Leadership Skills for Resume With Examples, Tips, and Guide
Some people have an innate ability to lead, but everyone can learn to motivate others and build solid teams. And once you’ve developed these capabilities, showcasing them on your resume can help you get an interview and potentially your next job. In this guide, we cover top leadership skills for professionals and provide resume tips for including leadership skills in your application.
Why Leadership Skills Matter on a Resume
The role of leadership skills in career success
Developing leadership skills can help you grow professionally and advance in your career. Promotions in many industries involve taking on a managerial role, and to achieve that upward mobility, you need to show hiring managers you have the key skills and competencies needed to lead and motivate your team.
Demonstrating your value to employers
Strong leaders are invaluable across all industries, and it’s not something everyone does well. Highlighting leadership skills on your resume can make you a more attractive candidate to recruiters and hiring managers because it shows you can positively impact the organization.
Leadership skills and applicant tracking systems
Hiring managers and recruiters use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to help them filter resumes and ensure they’re only spending time on the top candidates. For management positions, the ATS scan almost always involves looking for leadership-related keywords and phrases. Including these on your resume increases the chances the ATS will flag your resume as a good match.
Best Leadership Skills for Your Resume
Communication skills
People can’t do what you want them to if they don’t know what that is. Communicating clearly and effectively is key to managing people. Demonstrate your proficiency by including an example of how you used your communication skills to effect a positive outcome in a previous role.
Team building and collaboration
Strong leaders foster a collaborative environment and a strong sense of teamwork. Focus on how you contributed to the company culture or ensured the success of group projects to illustrate your skills in this area.
Decision-making
Making data-driven decisions quickly is one of the essential leadership skills for managers. Show hiring managers that you can make strategic decisions and solve problems using phrases such as “evaluated complex data” or “developed and implemented strategic plans.”
Emotional intelligence
Leaders need strong emotional intelligence to succeed in the workplace, including empathy and self-awareness. Being aware of your strengths and weaknesses and identifying these in your team members ensures you can lead more effectively.
Strategic thinking and vision
Having a big-picture perspective is a key trait of successful leaders. They must use strategic thinking to guide their teams and support the company’s goals. Show hiring managers you’re capable of strategic planning by demonstrating how your skills contributed to the company’s overall growth.
Delegation and empowerment
Leading isn’t about doing everything yourself. It’s important to empower your team and ensure every person has the opportunity to grow and take on more responsibility. Illustrate this ability by using words like “delegated,” “assigned,” or “entrusted.”
Conflict resolution
One of the most important leadership traits for a resume is the ability to navigate conflicts successfully. Any time you have a group of people, you will have disagreements, differences of opinion, and personality conflicts. How you deal with these issues is the difference between a strong leader and one who fosters frustration and distrust.
How To Show Leadership on a Resume
Integrate leadership skills into the resume summary or objective
The summary section is an easy place for writing leadership skills on your resume. Use strong leadership-focused keywords like “mentored,” “motivated,” and “facilitated.” If possible, include an accomplishment that displays your skills, such as “led the team through a reorganization, achieving a 20% increase in productivity.”
Highlight leadership experience in the resume work history section
Utilize bullet points in this section to exemplify your leadership achievements. Focus on specific quantifiable accomplishments and show your skills’ impact.
Create a dedicated skills section
When demonstrating leadership on a resume, a skills list can help you work in keywords that may not fit elsewhere. You can also list leadership skills, such as “communication,” “delegation,” and “conflict resolution,” separately for emphasis and better ATS optimization.
Examples of Leadership Skills on a Resume for Different Roles
Leadership skills for entry-level positions
- Lead a team of educators in developing a math curriculum that resulted in a 25% improvement in state standardized test scores for ninth-grade students
- Establish trust-based relationships with students and families to communicate students’ progress and challenges effectively
Leadership skills for mid-level professionals
- Developed lead-generation strategies through email campaigns and local contractor partnerships across five Home Depot stores, averaging a 20% increase in qualified leads
- Partnered with account executives to identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities, resulting in a 15% increase in average deal size per quarter
Leadership skills for senior-level and executive roles
- Direct a team of five data engineers and act as a mentor to junior members
- Collaborate with business intelligence (BI) engineers to adopt best practices in reporting, analysis, data integrity, test design, and documentation
Leadership skills for health care
- Led, trained, and developed a team of over 50 health care professionals, increasing productivity by 30% in the past three years
- Helped oversee operations of a 40-member outpatient care department, contributing to a 15% efficiency gain
Leadership skills for finance
- Executed strategic financial planning responsibilities; designed and implemented financial models that predicted future market trends, aiding business strategies
- Led teams and applied innovative communication strategies for external stakeholders to build robust relationships
Frequently Asked Questions About Including Key Leadership Skills for Job Applications
Key leadership skills for job applicants without previous management experience include adaptability, resilience, strong interpersonal skills, and goal-setting ability. Hiring managers are looking for candidates who can think critically about situations and who know how to motivate others. Provide examples from previous roles, such as leading a group project or organizing a charity fundraiser.
Skills assessments and behavioral tests can help you identify your leadership skills. Ask a manager or colleague you trust to provide feedback on your strengths and weaknesses in this area.
The STAR method — which stands for situation, task, action, and result — can help you show examples of your leadership skills in an interview. Start by providing context for your example, and explain the task or challenge. Then, detail your action to resolve the issue and the result.
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