Even for candidates with great resumes, you may struggle to stand out when other applicants closely match your experience and skills. In such cases, recruiters often look for extra signals (such as personality, cultural fit, and how closely you match the company’s principles) to make hiring decisions.
That’s when hobbies and interests can set you apart. If used strategically, these additions reinforce your role relevance, humanize your application, and give you an edge over other equally qualified candidates.
However, you can’t use hobbies and interests interchangeably because any incorrect move can hurt more than help.
In this post, we show you how to:
- ✅Tell the difference between hobbies (active participation) and interests (areas of curiosity or passion)
- ✅Decide whether including hobbies and interests on a resume is appropriate
- ✅Identify examples that support cultural fit and role alignment
- ✅Position hobbies and interests so they complement and do not distract hiring teams from your core qualifications
Resume Examples That Effectively Highlight Hobbies and Interests
Example Resume
Why these hobbies and interests strengthen this history teacher resume
- If you’re writing something highly specific like a middle school history teacher resume, you’ll want to select hobbies and interests that show skills useful in mentorship, such as patience, communication, and guidance.
- Always choose hobbies and interests that support skills, knowledge, or experiences that are useful in your target role (for example, coaching for teaching roles, or coding side projects for engineering roles).
- Don’t be afraid to include something cool and credible, like being a Jeopardy contestant.
- Activities like mentoring at-risk youth can display compassion and adaptability when dealing with emotionally charged or unpredictable situations.
Most Common Hobbies and Interests People List on Resumes in 2026
Knowing the value of hobbies/interests on a resume, you may wonder which ones are the most popular in the US. Here’s an overview of five of the most common hobbies and how you might connect them to specific types of roles.
- Cooking/baking
- At the top of the list, 40% of US adults have cooking/baking as a hobby or interest. This is a great one to list on resumes for culinary positions or when working around food. It also shows you can follow instructions precisely.
- Reading
- Want to show some expert research abilities? Reading is an excellent hobby for resumes when applying to jobs involving scientific research or business analysis, such as roles in scientific research, business analysis, or market research.
- Pets
- Everyone’s interested in their pets. Plus, positions like vet techs or even care-based nursing roles can see directly relevant abilities, such as patience, observation, and comfort handling animals from individuals who love and cherish their animals.
- Video games
- Applying to a tech-related role? Video games are a potential hobby/interest you could list. It can also show systematic problem-solving skills that are useful in analytical positions, such as data analysis or quality assurance.
- Outdoor activities
- Nearly half of all jobs require outdoor work. So whether you’re applying to construction, agriculture, or other similar roles, many outdoor activities will be relevant, especially those that show physical stamina, safety awareness, or familiarity with working outside (for example, hiking, gardening, or trail maintenance). For instance, a gardening hobby could be great for an aspiring landscaper.
Comprehensive List of Hobbies and Interests to Consider for Your Resume
Here’s an extensive list of hobbies and interests to potentially include on your resume.
Volunteering
What better way to demonstrate that you’re willing to contribute your time to causes that benefit your community or support others than by including your volunteer efforts on your resume?
People want to work with kind people. Not to mention, a growing number of companies offer paid volunteer days each year so employees can support causes such as education, the environment, or local charities.
Volunteer hobby ideas you can list on your resume
- Fostering animals
- Serving within your religious organization
- Firefighter/ EMT
- Coaching youth sports teams
- Volunteering with organizations that help the homeless
- Tutoring
- Assisting at local meetups or hackathons
- Volunteering at an animal shelter
- Working for local committees or organizations in your community (like the Board of Education, for example)
Exercise
Mentioning how you exercise as one of your interests or hobbies can give the person reviewing your resume an easy conversation starter during an interview.
However, saying something like “sports” in your interests section is not worth including. What sport do you play?
Exercise can be anything that gets the heart pumping. If you dance or do karate, those are unique hobbies that you should definitely mention on your resume.
Exercise-related hobby ideas to feature on your resume
- Running (if you run events like 5Ks, say so!)
- Yoga
- Weight lifting
- Dance (salsa? square dancing?)
- Golf
- Karate
- Pilates
- Basketball (do you play in a league?)
- Volleyball
- Bowling
- Rock climbing
- Biking
- Skiing/ snowboarding
- Swimming
- Hiking
Art
Many companies value employees who can generate new ideas or approach problems creatively. If you’re looking for a career in marketing or design, that’s especially true.
