In this week’s KIQ, employers want to know about your extracurricular activities. But that doesn’t mean you should wax lyrical about your love of baking.
Woman painting image from Shutterstock
Why would an employer want to know what your hobbies are?
They want to understand you on a more personal level and try to determine whether you’d be a good fit for the company. Learning about the things that you enjoy doing outside of work will help them assess this.
“By learning more about your outside interests, they can glean more about your personality and even draw some conclusions about how you may thrive in the organisation,” Lynn Taylor, a workplace expert, said.
To this end, you should only talk about the hobbies that best showcase your strengths, passions and skills. For example, if you like painting and you’re interviewing for an account executive position with an advertising agency, talking about this hobby will let the interviewee know that you have a creative side. If you love doing escape rooms with friends on your days off, you can explain that this hobby has enhanced your critical thinking skills.
How would you tackle this question? Let us know in the comments.
Comments
One response to “Killer Interview Question: What Are Your Hobbies?”
That would be easy for me to answer. My main hobbies are things that tie into my skill set quite naturally, so the immediate answer would show that when I’m socialising, I’m also refining the skills I’m selling.
As an analyst/auditor, tournament poker is a great way to put work skills into a social environment.