All you need to know about skills for your resume

If you want to get ahead, you need the right skills. Before inviting you to an interview, recruiters and hiring managers will check out your resume to determine whether your skills are what they’re looking for. If you’re not sure about what skills to include, or where to put them, or which words to use, we’re here to help. In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about skills for a resume. 

Is it necessary to include a key skills section on a resume?

While everyone has their own opinion, the experts at TopResume strongly recommend including a skills section on your resume. It’s usually placed immediately under the profile section, just above your professional experience. A dedicated skills section has these advantages: 

• It provides a quick, at-a-glance summary of what you can offer

• It enables you to emphasise those searchable keywords that help recruiters to find your resume easily

• It shows early on that you have the skills the employer is looking for

• It gives the reviewer a reason to read your resume in more depth if they can see your skills are aligned with their needs

Hard skills vs soft skills

When you’re considering which are good skills for your resume, you need to consider both soft and hard skills. Before we go any further, let’s clarify what we mean by those terms. 

Soft skills

Soft skills are transferable between jobs and industries - that’s why they’re also known as transferable skills. For example, problem solving skills can be useful whether you work in technology, logistics, operations, HR, or many other sectors. Generally soft skills are developed over time and come instinctively.

Hard skills

Hard skills, on the other hand, don’t transfer well between jobs and industries. If you’re skilled in car mechanics, for example, you’re unlikely to be able to use that skill if you decide to change your career and become a musician, a hairdresser, or a data analyst. Hard skills can be taught - they’re not skills we’re born with. 

To consolidate the difference, check out this list of common hard and soft skills: 

Of course, this is just a small sample of the thousands of skills you could add to your resume. The final selection will depend on your previous experience and your planned next steps. 

How to decide which skills to include on your resume

With so many skills to choose from, how do you know which ones to include and which to omit? These steps will help you to narrow it down: 

• Review the job advert: Most job adverts will include a Person Specification that outlines exactly what skills and experience are required to succeed in the role. This is a great place to start - in fact, it’s like being given the answers to an exam! If there’s a skill mentioned here, it’s a fair bet that it should be on your resume somewhere too. 

• Consider what makes you unique: If you have any skills that would set you apart from other applicants, you should definitely include them - as long as they’re relevant. For example, someone applying for a customer-facing job in a hotel could differentiate themselves by including their skill in a foreign language. That same skill could be omitted when applying for a role as a laboratory technician. 

• Check out the competition: Look at the LinkedIn profiles of people currently doing the sort of role you’re interested in. Which skills are they emphasising and which make their profile look impressive? Take your inspiration from here and include whichever skills are relevant to you personally. 

• Do extra research: Visiting the About and Values pages of the company website, reviewing posts on their LinkedIn page, and reading news articles about the business, will enable you to form a good idea of exactly what the organisation prizes among its employees. You can use this information to convey the skills that will make you a great culture fit. 

• Tap into your network: If you know any current or former employees, why not pick their brain about the skills required for the role and any challenges that your unique skill-set may be able to help the business overcome?

• Think about awards and recognition: If your current or previous employers have ever given you awards or recognised your contributions in other ways, that’s probably because you have a skill they valued - make sure others know about it! Even if you haven’t been recognised (yet!), asking friends and colleagues to help identify your skills might uncover some gems you’d never considered. 

Top 6 skills for your resume

Some skills are always in high demand, so we’ve created a list of key skills for a resume to get you started. Don’t forget, though, that a strong resume will need a mix of hard and soft skills. We’ve only included the most common soft skills here - there are just far too many hard skills to list in one article!

1. Teamwork

Every team has someone who is a true delight to work with… and someone who simply doesn’t pull their weight. Guess which one the hiring manager wants to recruit? These skills will show how you can fit into the team: 

Collaboration: The ability to work well with others by sharing information and ideas just can’t be underestimated. 

Active listening: Listening to understand, rather than listening to respond, means that you’ll have a solid grasp of the task, the potential obstacles, and the desired outcome - as well as your team-mates’ perspectives. 

Conflict resolution: Even in the happiest teams, conflict will occasionally arise. Being able to diffuse and de-escalate the situation, rather than adding oil to the flames, is a desirable skill in an office where diverse personalities are thrown together for hours on end. 

