitment, discipline, organisation, technical skill — that a reader would care about.

Writing Entries That Are Worth Reading

The difference is specificity, exactly as it is everywhere else on the resume.

• Weak: Reading, travelling, music, sports.
• Better: Long-distance running (three marathons since 2023); restore vintage motorcycles; volunteer coach for a under-12s football team.

The second version is memorable, gives an interviewer something to open with, and each entry implies something — sustained training, mechanical aptitude, working with people. None of it is asserted; it is simply specific, which is the same mechanism described in making a resume memorable.

A few practical rules if you include one:

1. Two or three entries, one line. This is a footnote, not a section.
2. Put it last, below education and certifications.
3. Be ready to discuss anything you list. Interviewers use this section to open conversations, and it is the easiest place to be caught embellishing.
4. Leave out anything divisive. Political affiliation, religious activity, and anything an interviewer might have strong feelings about — the same judgement discussed in listing volunteer work.
5. Avoid risk-heavy activities where the role involves safety-critical work or where insurance considerations might arise.
6. Cut it first when the page is over length — the priorities are in how many pages a resume should be.

If you are unsure whether the space is better used elsewhere, running the resume against a real posting will show what the document is missing relative to what the employer asked for — usually a clearer answer than deliberating over it. The free resume builder treats interests as optional by default. Both are on FixResume, with credit options on the pricing page.