How To List Skill Level On Resume

Best Skills To Put On Your Resume For 2022

Caitlin Proctor, CPRW

26 min read

You have only one or two pages to earn an interview. Make your resume skills compelling by including the right skills in the right way!

One of your resumeâs main functions is to show off your skills. Modern resumes need to include the right skills to quickly prove to a hiring managerâand an applicant tracking systemâthat you are worth contacting.

By skills, we mean the technical and interpersonal abilities you need to thrive as a candidate. Youâre a talented and qualified applicantâhow do you choose the best skills to put on your resume?

Employers are looking for applicants who have both hard skills and soft skills. However, there are different ways you should talk about these job skills and include them on your resume.

Hard skills are specific and usually required to succeed in a job. You can describe how youâve used your hard skills to achieve certain results, using metrics and numbers. You may also describe your hard skills as certifications, test scores, or with examples of your work.

Soft skills canât be easily measured and are often open to interpretation. To display your ability, you need to offer examples of how youâve used your soft skills to succeed. Add these to your work experience section as bullet points or descriptive sentences.

Want to learn more? Read on to see how to find the best skills to put on a resume this year.

How To Display Skill Levels On Your Resume

Getting ready to apply for a job position requires you to prepare the necessary documentation and tailor it to the position in question. By understanding how to incorporate skill level into your resume, you can help enhance your employability and generate interest in your application that encourages an employer to take a closer look at your unique qualifications.

In this article, we define what skill levels are, review tips for including them on your resume, and demonstrate how to go about displaying them on your resume.

Related:How To Develop Your Skill Set to Advance Your Career

Read Through The Job Description And Visit The Company Website

Job descriptions are valuable when it comes to writing the best resume as they usually have a “Requirements” or “Key Skills” section where the companies list the skills they expect their candidates to have. However, companies will also often list necessary skills in the descriptions of the company and the position. By carefully examining the job description, you can find the most relevant skills to put on your resume. You will want to look for skills-related keywords or phrases, such as “knowledge of JavaScript.”

For example, a job description for an administration clerk requires “attending to all queries in a timely and effective manner.” From this, a candidate can deduce that time management and communication skills are essential requirements for the job. Another job description for a motor technician requires successful candidates to “prepare all reports and forms required in conjunction with work assignments,” meaning that the candidate should have administrative skills as well as attention to detail.

For information on the company’s culture, and thus the soft skills you would need, check out their website. You can also search for a careers page, LinkedIn, or other social media platforms. You will then be able to include the most relevant soft skills tailored to the specific company.

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Match Your Master List With The Computer Skills Required For Each Position

The computer skills you include on your resume should be the items that overlap between your master list and the list of computer skills needed.

A general rule of thumb is to never include skills that arent relevant to the job you are applying for. For example, if you are applying for a landscaping position, there is no need to include that you know computer programming.

Communication & Interpersonal Skills

Oral and written communication skills are on top of the requirement list in every industry. Hiring managers give advantage to candidates who are able to get their point across well during the interview process, especially if their hard skill set is identical to other applicants.

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Faqs About Skills On Resumes

What is a good list of skills that are relevant to put on a resume?

Use a combination of hard and soft skills such as:

1. Communication skills like public speaking, writing, written communication, and active listening.

2. Technical skills like IT skills, engineering skills, programming languages, web development, search engine optimization and industry-specific technology.

3. Analytical skills like critical thinking, problem solving, and research.

4. Transferable skills if youâre changing careers like leadership and time management.

5. Negotiation skills related to management, compromise, and adaptability.

How many skills should I put on a resume?

As many as you can!

You want to include all the skills the employer is looking forâas long as you can honestly claim to have each skill. Incorporate your skills throughout your resume, not just in a skills section.

Within your dedicated skills section, limit yourself to 9 to 12 key talents. Use bullet points, text bars, or columns to keep this section organized and easy to read.

What should I call a skills section?

At ZipJob, we like to use a âcore competenciesâ or âcore proficienciesâ section. Under that heading, include your most impressive technical and hard skills.

Depending on your field, you may also need a âTechnical Skillsâ section.

We donât recommend using headings like âSkills and Abilitiesâ or âSpecial Skills.â

Where to put skills on a resume?

Everywhere!

Put Them Among Your Work Experience Bullets

One of the best ways to showcase your skills on a resume is by writing resume work experience bullet points that feature your greatest professional accomplishments. These bullets then show that you not only possess certain skills, but also prove youve used them to produce results for previous employers.

