Hobbies and Interests on a CV: Should You Include Them?

Include hobbies and interests on your CV only when they add something the rest of your CV does not already prove, or when you are early in your career and have space that would otherwise sit empty. For most experienced candidates the section is optional and easy to cut. For students, career changers, and anyone with a short CV, it can quietly do real work.

The problem is that most people write this section on autopilot. "Reading, travelling, socialising" appears on thousands of CVs and tells a recruiter nothing. Below is how to decide whether to keep the section at all, and how to write it so it earns its space.

When do hobbies and interests actually help?

There are four situations where the section is worth keeping.

You are a student or have little work experience. When your work history is thin, hobbies become evidence. A recruiter cannot judge you on five years of output, so they look for signs of initiative, commitment, and follow-through. Running a society, coaching a junior team, or maintaining a side project all fill that gap. If this is you, read our guide on how to write a CV with no experience alongside this one.

You are changing careers. Hobbies can bridge the gap between where you have been and where you want to go. Someone moving from retail into design has a stronger case if their CV shows years of freelance illustration work, even unpaid.

The role is culture-facing. Small teams, startups, agencies, hospitality, and education often hire partly on personality and shared interests. A short, human line at the bottom gives an interviewer something to open with.

Your CV is short. If you have half a page of white space, a well-written interests section is better than padding your job bullets with filler.

When should you cut the section?

Cut it when the space could carry something stronger. Specifically:

• You have several years of directly relevant experience and are already at two full pages.
• You are applying to a large employer that screens on hard requirements first.
• Everything you would list is generic, and you cannot make it specific.
• The section would push a genuine achievement onto another page.

No recruiter has ever rejected a candidate for leaving hobbies off. Plenty have skimmed past a weak one. If in doubt, cut it.

Which qualities should a hobby prove?

Do not think in terms of hobbies. Think in terms of the quality the hobby demonstrates, then pick the hobby that proves it. Useful signals include:

• Leadership and organisation — captaining a team, running a club, coordinating a volunteer group, organising a local event.
• Discipline and long-term commitment — marathon training, learning an instrument, studying a language over several years, a martial arts grade.
• Technical curiosity — building small apps, 3D printing, home automation, contributing to open-source projects.
• Creativity and craft — photography with published work, a blog with a real readership, illustration, woodworking.
• Communication — debating, hosting a podcast, mentoring, tutoring, public speaking groups.
• Community and empathy — regular volunteering, fundraising, charity work, first-aid training.

The pattern is the same in every case: the hobby is only interesting because of what it required from you.

How do you write one so it means something?

The fix is specificity. Replace the label with a detail that could only be true of you: what you do, how often, how long, and what came of it.

Compare "Football" with something a recruiter can actually picture:

Interests: Coach a Sunday under-12s football team of 18 players; organise fixtures, kit, and parent communications each season.

Or a technical example:

Interests: Build small web tools in my spare time, including a budgeting app used by around 200 people; currently learning Rust.

Or a creative one:

Interests: Long-distance running (three marathons since 2023) and film photography, with work shown at two local group exhibitions.

Each of those is one line. Each contains a number, a scale, or an outcome. None of them says "passionate about".

A quick rule: if another candidate could copy your line word for word and it would still be true of them, rewrite it or delete it.

Interests that carry more risk than reward

Some entries create doubt for no benefit. Leave these off unless the role makes them directly relevant:

• Political affiliations or activism. Fair or not, this invites bias you cannot control.
• Religious activity. Same reasoning. Volunteering through a faith organisation can usually be described by the work itself rather than the institution.
• Anything divisive or controversial, including strongly debated causes.
• Vague filler — "socialising", "watching films", "spending time with friends and family", "music".
• Hobbies that hint at safety risk or heavy time demands, such as extreme sports, when the role has safety or availability concerns.
• Anything you cannot talk about for two minutes. If you list it, expect to be asked about it.

Listing something you have not actually done in years is a version of the same mistake covered in our guide to CV mistakes to avoid: it holds up fine on paper and falls apart in the interview.

Placement, heading, and length

Put the section last, after education and skills. It is the lowest-priority content on the page, and the layout should say so.

Use a plain heading such as Interests or Hobbies and Interests so applicant tracking systems and human readers both parse it instantly. Avoid clever alternatives like "Beyond the desk".

Keep it to two or three lines, or three to five short items. A half-page block with a separate paragraph per hobby signals that you had nothing better to fill the space with. If you are unsure how the section fits the whole document, our guide on how to write a CV covers the order of sections in detail.

One more thing: tailor it lightly. If a job description emphasises teamwork, lead with the team hobby. If it emphasises independent problem solving, lead with the side project.

Key takeaways

• Include hobbies and interests when they prove a quality your work history does not, or when your CV is short; cut them when the space could hold something stronger.
• Choose the quality first (leadership, discipline, creativity, communication), then choose the hobby that proves it.
• Write with specifics — scale, frequency, duration, outcome — instead of one-word labels.
• Leave off politics, religion, divisive topics, and vague filler like "socialising".
• Keep it to two or three lines at the bottom of the page, under a plain heading, and be ready to talk about anything you list.

Ready to put this into practice? You can build your CV free with CVify AI, add a tailored interests section in a couple of clicks, and see instantly whether it earns its place or pushes something more important off the page.