The Ashbury Park Press has an article about the pros and cons of listing your hobbies on your resume. The article says one person believes they found a job because they listed their disc jockey hobby.
The company owner doubted that job candidate Eric R. Derby would make a good technical recruiter. Derby seemed too quiet, too reserved. Could he really excel in such a job?
But the owner gave Derby a chance after spotting something at the bottom of his resume.
Derby listed "disc jockey" under a section dubbed "hobbies."
"He assumed that if I was a DJ, I've got to be able to talk to people," said Derby, recalling a conversation he had with the owner months after he was hired. "I tend to come across as quiet and conservative when I don't yet know people. If that hadn't been in the resume, I might not have gotten the job."
Some experts say the risks of listing hobbies may outweight any benefit because you don't know what the employer is going to think about those hobbies.
Just remember: There is one big risk to listing those hobbies. You never know how a hiring manager might view them.
Something innocuous such as being a fitness buff, for example, might put off a sedentary manager who fears you'll be obnoxious about your exercising ways.
"It's way too much information that a manager doesn't need to know," said Jody Stolt, a national recruitment manager for the Perinton, N.Y.-based PAETEC Communications. "They just need to know that they can do the job."
Experts that think is it acceptable to list hobbies but most experts say to keep the list small -- don't overdue it. The resume writing section from Boston College has a few good tips relating to hobbies.
when your interests or hobbies are so unusual that they are bound to attract positive attention. (One recent alumna, applying for work in the investment industry, listed "mud wrestling" as a hobby. Every recruiter that interviewed her started the interview off with a question about her hobby.)
when your interests or hobbies reflect positively on your job skills. For example, if you are applying for work as a paralegal and you love chess, the recruiter may equate your hobby with analytical abilities.
Somehow the chess hobby sounds like a much safer hobby to list than the mud wrestling one.