Simply follow these three steps and youll be able to reinforce your experience section with skills that help you attract recruiters and impress hiring managers.

Step 1: Make a list of all your relevant skills

List every ability you feel is relevant to the target position. If youre struggling to think of any, use the job descriptions used in ads from your industry, as well as looking at LinkedIn profiles of people working in similar roles.

Once youve created your list, go through and circle all the skills that are relevant to you. These skills should be your focus.

Step 2: Create achievement-oriented bullet points

Once you have your list of skills, convert these skills into bullet points that show you produce positive results. The easiest way to do this is by using the STAR method.

Check out how a project manager used the STAR method to emphasize their communication skills:

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Top Skills By Career Field To Add On A Resume

Some general skills can be a plus for nearly any job out there, particularly soft-skills.

However, the number one rule on how to write a resume applies here too, always tailor your resume with skills that align with the job. Also, keep in mind that sometimes skills that dont seem relevant actually are, you just have to learn how to describe skills on a resume.Here are a few soft and hard skill examples for popular career fields you can add to your resume .

Hard Or Soft Skills: Which Is Moreimportant In A Great Resume

Logic suggests hard skills are more important. The answerisnt so simple.

In a tough economy, applicants with hard skills are hiredquicker because employers think they can do the job with little or no training.

In a niche or competitive market, applicants withsought-after skills are prioritized. This happened before when iOS apps weregaining popularity and companies scrambled to fight over limited talent supply.Its happening again now that Facebook, Google, and other tech companies arefighting over candidates with machine learning expertise.

In industries where the supply of talent is plenty,employers prefer applicants with developed soft skills, arguing that soft skillsarent easily learned.

Dont forget, employers dont recruit on practical ability alone, they also consider cultural fit, says Sarah Dowzell of Natural HR.

of all the 50,000 skills listed on their network shows that majority of employers prefer candidates with a combination of hard and soft skills, most desirable of which is creativity.

Findings from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report also shows that “soft skills” like critical thinking, originality, collaboration, and originality are going to be demand the more we advance in technology.

Also Check: Where To Put Language On Resume

Within The Experience Section

This example shows how you can include Microsoft Office skills when discussing previous roles:

• used Microsoft Excel macros to automate processes and increase the team’s productivity by 14%

• used the mail merging functionality in Microsoft Word to improve the speed the company was able to convert a mailing campaign into a list of 14,000 people by 26%

• used Microsoft Excel VLookup to sort a database of 14,6890 records for vital information

Please note that none of the companies mentioned in this article are affiliated with Indeed.

Should You List Language Skills On Your Resume

Yes, you should list language skills on your resume in the following situations:

• Theyre relevant to the job youre applying for
• Youre applying to a position that requires interacting with customers or clients
• Youre an inexperienced job seeker

Even if language skills arent required for the job, they could help you make a sale or build rapport with new clients.

However, if youre applying for jobs that require little social interaction and dont require you to speak a foreign language , then your language skills are better left off your resume.

Read Also: How To Put Bilingual On Resume

What Are Skill Levels For Resumes

Skill levels rate your knowledge of a subject, technology, or concept. In resumes, they tell a recruiter more about your personal or professional attributes and whether you are competent and experienced. Common words for demonstrating your skill level include:

• Advanced

• Expert

Skill levels add more meaning to the qualities in your resume. Using them creates a structured order of your resume’s skill section.

Look For Target Keywords

If youre still not sure if any of these skills are right for your situation, one quick way to check which skills the employer is seeking is to check the job description.

Read through it a few times and youll likely spot three or four key skills mentioned several times throughout the document. If thats the case, you should do your best to focus on those skills in your resume, too.

Don’t Miss: Listing Technical Skills On Resume

Second Decide How You Will Organize Your Skills

If you have quite a few skills to detail, it can help create a two or three-column list to split the skills up in an organized and visually pleasing way. Additionally, as previously mentioned, it can make more sense to categorize certain skills based on their specialized field. For example, you could create a technology or language skills section.

List The Skills You Are Most Experienced In First

Consider placing the skills that you consider to have an expert level of experience with, before the skills in which you consider yourself proficient in, or a novice. This can help draw an employer’s attention to your most valued skills before they skim through the skills you are not as experienced in.

Also Check: How To Add Relevant Coursework To Resume

Tips To Match Your Skills To Job Requirements

When adding resume skills, it helps to know your audience. As you apply to jobs, consider three sources to understand how your audience might react to the resume skills: the job description, the company, and the industry.

