It is always debated to include or not to include hobbies. When you’re in a dilemma whether to include hobbies and interests on your resume ask yourself few key questions:

* Do a little research about the company you’re applying for to get to know about their culture, are they open to unique ideas?

* Try to look at other employee profiles on Linkedin of the company, do they reflect creativity?

If the answer is yes then you can readily go ahead and add hobbies section to your resume. Apart from your achievements and accolades in your journey, hobbies will reveal a humane aspect of your personality.

You’re not just a robot who would work all the time

It is good to have hobbies that somehow contribute to skill development and it is also ‘Okay’ to list those that are in no way related to the job you’re applying for. Just take a little careful about what you’re writing; it doesn’t make sense to write a hobby that you’d do to kill time.

Hobbies are there to enhance your well-being and once you put them down you’ve got to explain why and how does it make you feel good doing it.

Instead of just throwing the hobbies with boring bullets and leave them at that, try to come up with at least once concise sentence that can sum up your feeling towards it.

For example, instead of just mentioning ‘Chess’ you can say something like this:

‘Chess for me is a way to extract multiple solutions and I apply this in using scarce resources optimally’.

The above example shows that you’re a strategic thinker, whatever strategies you apply in the game do come in handy when dealing with real-life scenarios. Hence, you’re a problem solver and a thinker.

That sounds perfect.

So, let’s have a look at three hobbies that make your resume look attractive:

1. Volunteering

This one shows your initiative, leadership skill and reflects your way to giving back to the society. The causes you believe in would definitely talk a lot about you. However, avoid political, religious and monetary aspects which may not go so well with employers.

2. Sports

You can talk about individual sport or team sport, each one has its own requirements and you can talk about them too and how you’re able to adjust/adapt yourself to it. Sports in general, even as a hobby would require some discipline and focus that itself is a positive outcome of playing sports.

3. Creative outlets

If you’re showcasing your creativity by opting for various outlets then it implies that you like thinking out of the box and have an attitude of open-mindedness.

Be it cooking, painting, photography, film-making, gardening, designing, teaching, creative writing, doodling or any unusual hobby you have that helps in honing your creativity and spontaneity are good to go on your resume.

Brainstorm about your hobbies you want to include and in case you do not have any, which is rare then start investing a little time in expanding your interests.

Feel free to share your comments and opinions and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.