What Are Some Skills To Put On A Resume

What Are Hard Skills

Hard skills are skills obtained through training or education that are required to complete a job. These skills can be technical knowledge or abilities that are easily defined and measured. Hard skills may also be considered job-specific skills and can vary from occupation to occupation. These types of skills can be acquired and honed through certifications, schooling, training, courses and on-the-job training.

Related:Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills

Consider Whether Or Not To Use Side Columns

Dr. Dawn D. Boyer of Dboyer Consulting advises againstusing templates with text blocks, double-line spacing, side columns, and othercreative but problematic layouts.

She continues, An ATS takes the text it finds and parses it over intodata blocks for future searches. Resumes with text boxes, fancy graphics,tables, and weird columns may confuse the ATS system, which can lead it to mixup the text, or ignore it totally.

According to her, its also the reason why putting yourinformation only in the header or footer is a bad idea. ATS often cantrecognize text embedded in headers, so your contact details wont be includedon your application.

Create More Space For Your Skills

Resume space is typically limited to one page. Consider using a two column resume design to make more room for your skills section. By creating two columns, you can manipulate the format so that the left column appears narrower. You can put your name, contact information, resume objective and any optional sections on the left side. Doing this expands the width of the column on the right and offers you a larger physical space to elaborate on your skills and abilities.

Read Also: How To Make An Acting Resume With No Experience

How To Get Past The Ats: Customize Your Resume Skills For Each Job

The best skills to include on a resume are the required skills that are present in the job description.

For example, if youre applying for a job in Customer Support, the job description might include skills like IT, Stripe, Zendesk, troubleshooting, etc. These hard skills and software then become the top skills for your resume.

I know what youre thinking, and yes, that means each job you apply for requires its own unique set of resume skills. You should update your resume for every job you apply to after reviewing the job description. A one-size-fits-all resume does not work in the world of online job applications and ATS.

Want to see if youve included the most important resume skills for the job youre applying to? Scan your resume and the job description side-by-side in Jobscan.

Valuable Tips On How To Beef Up Your Top Skills For A Resume

According to statistics, every job post attracts an average of 118 applicants. Of these 118 applicants, 23% or 27 candidates will be invited for an interview. Chances are most of these applicants have indicated similar skills listed in their resume.

How can your resume skill set stand out from the rest of the competition? Here are 3 valuable tips you can use to beef up your top skills for a resume:

Also Check: How To Make Resume On Photoshop

Quick Answers: Resume Skills Faqs

How many skills should I include on my resume?

Put as many relevant skills as possible on your resume. Highlight your most applicable skills in your skills section and include the rest in your summary and work experience copy.

What soft skills should I put on my resume?

Desired soft skills vary by role, but here are 10 soft skills recruiters love to see: Adaptability. Communication. Creativity. Customer Service. Leadership. Organization. Problem Solving. Teamwork. Time Management. Work Ethic.

What hard skills should I include on my resume?

That depends on the job! You can take a close look at the job description to see which skills are required. Be sure to include as many relevant hard skills as possible on your resume. Use Jobscan to scan your resume beside any job description.

How to list resume skills when you have no experience?

Just because you might not have held a similar title in the past, doesnt always mean that youre lacking the required skills to make your application competitive.Note the relevant skills youve gained from education and certifications, mock projects, volunteer opportunities, and internships.

Add A Highlights Section

Modern resumes are built to be value-oriented, which requires providing information that is more achievement-based as opposed to task-based. If youve had multiple roles with varying achievements, select the top four you are most proud of and incorporate them into a Career Highlights section.

Try to avoid adding more than four as this section is meant to be the highlights of your achievements, and you dont want to create sections with long lists of bullets, creating a very boring way to read content.

Recommended Reading: When Will Corvette Plant Tours Resume

Ability To Gather And Process Information Efficiently

Being a new employee, you will be expected to learn the job in a timely manner and understand the requirements of your new position within the company. In most cases you will be pared with someone who will teach you what you need to know, but if you cannot learn and adapt quickly, you become a liability. You must show that you have the initiative to perform tasks and do your job effectively.

How To Include Computer Technology And Programming Languages In Your Resume

Here are some keywords and transferable skills you can include to score brownie points with employers:

1. Languages Known.

• Mention any programming languages that you know , along with your proficiency.

2. Projects Completed.

• Mention previous projects youve completed with your earlier employers.
• Highlight the languages you used.

3. Helped Write Code.

• Mention instances when you helped write and execute difficult pieces of code.
• Explain how it helped your employer with unique computer skills.

4. Performed Feasibility Studies.

• Mention instances when you used your proficiency to study the feasibility of a project.

5. Implementation Decision.

• Highlight cases where you determined whether the implementation of a program was feasible or not.
• Explain how your technical skills helped your organization with metrics to back it up.