Even if you’re looking for a job as a programmer or data scientist, creativity can still be an invaluable skill.
Listing “music” alone is too broad; specify what you do, such as composing, playing violin, or performing in a band. Saying you play guitar, however, may catch the employer’s eye.
If you have a portfolio of your work that showcases skills relevant to the role, include a link to it on your resume.
Creative and artistic hobby ideas for your resume
- Photography
- Painting
- Drawing
- Comic books
- Sewing
- Classic films
- Instruments (guitar, violin, piano, etc.)
- Interior decorating
- Writing (fiction? slam poetry?)
- Calligraphy
- Stand-up comedy
- Singing
- Rapping
Puzzle and game hobbies that showcase your strategic thinking
Much like your artistic endeavors can showcase your creativity to a prospective employer, an interest in strategic games can signal that you enjoy long-term planning, pattern recognition, and weighing trade-off, skills that are useful in roles like product management or data analysis.
We likely sound like a broken record, but spell out the type of game and format (for example, ‘online chess tournaments’ instead of just ‘chess’). Saying “video games” is too broad, but specifying something like “strategy PC games” can highlight analytical thinking and problem-solving, especially if the company works in tech or gaming.
Puzzle and game hobby ideas to list on your resume
- Chess
- Poker
- Dungeons and dragons
- Sudoku
- Jigsaw puzzles
- Crossword puzzles
- Trivia
Other unique hobbies and interests that can strengthen your resume
Your hobbies or interests don’t have to fit into a single category like “sports” or “art,” and it’s fine if they overlap several areas. Ask yourself whether this activity clearly illustrates a skill employers want, such as leadership, attention to detail, or communication.
For example, in the list below, you’ll see brewing beer as a hobby. If the business you’re applying to has a casual culture or works in food, hospitality, or consumer products, this could be appropriate to include. To be a successful brewer, you need to be precise and thorough—traits that are valuable in quality control, operations, and lab-based roles.
Additional hobby and interest ideas to consider for your resume
- Learning languages (which/how many languages have you learned?)
- Backpacking through Southeast Asia (budget travel and cultural immersion)
- Foodie (talking about local restaurants can be a great way to break the ice in an interview)
- Gardening
- Brewing beer
- Cooking (which cuisine is your specialty?)
- Baking (who doesn’t love the person who bakes for office parties?)
- BBQing (this would grab our attention)
- Social media (for example, managing an Instagram account that grew from 524 to 6.4K followers in a year for a local non-profit)
- Camping
We know this is a long list of examples to sort through. You can start by listing all the activities you enjoy on your resume outline, then narrow that list to three to five hobbies that best match the job description when you create your final resume. We’ve also got some clean, one-page resume templates from Google Docs with a dedicated section for hobbies and interests with a section just for hobbies and interests.
Remember, your hobbies are supposed to be for your enjoyment. If you don’t think you have any hobbies that clearly support your target role, it’s okay to leave this section off your resume.
When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Include Hobbies and Interests on Your Resume
Before we dive into the types of hobbies and interests you should add to your resume, we first need to answer the question of whether they’re worth including for your specific role and company.
The primary factor in determining whether you should include a hobbies and interests section on your resume is the seniority of the role (entry-level vs. executive) and the company’s culture (formal vs. casual).
While large, traditional organizations in industries like finance, law, or government are less likely to be intrigued by what you do outside of work, fast-growing tech companies or early-stage startups will likely be interested in learning about your prospective cultural fit. One great way to demonstrate that on your resume is through your hobbies.
Example Resume
Why these hobbies/interests work
- Even listing a single, distinctive hobby can stand out to employers, especially if it shows rare dedication or advanced skill.
- Entry-level candidates can approach resume writing with a mindset that focuses on a few strong, memorable details instead of trying to list everything you’ve ever done.
- For example, mentioning that you’re a World Sudoku Championship Competitor for not just one but three years in a row shows sustained commitment and the ability to concentrate on complex problems over long periods.
- A niche interest like Sudoku is perfect for a front-end developer resume since it requires critical and mathematical thinking.
- If you’re applying for a web development job, try adding a related side project like apps; alternatively, If you’re playing up your artistic side, talk about your interest in web graphics!
How to decide if you should list hobbies and interests on your resume
- Read the job description of the role you’re applying to.
- Do they mention their company culture or the importance of cultural fit?
