Hobbies and Interests: Keep, Cut, or Rework
The default is to cut it. An interests section earns its line only when the interest shows a skill the job needs, gives a genuine conversation opening with someone in that field, or fills a page that is thin because you’re early in your career — and even then it’s one specific line, never a list of pleasant generalities.
Why “reading, travel, and music” fails
It is true of almost everyone. A line that would fit on nearly any resume in the pile does not distinguish you, and it costs the same vertical space as a real accomplishment. A reader who reaches it learns nothing and, worse, briefly wonders whether you had nothing else to add.
The failure isn’t that the interests are boring. It’s that they’re unfalsifiable and unspecific. “Music” could mean you have played in a working band for eight years or that you have a streaming account. If a reader can’t tell which, the line does no work.
Three cases where an interest earns its line
1. The interest is adjacent to the work. You’re applying to a bike retailer and you race amateur cyclocross. You’re applying to a garden center and you keep an allotment. You’re applying to a publisher and you run a book club that has met monthly for six years. Here the interest is domain knowledge, and it tells a hiring manager you’ll understand the customer without training.
2. It demonstrates a capability the job needs, with real evidence of scale or persistence. Organizing a monthly meetup means scheduling, promotion, venue negotiation, and no-show management. Refereeing youth league matches means authority under pressure with hostile spectators. The test is whether you could describe the work involved for two minutes and have it sound like work.
Be honest about the level, though. Coaching a team for four seasons is a commitment. Having gone twice is an activity.
3. Your page is genuinely thin and the alternative is padding. A new graduate with one job and a short skills list is better served by one real, specific interests line than by inflating bullets to fill space. But check the better options first: an interest that involved making something is usually a stronger entry in a projects section, and anything organized through a nonprofit belongs in volunteer work on your resume, which reads as experience rather than as leisure.
How to write the line
One line. A specific noun, a hint of level or duration, no adjectives, no enthusiasm words.
- Before: “Passionate about fitness, travel, and lifelong learning.”
- After: “Interests: distance running (three marathons), conversational Portuguese.”
Before: “Love cooking and being creative in my spare time.” After: “Interests: bread baking; run a 40-person neighborhood supper club.” The second version is shorter and says more, which is the pattern behind most good resume edits.
Two things to avoid in the phrasing. Don’t use “passionate about” — it’s the clearest cliché in the category, and resume clichés and what to write instead covers why the reader discounts it. And don’t dress an interest as a skill: enthusiasm for a tool is not experience with it, a distinction build a skills section worth reading makes at length.
What to leave off
Anything that mainly signals group identity. Politics, religion, activism. Not because there’s anything wrong with them, but because with a stranger the response is a coin flip you have no reason to accept, and the resume’s job is to get you a conversation.
Anything you’d have to exaggerate. If “cycling” means the bike is in the garage, the line is a small untruth in a document where every other line is checkable. It also risks a five-minute conversation with someone who cycles seriously.
Solo pursuits with nothing to show and no relevance. Watching films, gaming, “spending time with family.” All fine ways to live; none of them help an employer decide.
Anything that made the resume longer than it should be. If the page is over length, the interests line is among the first things to go — it sits at the top of the cut order in what to cut from your resume first.
The most common fix: move it, don’t delete it
Many interests are misfiled rather than worthless. Before you cut, check whether the thing belongs somewhere it counts for more:
- You built, ran, or organized something → a projects entry, with a result.
- It was for a nonprofit or community group → volunteer experience.
- You hold a position in a club or association → that’s closer to professional experience; if it involves publishing or speaking, see publications, talks, and memberships on a resume.
- It taught you a real, nameable skill → the skills section, described as a skill.
- It’s a language → its own short line, with an honest level.
What’s left after that sorting is genuine leisure, and genuine leisure is what you cut.
Where it goes, and what to call it
The very bottom of the page, below everything else, at one line. Call it “Interests.” Avoid “Personal,” “About Me,” and “Outside of Work” — headings that invite a reader to shift out of evaluating you and into browsing, which is not a shift you want at the end of a resume. The general naming logic is in what to name your resume sections.
The one-question test
Read the line and ask: how does this help them decide?
If the answer is “it shows I understand their customers,” keep it. If it’s “it shows I can run something complicated,” keep it. If it’s “it makes me seem well-rounded,” cut it and spend the line on a bullet that says what you did at work — which is what the reader came for, and what the rest of the page should be full of.