Also Check: What Happens If You Lie On Your Resume

List Of The Best Skills To Put On A Resume

The standard format of a resume normally includes the following headings: Personal Information, Work Experience, Educational Attainment and Hobbies and Interests. If you dont have a section dedicated to skills for a resume, you will have difficulty selling your value proposition to the Hiring Manager. A Skills section would definitely push your resume further than Hobbies and Interests.

Your skills are a summary of what you can do for the potential employer if you were offered the job right now. For most job seekers, this section presents a challenge because they are not sure what to put on a resume in the skills and abilities sections.

Before we discuss what should be included in your list of skills for your resume, let us differentiate two very important types of skills that employers always look for: hard skills and soft skills.

Social Work Skills To Highlight On Your Resume

Social workers provide support for vulnerable populations by offering counseling, guidance and advocacy. To get a job in this field, your resume needs show your unique skills and talents pertaining to empathy, ethics and client care. If you are writing a social work resume, you need to know what skills to include and how to best showcase them. In this article, we explain why the skills section is so important on a social work resume, describe 23 important skills to include and give steps and examples for creating a resume that highlights your skills.

Read Also: How To Put Ged On Resume

Focus On Your Potential Employer

The person reviewing your resume could be your next employer. Research the organization or practice you are applying toâyou’re likely to find information on the exact skills and attributes of an ideal candidate. Tailor your skills section to reflect the qualities you possess that match the interests of the specific job or employer you are sending your resume to.

Create A Dedicated Resume Skills Section

Your job description is full of job-related skills and keywords. But you can still give your best skills more prominence.

If you extract the essence from the job description above, youll end up with the following list of skills:

These are the best skills to put on this particular resume.

Why?

Because theyre relevant to the position youre applying for. They are your best skills. And theyre exactly what employers look for.

Now

Revisit the job posting to make sure you didnt miss any important skills the employer expects.

Double-check if youre using the right skills and experience keywords.

After all, collaboration and teamwork are synonyms. But if the job posting calls this skill teamwork, stick to it.

Remember: the ATS is smart. But not too smart.

If the list of skills on your resume seems longish , you can split it into two categories: soft skills list and hard skills list.

Youll find more information on different types of skills for a resume in the last section.

Expert Hint: Employers start to pay more attention to candidates soft skills than hard skills. Mainly because soft skills cannot be easily taught. Its part of the so-called hiring for attitude approach.

Also Check: Resume Technical Skills Section

What Are Professional Skills

Professionals skills are abilities that can help you succeed in your job. A professional skill describes a habit, personality trait or ability that positively affects your performance in the workplace. Having professional skills can benefit people in nearly all job positions, industries and work environments.

+ Essential Skills To Put On A Resume

Listing skills on your resume is fairly easy.

Listing the right skills in the right way is a little bit trickier.

Are you mentioning the right skills for the job, or are you boring the HR manager with irrelevant information?

Heres a hint: the hiring manager for the Software Development team couldnt care less about your expertise in Marketing.

What theyre dying to know, though, is your skill level in Python.

In this guide, were going to walk you through the process of putting skills on your resume. Well explain how to identify the right skills, and how, exactly, to list them.

Among others, you will learn:

• How and why should you list your skills on a resume?
• What are hard skills, soft skills, and what is the difference?
• How can you list skills on your resume to help you stand out?
• What are the top 120+ skills to put on a resume? For 10+ fields!

Don’t Miss: Objective Portion Of Resume

Where Do You See Yourself In 5 Years Nursing Question

When answering the Where do you see yourself in 5 years? question, make sure your answer outlines your commitment to staying with the company long-term. Try not to overthink your answer, avoid specificity, and dont say anything that makes the hiring manager doubt that youre a solid investment for the future.

Remove Unnecessary Jargon From Your Resume

“The hard skills you write should be recognizable to thecompany or audience who will review your resume”, says Kristen McAlister of Cerius Executives.

For example, a specific program you used at your old jobmight be unheard of to your new boss, so you should replace it with a genericname to describe what the application does instead.

Customer service and phonesales agents, for example, use software specific to the company they work for.Instead of naming the sales software, its better to write lead managementapplication or customer database application in your resume business skills.

Recommended Reading: Should You List High School On Resume

What Hard Skills Should You Put On Your Resume

The ultimate source of truth when youre applying for a position is always the job description. This is because which hard skills you should list on your resume always depends on the specific job. For example, all software engineering jobs likely expect that you know how to code, but a specific job might require that you can use Python and that you be familiar with the Waterfall methodology. You should tailor your resume for each job application and emphasize the relevant experiences and abilities for that position.