- If the answer is “yes,” that’s a strong sign you should include a brief hobbies and interests section.
- Visit the company’s website. Read their “about us” section as well as their employment pages.
When it comes to your resume, not all hobbies and interests are equally helpful on a resume. For example, some of us here at BeamJobs are expert television show binge-watchers. If there was a binge-watching championship, we think we could win gold.
Still, this is a hobby we would leave off our resumes. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with this hobby; it’s just that it’s neither particularly unique nor noteworthy. Remember—the goal of your hobbies and interests are to help you stand out. If the hobby you include is something the hiring manager has seen hundreds of times, it won’t help you stand out or spark a meaningful conversation.
This means you should be as specific as possible when describing your hobbies or interests. “Sports” is not the same as “captain of co-ed basketball team.”
Here are a few more examples of what we mean:
- Wrong: Cooking
- Right: Cooking Middle Eastern cuisine
- Wrong: Travel
- Right: Backpacking through Europe
- Wrong: Music
- Right: Electric guitar
- Wrong: Volunteering
- Right: Volunteering at local ASPCA
- Wrong: Puzzles
- Right: Expert at Sudoku
Sensitive Hobbies and Interests You Should Avoid on Your Resume
If you’re on the fence about whether you should include a particular interest or hobby on your resume, default to leaving it off your resume if you’re unsure whether it could be controversial. The last thing you want to do is turn a “yes” into a “no” by including a topic that might strongly divide opinions, such as partisan politics or polarizing social issues, on your resume. This means you shouldn’t list anything about politics on your resume (unless, of course, you’re applying for a job in politics).
This is not to say you must hide volunteer work through your local church if that’s a major part of your life; just describe it in a neutral, service-focused way. Just imagine you’re meeting someone you’d like to make a good impression on. If it’s a topic you’d avoid when first meeting someone you want to impress professionally, leave it off if you’d like to present a professional resume. With that said…
BeamJobs’ co-founder, Stephen, knows a thing or two about including a hobby that, under different circumstances, would have been better left off his resume
Before I started BeamJobs with my brother and shifted my career to focus entirely on resumes and job search tools, I was a data analyst at a company called Chegg.
At that time, one of my biggest hobbies was playing poker. Now, as a data nerd, I took a very data-driven approach to playing poker. I studied the game religiously to develop a deep understanding of winning strategies and probabilities.
Since I was applying for jobs as a data analyst, I thought that would be worth including as an interest on my resume. I also understood poker would be a poor fit for applications to conservative or highly regulated companies, such as banks or government agencies.
When it came time to apply to Chegg, I learned that the role I was applying for would be as an early employee for their recently acquired company, Imagine Easy Solutions. I researched the founders and learned they had a history of entrepreneurship.
As such, I included poker as a hobby on my resume. That gamble (poker pun intended) paid off. I learned during my interview that one of my interviewers was a big poker player. This gave me an opportunity to elaborate on my data-driven approach to the game and how I would take a similarly quantitative approach to my job.
We hope this illustrates how a specific, unusual hobby can create rapport in an interview and give you a concrete way to discuss your skills. They make you feel more like a person than a list of bullet points and can reveal shared interests with your interviewers, such as a sport, game, or volunteer cause.
Stephen’s anecdote also highlights two important points:
- Do your research on the company and role you’re applying for; make sure what you’re including as a hobby is relevant.
- Don’t lie. By his own admission, Stephen would have been quickly exposed by a much better poker player in his interview had he told a lie!
How to Add Hobbies and Interests to Your Resume
Before we dive into the best way to include hobbies or interests on your resume, let’s start with a sample resume that uses a hobbies and interests section effectively.
Example Resume
Why these hobbies/interests work
- Your social manager/photographer resume should showcase your creativity in the hobbies and interests section!
- Have outdoor interests like kayaking? These kinds of hobbies can suggest experience with composition, timing, and visual detail that support your photography and design work.
- Hobbies like fly fishing and comic art can suggest sociability and interconnectedness with others—valuable soft skills (like communication and collaboration) to list on your resume.
- You can use hobbies and interests to show that you have interests outside of work and can relate to different types of people, but the way to really rock this section is by displaying those that directly or indirectly relate to the job you’re after.
Best practices for adding hobbies and interests to your resume
- Add a specific section to your resume called “Hobbies,” “Interests,” or “Hobbies & Interests.”