Read the job description to understand the important keywords and tone of voice. How does the job description talk about skills? Are there any required skills? Be sure to list and talk about skills on your resume in a similar way the job description uses.

Research the company to figure out the company culture. Does the company put an emphasis on innovation and learning? Does the company seem like it would have an appreciation for creative skills or like they might put a stronger emphasis on soft skills? Know what type of skills the company values overall and be sure to include those skills on your resume.

Understand the industry to align the skills on your resume with the expectations of your industry. Demonstrate your experience and industry knowledge by talking about the skills on your resume exactly the way an industry insider would expect.

How To Find The Best Skills To List On Your Resume

Before you begin writing your resume, familiarize yourself with the hard and soft skills associated with the job you want.

The best way to identify these important job skills is to analyze job openings in your industry. Take this job ad, for instance. For your convenience, weve highlighted soft skills in green and hard skills in yellow:

In this ad, you can quickly pick out several good skills to put on your resume. This includes a range of technical skills needed for the position, as well as many soft skills that help define the best candidate for the role.

Once youve looked at several such job ads, youll have a clearer idea of what job skills hiring managers are looking for.

Read Also: How Many References Should You Have On A Resume

How To Customize A Resume Template With Ms Word

Many of the resume templates on Envato Elements and GraphicRiver come with an editable PDF or MS Word File, so you don’t need to use specialized graphic editing software to customize a resume template with your information.

Here’s a quick rundown of how to list skills on a resume using MS Word.

Note: For this example, we’ve used a professionally-designed resume template from Envato Elements.

Do You Know How To Include Spanish On Your Resume

The best way to include foreign language skills on your resume is to illustrate how you’ve used your language. Accomplish this by including details throughout the document.

For example, if you interpreted for English-speaking professionals and Spanish-speaking clients in one of your internships, that information should be included in the “Professional Experience” section of your resume. to If you took phone messages or wrote press releases or collected data in a foreign language, those details should be in the relevant entry on your resume.

But most first time resume-writers start with this question: How do I describe my language fluency so that I can list it in the “Skills” section of my resume?

Do you claim to be fluent if you’ve taken Spanish for 10 years? What are the other words you can use to describe your fluency level? How do you know which one describes your own Spanish?

First, here is a list of key terms that can be used to describe language fluency.

• Beginning is anything through 3-4 semesters.
• Intermediate is 4-7 semesters.
• Proficient is if youve been immersed .
• Fluent describes regular use in your everyday life .
• Native is really only appropriate if its your first language or one you have spoken your whole life.

Versant is a great affordable way to get an objective evaluation that you can use when you’re preparing your resume and want to be sure to include your Spanish language skills!

Also Check: Honors On A Resume

What Are Skill Levels And How Can They Benefit Your Resume

Skill level is a term that can be used to define a person’s knowledge of a particular subject. Words such as novice, intermediate, proficient or expert can be assigned to your personal and professional attributes to demonstrate the level of experience you have with a particular skill.

Related:10 Best Skills to Include on a Resume

Create A Master List Of Skills

Go through each category and create a master list of the skills in your toolbox. Dont be afraid to list things that seem obvious, like computer skills or customer service.

Although they might seem like a given in your profession, many hiring managers still want to see these skills listed.

Never include skills that you are no longer familiar with. If you write a skill on your resume, hiring managers will be expecting that you can deliver on that activity.

If you are worried that a hiring manager will over or underestimate your level of proficiency, feel free to write beginner, intermediate, or proficient next to each skill listed.

Recommended Reading: How To Add Conferences To Resume

Best Soft Skills To Put On A Resume In 2021

It doesnt matter how technical your profession is. At the end of the day, youll have to interact with people in some form or another. Thats where soft skills come into play.

Think about it, if you were a recruiter, who would you rather hire? A programmer whos also emotionally intelligent and has a way with people? Or someone equally skilled but who is anti-social?

If youd prefer the former candidate, you wouldnt be alone. In fact, 67 percent of HR managers said theyd hire a candidate with strong soft skills even if his or her technical abilities were lacking. On the contrary, only 9 percent would hire someone with strong technical credentials but weak soft skills. Even when it comes to hard-to-fill positions, the candidates soft skills still amount to about 25 percent of the hiring decision.

Having said that, here are 10 of the most marketable soft-skills in 2021:

Most companies understand that efficiency alone doesnt make an organization stand out. They need to be innovative too and create an environment where talented workers want to come and stay.