Generally speaking, when analyzing a job description, you will have a sense of what technical skills or domain knowledge is required or preferred in the role, says Muse career coach Emily Liou, founder of Cultivitae, which helps professionals discover and land their dream jobs. As you read through the job posting, you should highlight any technologies, tasks, or methodologies you come across. They often appear as required or preferred skills, qualifications, or experience, but you should also note any hard skills youd need to perform the job duties or responsibilities listed.

If you want additional ideas, you can also talk with or research the Linkedin profiles of people who have done the job you want and see which hard skills they mention, Smith says. This is especially valuable if you can find people who have held the position you want at the company you want to work for.

Types Of Skills To Put On A Resume

There are three important skill types that you should include on your resume:

• Transferrable skills. Transferrable skills are what you have learned at one job or in a specific life experience that can be adapted for the job you are seeking.

• Job-related skills. Job-related skills refer to any qualifications or skills that are needed or or relevant to a specific job.

• Adaptive skills. Adaptive skills are not necessarily be substantiated through experience but rely on an individuals personality traits.

Job-related and transferrable skills are the most sought-after skills to include on your resume and you should include the ones that will help you stand out to a prospective employer.

Recommended Reading: How Far Back Resume

Which Skills Are More Important

The debate rages on about which of these two types of skills are more important.

According to executive consultant and Forbes contributor Naz Beheshti, There is an ongoing debate about the relative importance of soft and hard skills that imply a competition between the two. However, they are both necessary and complementary to one another.

On one hand, in a tough job market, job seekers with a proficiency in a specific hard skill may get hired more quickly as companies look to hire people that can deliver value with fewer resources .

However, we are also seeing that many hiring managers are choosing to hire candidates with highly developed soft skills.

Why?

Because they feel that they can always train the candidate in the hard skill that is required to complete the job, but soft skills are often skills that cannot necessarily be taught.

So what does this mean for you?

Use Color To Show Levels Of Proficiency On Resume

A new window will prompt you to change certain elements of the selected AutoShape. Just click Color, then pick the color similar to the already shaded circles on the template.

The selection we made in this example indicates that you’re more proficient in HTML5 compared to the other technical skills listed in your resume. You can see the results below:

Read this tutorial for more information on create a resume using MS Word:

• Andrew Childress

Also Check: Cna Experience Resume

My Employability Skills Exercise

Employers want you to have all of the seven employability skills, but you’ll find that you are better at some of the skills than others. The skills you are good at can give you career ideas.

Try this exercise

2. Review this worksheet. Which skills have more examples? Which skills are your strongest?

3. Use our Skill Matcher tool. Put your strongest skills into this.

4. Our Skill Matcher tool will suggest career ideas based on your strongest skills.

Top Skills To Add To Your Resume

There are currently 7.8 billion people on Earth and the number this about to touch 8 billion in 2023, and 10 billion by 2056.

Unfortunately, the number of jobs isnt increasing fast enough to keep up with the growing population.

Furthermore, statistics suggest that 174 million people are likely to be unemployed globally by the end of 2020.

Theres a lot of competition for job seekers and the right opportunities during a job search can be hard to come by.

Most employers get thousands of job applications, and it isnt possible to pore over every single one of them for lack of time. So, modern-day companies use a system called the Applicant Tracking System.

Employers initially select the resumes that show positive hits for specific keywords, no matter how irrelevant they may later turn out to be.

And due to this, many relevant candidates end up getting rejected outright due to the lack of required keywords in their resume.

Thats why creating the right resume isnt a simple task anymore.

This guide will cover the best skills to add to your resume to get more job opportunities this year. This skills list covers what to add to your resume skills section so that you can go from seeing a job posting to getting hired.

Let’s get started.

Recommended Reading: What Happens If You Lie On Your Resume

Where To Include A Skills Section On Your Resume

Weve mentioned a few times that its a good idea to have a skills section on your resume. These days, having a well laid-out, dynamic resume is important. A simple Word document printed in black and white Times New Roman may still be the standard for some industries, but in many fields, visually standing out is important.

One way to do that is to have clearly labeled sections on your resume, sometimes graphically laid out in modular boxes that are fun and eye-catching. Whatever layout you choose, prominently identifying your skills is usually a good idea. In that section, simply list your skills. Some professionals also recommend giving clear examples of your skills in action.

For instance:

• Web design: Build company website from the ground up using HTML and CSS coding.
• Clear communicator: Worked collaboratively with a team of designers to improve software UI
• Leadership: Stepped up and took the lead on a project when the manager had to step out.

Using evidence to support your skills gives potential employers an idea of what they can expect from you a critical leg up as they assess their many options. Its also just part of having a strong, well-rounded resume.

When it comes to placing the section for skills for your resume, there is some debate over where the best location might be. There are some options to choose from: