How To List Skills in Your Resume Skills Section With Examples, Tips, and Guide
- Why Listing Skills on Your Resume Is Important
- Types of Skills To Include on Your Resume
- How To Organize the Skills Section on Your Resume
- Examples of How To Write Skills on Your Resume
- Tips for Listing Skills on Your Resume
- Additional Resources
- Frequently Asked Questions About How To List Skills on a Resume
The skills section of your resume provides valuable information to hiring managers and helps them identify if you’re a good fit for the position. Get tips on how to make the skills section on your resume stand out and see formatting examples in this guide.
Why Listing Skills on Your Resume Is Important
Highlights your qualifications
Listing your best skills in a skimmable format makes it easy for a hiring manager to verify that you have the qualifications and expertise they’re looking for. While bullet points under specific positions can provide more detail about your experience, a skills list lets you demonstrate software proficiencies or a specific soft skill more concisely.
Improves applicant tracking system compatibility
Many hiring managers and recruiters use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to vet the initial round of resumes. Those the software deems as good fits are passed on for human review. ATS scans work based on keywords. A dedicated skills section lets you work in these specific terms to improve your chances of getting an interview.
Provides a quick overview of your capabilities
Resumes aren’t meant to show your entire professional history or provide a complete narrative of who you are as a candidate. Instead, they provide enough information for a hiring manager to see if you have the required background so they can find out more in an interview. Including a bulleted skills list provides these details at a glance.
Types of Skills To Include on Your Resume
Hard skills
Hard skills for a resume is also called technical skills, hard skills show where your proficiency can be quantified in some way. These are generally skills that you have taken classes for or have completed a certificate in. Listing hard skills is especially important for technical roles, where candidates need to immediately work with these programs. Some examples of hard skills for a resume include:
- Adobe Photoshop
- Customer relationship management (CRMs), such as HubSpot or Salesforce
- Data analytics tools, such as Tableau or Apache Spark
- Microsoft Office
- Programming languages, such as Python and C++
- Search engine optimization
Soft skills
Soft skills for a resume are professional skills you use daily to work as part of a team and effectively communicate with colleagues. Relevant across all industries, professional skills on your resume are often found in the job description. Potential soft skills for a resume include:
- Communication
- Critical thinking
- Negotiation
- Public speaking
- Solution-finding
- Teamwork
Industry-specific skills
A list of professional skills for a resume should include those that are relevant to the industry. For example, a job in the health care field may require experience in electronic health records or medical coding. Candidates applying for a position in the finance sector may need skills such as risk assessment or investment management. Identify these skills by looking through the qualifications section of the posting, and include as many keywords as are relevant.
Transferable skills
Transferable skills for a resume are similar to professional skills as they apply to a variety of industries. Including these skills on your resume shows a hiring manager how you identify issues and solutions and how you prioritize things like efficiency and customer service.
What you should include on your resume depends on the role, but things like organization skills, customer service skills, and project management are common.
How To Organize the Skills Section on Your Resume
Create a dedicated skills section
While you can work keywords related to skills into your job duties bullets, it’s best to have a specific skills list somewhere in your resume. If you’re an experienced professional with a lot to cover, consider splitting the list into technical and professional skills. Use short bullet points — no more than two or three words — to keep the information easy to skim.
Integrate key skills throughout your resume
If you can’t fit everything you want to include in a skills list, add extra keywords to your profile summary and work experience sections. For example, if a job description lists QuickBooks as a required hard skill, add “over five years of experience with QuickBooks” to the end of your profile.
Prioritize skills based on relevance
Remember that anything included should be relevant to the specific position, so you don’t need to include every skill you have on your resume. Keep a master list of your soft and hard skills so you can customize the list for each application.
Examples of How To Write Skills on Your Resume
See these resume examples that highlight skills:
Hannah Roberts
(123) 456-7890
[email protected]
LinkedIn | Portfolio
City, State Abbreviation ZIP code
Profile
Dedicated technical support professional with nine years of experience. Seeking to leverage skills in customer relations to attain a product sales position. Recognized for ability to find creative solutions and communicate complex instructions in a user-friendly manner. Adept with CRM software.
Skills
Customer service
- Achieved a 97% customer satisfaction survey rating and helped retain loyal customers with timely solutions
- Educated new users with product demonstrations and translated complex technology concepts into accessible language
- Implemented conflict resolution techniques and exhibited empathy to diffuse customer frustrations in a timely manner
Verbal and written communications
- Coordinated with IT team to develop online knowledge base and FAQs for recurring issues that resulted in a 25% faster issue resolution time
- Hosted live webinar training to end-users for new product launches
- Provided status updates to customers waiting on escalated issues
Technical knowledge
- Diagnosed and troubleshot hardware and software issues
- Logged customer support interactions and ran weekly team reports
- Performed root-cause analysis to discover unknown technical issues
Professional Experience
Technical Support Manager, Summit Technology, Reno, NV
October 2022 – present
Technical Support Specialist, Northern Lights Software, Reno, NV
January 2020 – April 2022
Technical Support Representative, Apex Networking Solutions, Austin, TX
March 2014 – November 2018
Education
Bachelor of Science (B.S.) Computer Science, September 2010 – January 2014
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
Certifications
- CompTIA A+ certification, 2016
Tips for Listing Skills on Your Resume
Ensure your skills list positions you as a top candidate with these tips:
- Conduct a self-assessment. Sit down with a copy of your resume, go through each job you’ve worked, and make a list of the skills you used. This gives you a master list you can choose from depending on the job.
- Use keywords effectively. Your resume’s key skills should reflect the keywords from the job descriptions. Go through the posting, looking for specific phrases and keywords. Use as many as possible in your resume, paying attention to phrasing. If an employer lists “direct communication” in the posting, use this exactly instead of just “communication.”
- Keep it relevant and focused. Your resume’s skills section should be tailored to each position. Before submitting, skim through and remove anything that’s not directly related to the job.
- Look at resume skills examples. Seeing examples of how others have formatted their skills sections can help you get ideas and identify which option will work best for you. Look at examples of where to place the skills section and how to format the individual skills, such as using bullets or separating them with pipes.
- Proofread carefully. Review your resume, specifically the skills list, to ensure that software names are spelled correctly and that formatting is consistent.
- Update your skills regularly. Your resume is a constantly changing document. Remember to update your skills list every time you complete a certificate, learn a new program, or tackle a new challenge.
Additional Resources
- ATS-Friendly Resume Examples and Templates for 2024
- Entry-Level Resume Examples and Templates for 2024
- Functional Resume Templates and Examples for 2024
- Top 10 Free Skill Assessment Tools
Frequently Asked Questions About How To List Skills on a Resume
The most important skills for an entry-level resume are professional and transferable skills, such as communicating clearly and working as part of a team. At this level, the employer is expecting to train you for the role, so the emphasis isn’t as great on technical skills.
The most common skills listed in a job application will vary by industry, but employers often list collaborative skills, communication skills, being self-motivated, and adapting to changing processes as must-haves.
It’s best to limit your skills to four to six. If you’re separating them out into hard and soft skills, you can have four to six per list. This gives you enough room to include the most important skills without overwhelming the hiring manager or cluttering your resume.
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