When you apply for a job, your main goal is to stand out from the crowd. Moreover, your resume is the first impression that you make on your employer. Hence, it would be best if you chose the right interests to put on your resume.
While you may want to try the traditional method and create a list of positive hobbies and interests, you should know that it no longer attracts employers’ attention. Every employer is looking for something unique that can make the employee stand as it.
You may want to look at the activities resume samples, but you need to proceed with the right one. You should take inspiration from personal interests and create one. But, make sure that it isn’t too general because a mainstream resume will never attract an audience.
Table of Contents
What are your interests to put on resume?
Before you decide what interests to put on resume, you need to know what interests are.
As the word goes, interests are something that attracts the attention of your user. It will help you become fascinated and learn more about something. These interests act as a medium for the employer to know you better. The interests usually are aspects that help you discover more about your knowledge, behavior, and if you like pop culture.
As the suggestion goes, interests should be a reflection of your personal habits. While you can obviously include activities resume samples, you need to check all the aspects. Your list of interests talks a lot about you, and sometimes people may not even find you interesting. Don’t you just want to avoid it?
Should you include interests in your resume?
Obviously, you should. These are your positive hobbies and interests that help the employer know you better. Before the employer meets you, they mostly make sure to check your job profile. All these important factors are listed in your resume itself. Thus, you must manage the basic aspects and include their interests. If your hobbies and activities are interesting, more people will be attracted to you. Moreover, the employers will take an interest in your job profile. Isn’t that a plus point?
What are the common interests to put on resume?
A well-written resume will play an important role in helping you get the job quickly. While you will speak thoroughly about your abilities and skills, you should also be very careful about mentioning the interests. These interests act as an important factor to explain your personality. Hence, you should know what interests to put on resume.
Here are a few interests and hobbies that you can add to your resume to increase your chance of getting hired.
Volunteer work
Several companies take an active part in the activities of their local communities. Hence, most of them look for individuals who can help them with local communication. Although not necessary, you can enter details of volunteer work if you have done any. These are mostly references that would act in your favor.
You also need to be very careful about the details you add to regular volunteering. Even if they aren’t necessarily related to your work skills, you should add them. This is mostly because you don’t know when these would add to your favor. Apart from including these in the interest section, you might also create a separate section in your resume as “Volunteer Experience” to attract the attention of your employers.
Blogging
Blogging has become a trend in today’s time. If you love writing and poetry, make sure to include them as blogging. If you have a personal blog, that’s a plus point. Moreover, if you’re applying for a social media manager or content writer position, blogging as interest will make it easier for you to land the job.
Blogging as an interest reflects the fact that you’re interested in creating and communicating across the market. However, you should avoid sharing your personal blog’s details if those aren’t meant for sharing on professional platforms.
Sports
An interest in sports that you play regularly can help to improve your soft skills. How? Since you take active participation in sports, you know the importance of working with others, have leadership skills, and even the importance of being a team player.
Moreover, many employers have sports teams for their companies. If the respective company has any such facility, it would be easier for you to land the job. Plus, many employers are interested in hiring people who have sports-related knowledge.
Art
If you’re applying for a creative job, you should make sure to include art as an interest in your resume. However, make sure to specify in what way you’re creative. You need to mention details about how your creativity can help to solve the company issues. Several multinational and large organizations are looking for potential solutions or someone who can easily creatively solve their company problems.
Traveling
We all know the fact that traveling helps us know the world. Moreover, if you’re interested in traveling, it becomes pretty easy for you to land a job. Traveling can be one of the best additions to your resume, especially if your respective job requires you to travel much. Traveling helps to show off your cultural awareness, well-roundedness, and inclusiveness.
Reading
Don’t just randomly put reading as an interest. It would help if you were very careful about how you include reading. If you make reading a part of your resume, you need to be sure that you know things about it too. If you include reading as a part of your resume, you show that you are working towards improving your communication and skills even in your free time. But it is a solo task. So, it would help if you were very careful.
Final Thoughts
As said, the interests to put on resume talks a lot about yourself. Hence, make sure that you’re very careful about what you add because mostly the employers will judge you on the basis of that.