Respect: Treating others as you’d like to be treated isn’t just a nice thing to do - it’s a professional necessity. Many companies place diversity, equality, and inclusion high on their agenda and are looking for employees who do the same. 

Empathy: A bit of understanding goes a long way. Colleagues with empathy are nicer to work with and help to build a positive team environment with high morale and high productivity. 

2. Leadership

If you’re aiming for a leadership position, recruiters will expect to see evidence of leadership skills on your resume - even if you’ve not been in an official leadership position before. Try highlighting these skills: 

Coaching and mentoring: Whether to support colleagues towards promotion, onboard a new hire, or share your expertise elsewhere in the business, a willingness to support the development of others is a great leadership skill to add.

Decision-making: A good leader can evaluate the information available to make sound decisions under pressure, justify their rationale, and bring others along with them. 

Delegation: There’s a difference between being the boss and being bossy. Delegation is a skill that leaders and managers need to master. 

Vision: Rather than plodding along doing the same thing every day, leaders need to see the bigger picture, imagine the future, and take steps to achieve that vision.

Accountability: The buck stops here! Leaders need to be willing to take accountability for their decisions and actions, and those of their team. 

3. Communication 

Everyone can communicate at some level, so rather than simply adding “communication skills” to your resume, explain how your superior communication will be an asset to the business. Try these: 

Written communication: Being able to write with excellent grammar, spelling, and punctuation, in a suitable format, is less common than you might think. Reports, emails, and memos are a daily necessity you can help with!

Verbal communication: Speaking articulately and, um, professionally, without, like, loads of fillers, is a dying artform. If you’re a confident speaker, it’s worth mentioning.

Public speaking: If you can stand in front of an audience to present facts, figures, updates, or pitches, you have an advantage over applicants who are less willing to put themselves forward. 

Negotiation: Whether you’re interacting with suppliers, customers, colleagues, or managers, the ability to win them round to a compromise is a valued skill. 

Adapting to the audience: No-one talks to their friends and family in the same way they talk to the CEO. There are fine nuances in between those extremes, but if you can adapt your communication to ensure you’re understood by the audience, you have a useful professional skill. 

4. Time management

Are you running out of the door to catch the bus, working late, and missing deadlines? If not, your time management attributes could be just what the company is looking for. Think about these skills for a resume:

Organisation: Organised employees are more productive, with lower stress levels, and are easier to collaborate with. Who wouldn’t want to work with such a colleague?

Prioritisation: When the going gets tough, businesses need employees who can take a clear view of the work and prioritise so that everything gets done on time.

Meeting deadlines: Deadlines exist for a reason. Missing them often causes stress for colleagues and incurs costs for the business. Showing that you can deliver on time will raise green flags for hiring managers. 

Planning: Things don’t just happen by accident! If you’re the one that can chart a realistic route through to the goal, you could be a valuable hire. 

Flexibility: The best laid plans sometimes go awry - and that’s when it pays to be flexible. Being able to adapt to changes is a necessary skill these days. 

5. Problem solving

Unfortunately, problems are a fact of life - it’s how you deal with them that counts. These skills will show off your ability to provide solutions: 

Troubleshooting: When things go wrong, businesses need someone who can step in to put them right with minimal fuss. 

Analysis: If you can consider all perspectives and facts, you could be invaluable in supporting decision-making, identifying trends, and making recommendations. 

Information gathering and research: Are you the type to pull all the facts together before jumping into action? Your knowledge could inform key decisions. 

Risk management: Solving a problem is no good if it’s going to create a hundred others. Being able to identify, mitigate, and manage risk is as important as developing solutions. 

Resilience: Some people will give up at the first hurdle - but those people aren’t you. If you have the tenacity to stick with a problem to the bitter end, you have a superpower worthy of your resume. 

6. Creativity

Businesses increasingly value creativity and a unique perspective. Show how you can contribute with these resume skills: 

Storytelling: Conveying information through storytelling, whether on social media or for a public relations campaign, brings creativity and business together.  

Curiosity: Always asking questions and seeking to understand new ideas? Out-of-the-box thinking is a prized skill. 

