Should I include hobbies at all

Only where the line is specific enough to be about you. Reading, music and travelling describe most of the population and take a line that could hold evidence.

What makes a good interests line

Something a stranger could ask a real question about: a distance you run, an instrument you play in a named group, a thing you build, a language you are learning.

Do they help with the ATS check

No. There is no hobby rule in it. The words add to readable volume, which is a very small effect compared with an achievement line.

Where should the section go

Last, under a heading of its own, after certifications and languages.

Is there a formatting risk

Yes, a quiet one. A heading the rules here do not recognise is not treated as a section boundary, so the lines under it are read as part of the section above. Keep interests away from the skills block.

Guide · Résumé

Hobbies and interests, and when they earn a line

An interests line is worth having only when it is specific. Here is the test, and a formatting detail that quietly matters more than the content.

ConxfolioPublished 2026-09-12

— specific, or gone.

The interests line is the last line on the page and usually the least considered. It is worth having in two situations and worth deleting in all the others.

The test

Could a stranger ask you a real question about it. "Reading, music, travelling" fails: it describes most of the adult population and invites nothing. "Distance running, two marathons a year" and "plays double bass in a community orchestra" both pass, because each one is a fact with a shape.

When it earns a line

When it is relevant. A hobby that uses the skills of the job is evidence, and it belongs in the projects section rather than at the bottom of the page.
When it shows something the rest of the page cannot. A sustained commitment, a team, a thing organised, an endurance.
When you are early in a career. With less employment history, a specific interest is a real part of what a reader has to go on.

When to delete it

When the page is full of evidence and the line is generic. When you are competing for space and something measurable is being cut instead. When the interest would make an interviewer uncomfortable, which includes anything political, religious or otherwise personal that the job has no reason to know.

A formatting detail that matters more than the content

In the ATS résumé checker, a set of section names is recognised: summary and its variants, experience, education, skills, projects, and a group covering certifications, awards, publications, languages, volunteering and references. "Interests" and "Hobbies" are not in that set, which has a consequence people rarely notice: an unrecognised heading is not treated as a section boundary, so the lines beneath it are read as part of the section above.

If your interests sit directly under the skills block, the words on that line can be read as skills entries. It will not break anything, and it does make the reading less accurate than it should be. Put an additional section with its own recognised neighbour between them, or place interests at the very bottom after a block the rules do know.

How to write the line

Three items at most, each with a detail attached. Verbs where they help. No exclamation marks, and no explanation of what the hobby says about your character, which is the reader's judgement to make.

In the builder

Interests belong in an additional section in the résumé builder, reached through Add content, where awards, publications and custom blocks also live. Giving them their own titled block keeps them out of the skills list, which is both tidier on the page and cleaner in a parse. The skills guide explains why that list is read as a list of entries rather than as prose.

When an interest is really a project

A hobby that produces work is not a hobby for the purposes of this page. A game you built, a newsletter you write, a bicycle frame you welded, a dataset you maintain: those are projects, they go in the projects section with a name and a result, and they are read as evidence rather than as personality. Moving one line from the bottom of the page to the projects section can change what an interviewer opens with.

The no-experience guide leans on exactly this, because early in a career the personal project is often the strongest evidence available.

Interests in the countries that expect them

Some hiring cultures expect a short personal line and read its absence as evasive; others regard it as irrelevant. Where you are applying abroad, look at how people in that country write theirs rather than applying your own convention, and keep whatever you include specific and brief. One line is enough anywhere, and one line of something real is better received than three lines of categories.

The line at the very end of the page

Whatever sits last is what a reader leaves with, so it should be a line you would be happy to be asked about. That is an argument for either one specific interest or nothing at all, and against a row of categories that ends the document on a shrug.

Where the page is already full of evidence, nothing is the right answer, and the space goes to the achievement line that would otherwise have been cut.

Put it in the right section

Interests belong in an additional section with a heading of your own, kept apart from skills so nothing runs together.

Open the résumé builder See the skills guide

Questions

Should I include hobbies at all: Only where the line is specific enough to be about you. Reading, music and travelling describe most of the population and take a line that could hold evidence.
What makes a good interests line: Something a stranger could ask a real question about: a distance you run, an instrument you play in a named group, a thing you build, a language you are learning.
Do they help with the ATS check: No. There is no hobby rule in it. The words add to readable volume, which is a very small effect compared with an achievement line.
Where should the section go: Last, under a heading of its own, after certifications and languages.
Is there a formatting risk: Yes, a quiet one. A heading the rules here do not recognise is not treated as a section boundary, so the lines under it are read as part of the section above. Keep interests away from the skills block.

Conxfolio is a free set of four career tools: a résumé builder with 37 rendered layouts, an ATS résumé checker that prints its own arithmetic, a cover letter builder that traces every proof paragraph back to the line it came from, and a portfolio builder with 20 authored designs. There is no account to create, nothing is held back for a paid plan, and no language model is used anywhere in the product, so the readers, the score and the letter are deterministic code you can check.