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July 30, 2026 — 1:11pm
Every few years, you pull up an old file on your computer, add a few new headers and bullet points and save it as a new document. This ritual of updating your CV to get a new job has been performed for decades.
But there’s one area of your resume that most people overlook, and it’s more important than you realise. I’m talking about the few simple words you write to describe your interests and hobbies, which say more about you than almost any other part of your resume.
Usually hidden right at the bottom of your page, it’s the last remaining part that you can truly personalise. As AI-generated resumes flood the inboxes of hiring teams, the way you summarise your life outside work has increased in importance and should get just as much attention as the rest of it.
I’ve spoken to several different recruiters, who tell me that when they have the unenviable task of reviewing dozens of resumes in a single sitting – which all describe similar experiences at similar jobs – and their eyes are drawn immediately to the final few lines to read what interests might set them apart.
For most candidates, this is the last thing they hurriedly fill out before sending it off, but what you do outside the workplace says a lot about the type of worker you’d be inside it.
To help you better understand this forgotten corner of your resume, here are some of the most commonly listed interests on a CV, and what they say about you.
A love for travel in your interests signals curiosity and independence, and hints you can easily adapt to whatever’s thrown at you.
Let’s begin with sport, as most people do. Anyone who writes that they play a team sport, like soccer or netball, signifies they are likely to be co-operative at work, and have no problem working towards shared goals with others. A solo sport, like running or swimming, says you’re self-motivated and resilient, and will persist at hard tasks with discipline even when things get uncomfortable.
A history of volunteering shows reliability, empathy and gives a nod towards service-orientation to help other people, while listing games of any sort (from computer to board) implies that you’re a strategic and systems thinker who can remain calm in high-pressure situations.
A love for travel in your interests signals curiosity and independence, and hints that they can easily adapt to whatever’s thrown at them, like delayed flights and lost luggage teach you to.
Playing any kind of instrument demonstrates patience, scuba diving means good communication, writing implies reflection, and even gardening infers you have the patience required to not see immediate fruits of your labour for a very long time.
Now, this is not an exact science, of course. Hobbies can give a general sense of what someone might be like, but it’s not a direct predictor of future employee performance.
But when you next open up that computer file and start updating it before your first round of job interviews, don’t hurry past the small section that lists out your hobbies. Instead, think broadly about how they can sum you up as a human, and get specific around how you spend your time.
Know that these will be read and interpreted as a sign of your future temperament and judgement, and are a shortcut to standing out.
As computer programs scan your resume for the right keywords, or a person from HR scrolls quickly through it, listing the right hobby alone is not going to land you the job. But it might just spark a good conversation, or help you to be memorable, and those are the small differences between being overlooked and landing your dream job.
Tim Duggan’s new book, Clear in Tension: How to get better at conflict, is available for pre-order now from www.clearintension.com.au
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