- Limit the number of hobbies you include to five at most.
- Keep it toward the bottom of your resume layout.
- We have brand-new Google resume templates and Word resume templates that already have this section built in.
- Be as specific as possible.
- Don’t let this section push your resume beyond a single page if you have fewer than 10 years of experience.
All of these rules follow the principle that your interests/hobbies shouldn’t be the focus of your resume. They’re on your resume to add brief personal context and conversation starters, not to replace your experience or skills. In many cases, hiring managers will skim or ignore this section entirely, especially for senior roles. That’s the reason you shouldn’t make it so prominent.
Unfortunately, you won’t qualify for highly specialized roles, like surgeon, based on your hobbies alone—you still need to have the right qualifications for the role! With that said, the more specific you are with your hobbies and interests, the easier it is for a recruiter to connect them to the role and use them as interview questions.
You also want to be able to relate your hobbies or interests to what makes you a particularly good fit for the role you’re applying to. Let’s look at a few examples.
Example 1
Job title: Marketer
Hobby: Painting
How it relates: This demonstrates an eye for creativity and design—both important characteristics for a marketer.
Example 2
Job title: Manager
Hobby: Long-distance runner
How it relates: Committing to improving at long-distance running requires dedication without the ability to see immediate results, which can happen in management as well.
Example 3
Job title: Software engineer
Hobby: Baking cakes
How it relates: To be an effective baker, you need to be exact with measurements, temperatures, and time but also need a high degree of creativity. To be a strong developer, you must be creative and rigorously logical.
Example 4
Job title: HR manager
Hobby: Volunteering as an EMT
How it relates: Much like an EMT, to be a good HR manager, you must be caring and empathetic while staying calm in tense situations.
Resume Tips for Showcasing Hobbies and Interests Effectively
For most people, work is only one part of their lives; much of their time and identity comes from activities outside the office. Therefore, most of your time is likely going to be spent outside of your office.
Including your hobbies and interests on your resume can help hiring managers see you as a person with specific interests, rather than just a list of job titles and skills.
Tips for selecting and placing hobbies and interests on your resume
- Research the company and job description to see whether they emphasize culture, personality, or team fit, if they do, including hobbies is more likely to help.
- Create a dedicated “interests” or “hobbies” section on your resume.
- Remember: Interests are related to topics you find interesting, while hobbies are activities you participate in and enjoy.
- Keep this section short (four to five interests at most) and move it to the bottom of your resume.
- Your hobbies should be authentic; don’t start or exaggerate a hobby just because you think it will impress a potential employer.
Related content
Resume Hobbies and Interests FAQs
A hobbies/interests section works great for entry-level candidates who want to include additional relevant abilities or when applying to companies that emphasize workplace culture in the job description. For example, many retail organizations emphasize their culture, so someone applying to be an entry-level retail clerk could benefit from a hobbies/interests section.
A hobby is something you actively do, whereas an interest is something you may be fascinated by or dream about. For example, someone who actively reads an hour per day could consider reading a hobby. On the other hand, someone fascinated by psychology could consider that an interest. You could even combine the two to say you enjoy reading about psychology, which could work great for an aspiring therapist.
Including one to three hobbies or interests is usually enough for most one-page resumes. It typically shouldn’t be the focus of your resume, but should instead provide a small amount of extra context about your personality and how you might fit into the team.
For most resume formats, the bottom of the page or a sidebar beneath your education and skills is a good place for hobbies/interests. This placement leaves room for your work experience, education, and achievements to remain the primary focus of your resume.
Volunteer work is especially useful to list in a hobbies/interests section when you don’t have work experience since it’s the most similar to a work-related environment. Otherwise, aim for things that are the most relevant to the position. For example, listing a favorite sport or fitness activity, such as rugby or HIIT training, can help show your familiarity with fitness environments when applying for an entry-level job at a gym.
Stephen is the co-founder and CEO of BeamJobs. Frustrated with the challenges he'd faced in his own job search, he left the corporate world to start BeamJobs with his brother. Drawing on firsthand experience with hiring and getting hired as technical talent, he started BeamJobs in 2020 to help qualified job seekers land interviews with less stress. Since then, more than 4 million people have built their resumes and cover letters on BeamJobs. Stephen's insights have been featured in notable outlets, such as Fast Company, Business Insider, Yahoo Finance, MIT, and Zapier. Learn more about Stephen.
