Your Resume Can Include a Little Personality
A hobbies section can make a resume feel more human. It can also occupy space that your experience, projects, education, or skills need more urgently.
I treat hobbies as an optional finishing section. The decision depends on the role, the market, the available space, and the value of the detail. A thoughtful interest can start a warm interview conversation. A forced attempt to turn travel into “global logistics leadership” usually sounds absurd.
Use the section when it gives the reader useful context and still feels true to your life.
When a Hobbies Section Helps
Interests can help an early-career candidate with limited professional experience, especially when the activity has a clear connection to the work or reflects sustained involvement. A serious creative or technical practice may also give the employer useful work samples. Local CV conventions and the available space deserve consideration too.
Think of a developer who contributes to an open-source project, a designer who practices documentary photography, or a recent graduate who coaches a youth team. A mechanical engineer who restores vintage equipment and a communications candidate who performs improvisational theatre may also have something specific and memorable to share.
Some of these may deserve a stronger section title. Open-source work can sit under “Projects.” Coaching and community service often belong under “Volunteer Experience.” Published creative work may fit under “Publications” or “Portfolio.”
Choose the section that gives the activity the right professional weight.
When to Leave It Out
Use the space for stronger evidence when the resume is already crowded or your experience directly proves the required skills. Broad interests may add too little context. An activity may also reveal personal information you prefer to keep private or expose you to bias in the hiring process.
Leave the section out whenever it creates pressure to manufacture a professional lesson from something you simply enjoy.
Senior candidates can include interests as well. Prestige has no role in the decision. A genuine, concise detail works at any career level when space allows.
Hobbies Have No Special ATS Advantage
Applicant tracking software may store and search the text in your resume. A hobbies section carries no universal ranking benefit, and adding job-description keywords to personal interests creates awkward writing.
Keep essential skills in the summary, skills, projects, and experience sections. Write interests for the human reader.
How to Choose What to Include
Ask four questions:
- Would I enjoy discussing this activity in an interview?
- Is the description accurate?
- Does it add context, evidence, or personality?
- Is it worth the space?
You need no elaborate business case for an interest. “Trail running and contemporary Italian fiction” can be perfectly acceptable. The reader learns something specific, and the wording stays natural.
Write the Section Like a Person
Use a simple heading such as “Interests,” “Interests & Activities,” “Community & Interests,” or “Outside Work.”
Keep the section to one or two lines for most resumes.
Simple list
Interests: Documentary photography, bread making, and recreational cycling
Brief context
Interests: Volunteer youth football coach; amateur landscape photographer; conversational Italian
Relevant personal project
Projects & Interests: Maintain a home-automation project using Raspberry Pi and Home Assistant; publish build notes on GitHub
Include numbers only when they are real and useful.
Volunteer coding instructor for a monthly youth workshop serving 20–25 students
The number establishes scope. It avoids turning a personal activity into a dramatic achievement statement.
Examples by Situation
The following examples are hypothetical and show the level of detail I recommend.
Early-career software candidate
Projects & Interests: Contributor to an open-source accessibility tool; build small web applications with TypeScript
Marketing candidate
Interests: Street photography, independent magazines, and community arts events
Healthcare candidate
Community & Interests: Volunteer event coordinator for a local food bank; recreational swimming
Finance candidate
Interests: Chess club member, long-distance cycling, and economic history
Engineer
Projects & Interests: Restore vintage audio equipment and design replacement components with CAD
Teacher
Community & Interests: Organize a neighborhood book exchange; perform with a community choir
These examples provide specificity without claiming that chess proves strategic brilliance or marathon running guarantees discipline.
Protect Your Privacy
Interests can reveal religion, political beliefs, disability, family status, sexual orientation, health information, and other personal details. You control how much of your life enters the application.
Advocacy, political activity, religious service, and identity-based community work can represent meaningful leadership and commitment. Bias may still exist in hiring. Weigh the professional value, your privacy, and your comfort level. No candidate should feel required to hide an important part of herself, and no resume section deserves automatic inclusion.
Review local expectations as well. Resume and CV conventions vary across countries.
Avoid These Common Mistakes
Inventing transferable skills
“Travel” becomes awkward when rewritten as “coordinated complex international logistics across four continents.” Keep the natural description unless the activity involved a genuine project or responsibility.
Turning every interest into a metric
You can enjoy reading without counting books. Numbers help when they establish meaningful scope or achievement.
Using judgmental labels
Activities such as gaming, television, social media, or solitary hobbies can involve creativity, community, analysis, or simple rest. Include them when they add relevant context and leave them private otherwise.
Listing an activity you barely know
An interviewer may share the interest and ask a detailed question. Choose activities you genuinely practice.
Researching employees to imitate them
Your colleagues’ hobbies provide no useful template for your own identity. Tailoring should never become personality performance.
Where to Place the Section
Place interests near the end of a standard resume, after experience, education, skills, and relevant projects. An early-career candidate may move a substantial project or leadership activity higher under its own heading.
Keep the visual treatment simple and consistent with the rest of the document.
Using AI to Edit an Interests Section
AI can shorten a long description or suggest a clearer heading. Give it strict instructions to preserve the activity exactly.
Condense these interests into one natural resume line. Preserve every fact. Avoid corporate language, inferred skills, invented metrics, and claims about company culture.
Read the result aloud. Personal interests should sound like something you would actually say.
UseResume lets you edit your resume content and choose a clean document layout. Add an interests section only when it earns its place.
Keep It Genuine
A hobbies section offers a small window into the person behind the career history. A few honest words are enough.
Choose details you are comfortable sharing, describe them naturally, and protect the space needed for your strongest professional evidence.
Create your account and build a resume that presents your experience clearly and leaves room for the right personal details.
Continue with our guides to adding a portfolio and choosing the right resume length.