Should You Include Hobbies and Interests on a Resume?

A hobbies and interests section is one of the few resume decisions that genuinely depends on your specific situation — it's not a default "always include" or "always cut" the way some sections are. Here's how to tell which side you're on.

When hobbies and interests are worth including

• You're light on other content to fill the page. Early-career resumes, especially without much work history, sometimes benefit from a short hobbies line that adds a human, memorable detail — the same principle behind treating projects and activities as real content when work history is thin.
• A hobby is genuinely relevant to the role. A marathon runner applying to a sports brand, a hobbyist photographer applying to a visual-heavy marketing role, an open-source contributor applying to a software job — these aren't generic filler, they're evidence of real interest and sometimes real skill directly relevant to the job.
• It gives you something distinctive and memorable. In a stack of similar resumes, a specific, interesting detail can be the thing an interviewer remembers and asks about first — a low-stakes, easy conversation starter that works in your favor.
• You're applying somewhere culture and personality genuinely factor into hiring — smaller companies, culture-forward teams, or roles where a hiring manager is explicitly evaluating team fit alongside qualifications.

When to leave it off entirely

• You have plenty of stronger content competing for the same space. If your experience, skills, and achievements already fill the page, a hobbies line is taking space away from content that's actually doing persuasive work — see our resume length guide for how tight that space really is on a one-page resume.
• The hobbies are generic and add nothing specific. "Reading, traveling, spending time with family" tells a reader nothing distinctive — nearly every applicant could write the same line, which makes it filler regardless of whether it's true.
• You're applying to a conservative, formal industry — law, finance, government — where a personal-interests section can read as unnecessary or even slightly unprofessional relative to the norm.
• The hobby could raise questions you'd rather not answer in an interview — anything political, religious, or otherwise potentially divisive, even if it's a genuine and important part of your life outside work.

How to write one well, if you include it

Specificity is what separates a hobbies line that helps from one that's pure filler:

Weak: "Interests: reading, traveling, fitness" Better: "Interests: competitive chess (USCF rated), trail running, restoring vintage bicycles"

The stronger version is specific enough to be memorable and to invite an actual question in an interview — a generic list invites nothing. If a hobby connects to a real skill relevant to the job, say so directly rather than leaving the connection implicit: "Amateur photographer — manage a 15K-follower Instagram showcasing local landscape photography" tells a marketing-adjacent employer something concrete about visual sense and audience-building, not just that you like taking pictures.

Where it goes on the page

At the very bottom, after skills and any additional sections — this is genuinely the lowest-priority content on a resume, included only once everything more directly relevant to the job has already earned its space. One line is enough; a hobbies section should never run longer than your skills or experience bullets.

Frequently asked questions

Do recruiters actually read the hobbies section? Inconsistently — some skip it entirely during the fast first-pass scan, others read it specifically as a tiebreaker or conversation-starter once they're already interested. Because it's read late and skipped often, it should never come at the cost of content that gets read first.

Should I include volunteer work in a hobbies section, or does it belong somewhere else? Volunteer work belongs in its own section formatted like real experience, not folded into hobbies — our guide to volunteer work on a resume covers the full format, since it carries far more evidentiary weight than a casual interest does.

Is it ever a bad idea to mention team sports or group activities? Generally a safe, positive signal — team sports and group hobbies often read as evidence of collaboration and commitment, which is part of why they're a common, reasonable choice when a hobbies section is worth including at all.

Should hobbies ever appear in a cover letter instead of a resume? Occasionally, if a specific interest directly supports your narrative for that particular role — a cover letter has more room to explain why a hobby is relevant than a one-line resume mention does, covered in our cover letter guide.