Originality: Nothing moves forward unless someone brings a new way of looking at things - and businesses don’t like to stand still. Your unique perspective could open doors for you. 

Open-mindedness: A willingness to consider other views and try new things means you’ll be willing to engage as the business changes. 

Innovation: Companies love innovators who can move the business into new, unchartered territory before their competitors are even out of bed. 

How to add skills to your resume

Now you’ve decided which skills to add to your resume, you need to decide where to add them. In fact, hard and soft skills can be woven throughout your resume in almost every section! 

Choosing the right format to show off your skills

First up, you need to decide on the best resume format to showcase those skills. You have three choices: 

• Chronological resume: This is by far the most popular choice. Professional experience and education are presented in reverse-chronological format, so that the most recent events are at the top of the resume. Skills are included in a profile section, a short skills section, and the professional experience. This format is great for those with a solid work history. 

• Functional resume: This format places more focus on skills, for those who may have a patchy career history or who are looking to change careers. More emphasis is given to skills than professional experience. Skills are included in the profile and a long skills section. 

• Hybrid resume: A compromise between the chronological and functional formats, this resume has both a long skills section and a full professional experience section. It provides a detailed overview of the applicant, but with the drawback of being much longer. 

Adding skills to your profile 

At the top of the resume, just under your contact details, is a short, punchy introduction known as the profile. This paragraph summarises what you do and your areas of expertise, and explains how you can contribute to a company. Focus on your expertise (your main hard skills) and the main non-negotiable skill in the person specification. 

Building your skills section

This is the most obvious place to add skills for a resume. It’s recommended that you limit yourself to a maximum of 12 skills. Remember to update this section in line with the requirements of every job advert that you respond to. 

Showcasing your skills through your professional experience 

By this stage, the reader has a good idea of the skills you’re offering - but with no context. The professional experience section is the time to add that all-important context, to show that you’re not just keyword-stuffing your resume. 

To provide context, aim to give a solid example of a time that you’ve used each skill, with a positive outcome. This enables the hiring manager to see that you’ve developed the skills needed to achieve results. 

Including skills in the education section of your resume

For anyone with relevant professional experience, there’s no need to include skills in the qualifications section - your degree or professional certificates will speak for themselves. 

If you’ve recently left education, however, you may find that your professional experience section isn’t relevant to your career aspirations - or you may have no experience at all! In that case you can create a longer education section that includes skills, to cover the shortfall. 

Other sections to show off key skills on a resume

While the sections above are the main areas for highlighting skills on a resume, there are some optional sections you could add to cover any additional, relevant skills you wish to include. Consider: 

• Languages: Add a list of foreign languages you can speak and your level of fluency. 

• Interests: Only add this section if it enables you to showcase job-relevant skills that you haven’t been able to cover elsewhere. You may like to add a unique skill such as riding a unicycle to make your resume more memorable, although we recommend keeping it job-focused. 

• Technical skills: Include software, platforms, and tools you’re confident using in a professional context. 

Common skills mistakes on resumes

Your resume should be looking pretty strong by now, but before we go any further let’s make sure you’re not making any of the most common mistakes regarding skills for a resume. 

1. An excessively long skills section: Don’t make it hard for your reader to pick out the salient information. Keep your skills keyword focused. That means that, rather than using long, rambling sentences, you keep each skill to one or two words. 

2. Including everything: Keep your skills focused on what will truly be necessary in your next role. Sure, you may have spent hours in 1995 cultivating a unique talent in origami but, unless that’s what you’ll be doing all day in your next job, you can hit the delete key on that. If you’re finding it hard to let go, create a master resume with every skill you possess and edit it ruthlessly every time you apply for a role. 

3. Not tailoring your skills to the role: The top skill for one job might be entirely useless in the next. Make sure your resume aligns perfectly with the company’s requirements, without unnecessary detail, by removing all skills not directly pertinent to the role in question. 

4. Exaggerating - or downright lying: Never a good idea on any part of your resume, deliberately misrepresenting your skills could mean - in a best case - that you struggle in an interview. In the worst case, you could lose the job you’ve just landed when your deception is discovered and you can’t perform in the role. 

