Believe it or not, hobbies are important when it comes to the hiring process. After all, employers want well-rounded employees who can elevate the company and mesh well with the culture and work environment. However, there’s one hobby in particular that employers find to be a red flag in job seekers, and it could even impact their decision to hire you.

A study published in the Journal of Personnel Psychology wanted to look into the effects of extracurricular activities listed in job applicants’ resumes. Through their findings, researchers deduced that a popular hobby could actually be hindering people who enjoy it from finding a job.

People who admit to gaming as a hobby are considered less hirable.

The experiment, which took place in Germany, found that a fictional applicant they observed in their study who listed gaming as an extracurricular activity was rated lower in desirability compared to an equal applicant who listed volleyball. Somehow, gaming, although incredibly popular and linked to many positive cognitive attributes, was looked down on.

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Employers were quick to dismiss a person’s gaming skills as being irrelevant, especially when they were not formally certified or connected to education. Basically, it made them seem less capable and driven.

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There are certain career fields where this narrative is changing.

For fields such as IT, engineering, design, data analysis, and project management, it seems those who enjoy playing any type of gaming system might be in luck, as transferable skills from gaming are being more readily acknowledged. There are some employers who actually find value in gaming- interests, including systems thinking, adaptability, and collaboration under pressure.

Despite this, gaming skills require careful framing in professional contexts as they still tend to be undervalued and even looked down on by many employers. The study’s author, Johannes M. Basch, and his colleagues wanted to explore how the gaming skills of job applicants influence their perceived hirability and resume quality.

They conducted a study in which they contrasted gaming and participation in a team sport listed as extracurricular activities on job resumes. They compared them at two different proficiency levels: neutral/average and high.

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Applicants who listed gaming were ranked lower than the applicants who listed volleyball.

“This study can be seen as a first step in investigating the role of gaming skills in the preselection of candidates, with future research needed to pick up the limitations of our study and to examine whether these effects vary across different job sectors, job requirements, and organizations,” the study authors concluded. 

Employers definitely enjoy a candidate who can bring more to the table than just their ability to do the job correctly. Someone who shows interest in things outside their desired field can come across as a well-balanced addition to a team. But it seems gaming, in particular, still carries a slew of negative assumptions about a person’s character, including that they might be lazy and lack social skills.

Despite the fact that millions of people play games, when placed on a resume without any context, it can be reduced to simply “wasting time.” Employers tend to respond better to hobbies that they’re able to instantly understand and even respect, so being able to know how your interests are being perceived can eventually help decide what’s worth sharing on a resume and what you should probably keep to yourself.

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Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.