Personal Interests on a Resume
If you don’t list your personal interests on your resume, you are missing out on an opportunity to set yourself apart.
I am working with several candidates on their resumes. These candidates range from mid-level managers to VPs. One thing that is missing from these resumes is the candidate’s personal interests.
When I ask the candidate about their personal interests, they freely share them. When I ask them why they didn’t list their personal interests on their resume, I hear the following.
Excuses
- I like to golf, but I am not very good. I have a high handicap, and I don’t want to talk about it.
- Well, I do like to run, but running isn’t related to the job I am applying for
- I like baseball, but everyone likes sports. That doesn’t mean anything
- Craft beers are a passion for me, but I didn’t think that was appropriate for a professional document
First and foremost, personal interest can make you memorable and help you stand out.
Requisite Dating Example
If we are going on a first date, we dress appropriately and are ready to be entertaining and witty. We can talk all night and have a good time, but if we don’t share anything about our personal interests or learn about our Crush’s passions, we feel like something is missing.
Let’s say I am a hiring manager looking for a candidate with 3-5 years of experience and a degree in marketing. I share the qualifications with the recruiter, and they come back with 4-6 candidates. We can be pretty sure that all candidates I receive from the recruiter will have 3-5 years of experience and a marketing degree. There may be a dark horse with 2.5 years or 6 years of experience, but for the most part, all of the experience will look the same.
All candidates are not created equal
Of course, the recruiter didn’t just receive 4-6 applications for our position. The recruiter received 150 resumes. The recruiter was the initial filter. The other 144 resumes had less than 3 years and more than 5 years of experience, outside the requested experience window, or from the wrong industry.
A candidate with too little experience won’t be able to do the job we are looking for. If we wanted a junior candidate, we would have listed 1-3 years of experience required.
The folks with more than 6 years of experience will be looking for too much money. They have more experience; consequently, they are overqualified. We are like Goldilocks and want “jussstttt righhhhttt”.
If this post surfaced more questions, the book “Before the Interview | An Insider’s View of How Resumes Are Interpreted Before Anyone Talks to You” goes deeper into how these and other resume decisions are actually made.
Qualified candidates look similar
So, as the hiring manager, I receive 4-6 resumes from the recruiter that are in the ballpark. For the most part, they all look VERY similar. And they should. All have marketing degrees and the right amount of experience.
And here is where the personal interest can help you stand out. This can be the differentiator that most candidates miss.
Hiring managers will look at the very top of the resume and then go straight to the end of the document. They will skim the middle of the resume on their way to the end, but trust me, they will see the end of the document. All hiring managers are morbidly curious about education, and who doesn’t want to know the ending? It’s human nature.
The end of an interesting story is always read
Since we know the hiring manager will read the end, they will notice our personal interests. These are usually listed at the very end of the document.
Personal interests: An avid runner, running two marathons a year, and a professional baseball statistics fanatic. I believe Oreo’s should be eaten center-first.
A company’s About Page indicates the office culture. We should share something about ourselves.
Hiring managers want to hire employees who are not just qualified, but people they want to work with.
Break the personal interest stereotype
We want to avoid reinforcing negative stereotypes. Remember, someone just read your dossier and stalked your picture on LinkedIn. They formed an image in their mind about who you are and your personality. If you are an accountant, shatter the bean counter stereotype and add that you are dedicated to CrossFit. Stay away from talking about your six cats or weekly bridge game.
I have literally had managers ask me about a candidate by referring to them by where they are from, what school they went to, or some obscure fact they listed. When I went to interview at my last two jobs, as soon as I sat down, my moniker, HRNasty, was mentioned by the interviewers. Yeah, the cat was out of the bag, but they remembered me and asked me about the blog during the interview. Listing the personal interest paid off.
Not just co-workers, but hopefully friends
At the end of the day, the hiring manager wants to know that you can not only do the job but also have some personality. They are going to spend 8 hours a day with someone. It might as well be a hire with whom they have something in common or can imagine having something in common.
If you want to stick out, list a few personal interests and include a strong descriptor like “passionate”, “avid”, or “fanatical”.
The quiet truth
You may be fully qualified.
You may even be the best candidate.
But if your resume introduces friction early, it won’t reach the stage where qualifications are debated.
This post describes a few of the signals recruiters notice instinctively. In Before the Interview, I explain the broader system behind those signals: how resumes are actually read, what they compete with, and why interpretation happens the way it does long before anyone talks to you.
Understanding that system changes how you write, not just what you write.
Want to go deeper on this topic? Check out the book, “Before the Interview, An Insider’s View of How Resumes Are Interpreted Before Anyone Talks to You.“
See you at the after party,
HRNasty
nasty: an unreal maneuver of incredible technique, something that is ridiculously good, tricky, and manipulative but with a result that can’t help but be admired, a phrase used to describe someone good at something. “He has a nasty forkball”.
Ongoing writing and context live on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
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