5. Not providing evidence of your skills: It’s one thing to say you can do something, but hiring managers will be looking for proof. Usually, adding numbers to quantify the outcome of your action is the best way to do this. If you’re struggling to quantify your contributions, think about other concrete ways in which the business has benefitted from your skills. 

6. Focusing too much on soft skills: While soft skills are very much in demand, the recruiter wants to know that you have the hard skills to do the job in hand. Chances are, the company wants someone who can hit the ground running, not someone who needs extensive training. You’ll certainly need to show evidence of soft skills on your resume, but hard skills will win the day.

7. Being too generic: Don’t try to cover too many bases with one skill. For example, “IT skills” could mean anything from typing a basic Word document to coding a new application from scratch or managing cyber security for a global business. Over-generalising dumbs down your resume, making it harder for the reader to understand your value. 

Build skills into every area of your job search 

With a strong resume that highlights your skills, you’re making good progress towards your goal. The resume is only part of your job search strategy though! Don’t forget to promote your skills at every step of your job search journey: 

Cover letter

This is the ideal place to focus on the skills specifically requested in the job advert and person specification. Don’t just repeat your resume - give different examples or a new angle. Your aim here should be to show, not tell. That means giving great examples of times you’ve used the skill to the benefit of the business, rather than just telling the reader that you have a particular skill. 

For example, consider the different impacts of: 

• I deliver first class customer service

• My commitment to customer service excellence is reflected in a feedback score consistently above 90% and an award for successfully de-escalating a supply problem experienced by a key client

Ensure your cover letter balances both hard and soft skills, enabling the reader to evaluate not just how you’d fit into the job, but also how you’d fit into the team and the wider organisation. 

LinkedIn profile

Your LinkedIn profile is like your online shop window. It gives recruiters an insight into who you are and what you do. To make the most of this digital resume, ensure you fill in every section as thoroughly as possible. 

Skills can be woven into the About and Experience sections, just as they can on your resume. LinkedIn also has some bonus features that a resume doesn’t. For example, you can add up to 100 skills - far more than appropriate for a traditional resume - and you can also get those skills endorsed by your connections, adding weight to their credibility. 

Interviews

Interviewers will certainly be asking about your skills, so it will pay to review the job advert before the interview. Preparing answers to common interview questions, tailored around the skills they’re seeking, will pay dividends. Using the STAR framework will help you to keep your answers on track with relevant examples. 

How to develop your skills

If you’re aiming for a step up in your career, it’s possible that you have limited - or zero - experience in some of the necessary hard skills and higher-level soft skills. All is not lost! Skills can be developed at any stage and in a variety of ways. Try some of these suggestions to fill a skills gap: 

• Take a course: Whether in person or online, in your free time or during working hours, accredited or informal, there are literally thousands of courses to choose from these days. Try LinkedIn Learning, Udemy or Coursera for an extensive range of online learning opportunities, or speak to your line manager about internal training available to you. 

• Try work shadowing: Your employer may allow you to shadow someone already in your target role, giving you exposure to new skills and insight into what you need to work on before you step up. 

• Volunteer for projects: Taking on projects outside the normal scope of your role will enable you to develop in-demand skills whilst gaining a new perspective on other areas of the business and also building your professional network. 

• Leverage extra-curriculars: Hobbies, interests, and community volunteering can provide access to new skills if you push yourself. For example, playing football locally could offer exposure to team leadership, coaching, planning, and more. 

To make the most of these skill development opportunities: 

• Set smart goals

• Find opportunities to apply your learning 

• Ask for constructive feedback

• Persist through set-backs and mistakes 

• Reflect on your learnings and next steps

Asking for help is a skill too! 

Writing a resume with the right skills, in the right place, with the right words, can be tricky. We’ve covered a lot here, but if you’re still unsure and need some expert input, our resume experts are here to help. 

If we were to write a resume for our experts, we’d include skills like: 

• Resume writing

• Resume reviews

• Resume formatting

• Resume presentation

• Recruitment and hiring 

• Candidate marketing

• Customer service

• Grammar and punctuation

All in all, they’re great people to have on your team! Why not submit your resume for a free resume review to find out how your skills are stacking up?

Recommended reading: 

• How to write a resume - a step-by-step guide with examples

• How to write a cover letter (with tips and example)

• Top 5 questions to ask at the end of an interview