A list of well-crafted skills for your resume doesn't just impress the recruiter. It makes them invite you to the job interview right away. So, let’s see what skills they are looking for and start drafting the best resume you can have.
In this guide, you’ll find:
Save hours of work and get a job-winning resume like this. Try our resume builder with 20+ resume templates and create your resume now.
What users say about ResumeLab:
I had an interview yesterday and the first thing they said on the phone was: “Wow! I love your resume.”
Patrick
I love the variety of templates. Good job guys, keep up the good work!
Dylan
My previous resume was really weak and I used to spend hours adjusting it in Word. Now, I can introduce any changes within minutes. Absolutely wonderful!
George
Here’s a list of 15 skills you should definitely consider for your resume:
Employers will look for your ability to analyze, draw the right conclusions, and come up with creative solutions that align with set strategies. Make sure your resume mentions examples of critical thinking skills showing how you handled a crisis, boosted efficiency, or resolved a conflict.
Collaboration is your ability to work with others as a team. It means you can appreciate different perspectives, put your faith in others, and support them when needed. Prove to your future employer that you can through examples of active participation in projects and meetings or contributing to your colleague’s or team’s success.
Interpersonal skills speak to your overall people skills that involve building rapport with others. Let the hiring manager see those skills on your resume by including examples of understanding and respecting diversity, active listening, sharing constructive feedback, and receiving it with an open mind.
This skill is the most desired by every employer in every business sector. The ability to communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing, ensures your stakeholders understand you and your ideas. Highlight your communication skills through examples of adjusting your communication style according to the audience and achieving success through clear communication.
Knowing how to handle a certain software is a needed skill for many jobs out there. So, having a few technical skills up your sleeve and on your resume can get you closer to an interview invite. Show your employer that you are tech-savvy using examples of product knowledge, how you optimized a code, or how quickly you learned a new functionality.
Letting your employer know you’re organized is sometimes a must-have. Especially when you’re working in management. Organizational skills show you can handle multiple tasks at once, which is very often the case in such jobs. Let the employers know that you are reliable thanks to your ability to meet deadlines or lead successful projects.
You read time management skills, but what the employers really mean is managing workload. Show them you know how to do that by demonstrating effective prioritization or overcoming obstacles on your way to achieving goals.
Employers want applicants who can work towards and get closer to the best solution, which oftentimes is demonstrating your communication and persuasion skills. So to get a chance at an interview, prove you can clearly express your thoughts and actively listen to others.
Adaptability means you can adjust to incoming changes that may, but not always, come along with a challenging situation. If your employer requires you to have that adaptability, highlight how you adapted to a new role or changed your approach to get better results.
Flexibility is something a bit different from adaptability, and it doesn’t mean it’s less important. Flexibility means you’re actually willing to adapt; it’s your willingness to compromise. In a workplace setting, you can prove your flexibility by taking over greater responsibilities, control over your own schedule, or achieving a better work-life balance.
The ResumeLab builder is more than looks. Get specific content to boost your chances of getting the job. Add job descriptions, bullet points, and skills. Easy. Improve your resume in our resume builder now.
Nail it all with a splash of color, choose a clean font, and highlight your skills in just a few clicks. You're the perfect candidate, and we'll prove it. Use our resume builder now.
It’s not only a type of skill that creative industries seek after. Creative thinking allows you to drive innovation and become an original thinker, which is valued among all employees. To prove that, you can write about the time you made sense of a big set of data, reflected on what you’ve learned and applied that knowledge later, or simply, when you questioned the status quo to improve how things are.
Again, not a type of skill that only leaders should have. Having experience in leading teams helps you understand how to help others achieve their goals. So to show your leadership skills prove on your resume that you created a safe environment for your coworkers and demonstrated an ability to delegate.
Every employer looks for a candidate who knows how to avoid making mistakes. And attention to detail can help you achieve that. Demonstrate your ability by including examples of when you troubleshot problems, reduced distractions to focus on all areas of a project or task, or gave a thorough review that led to new insights.
With the technological advances, data analysis is becoming more and more desirable in many industries. Showcase you can collect and analyze data, but most importantly, draw the right conclusions and act on them.
Today most of the work is being done as part of bigger projects, especially in agile frameworks that are being adopted even more frequently. Share examples if you have experience in leading projects from A to Z. Try to weave them in among your communication, collaboration, and management skills.
To secure yourself an interview, the best thing you could do is pick’n’mix some soft and hard skills. Because the skills on your resume can be divided into two main types: hard and soft.
Hard skills are the technical skills and abilities that you need to do your job. You can learn them through practice, repetition, and education. Hard skills are easy to measure, and you can often prove them with a certificate on your resume. They can be coding, data analysis, project management, or information security.
Soft skills, on the other hand, are a reflection of your personality. They’re personal attributes and habits that enable you to work well with others, cope with stress, solve problems, and so on. Some examples could be adaptability, conflict resolution, or negotiation skills.
Expert hint: Employers pay more attention to soft skills than hard skills. Mainly because soft skills cannot be easily taught, it’s part of the so-called hiring-for-attitude approach.
Now, here’s how to eliminate the guesswork and find out exactly what skills your dream employer is looking for.
Your first step is to read the job ad carefully. Most job ads have skills-related resume keywords scattered throughout the entire text. Here’s an example job ad for a personal banker:
In this example, you can see highlighted skills-related keywords. Do the same with the job ad you’re going to apply for. And later, stick to those keywords as much as possible in your entire application.
Your resume will probably go through an applicant tracking system (ATS), and these systems automatically filter out resumes that don’t contain the same keywords as the job ad. So, while it might be tempting to paraphrase the skills in the job ad, it’s better to stick to the original wording.
To go even further, here are a few other tricks you can try to match your employer’s needs:
When you find every single skill in the job ad and on the company’s website, you might end up with a huge list of 20+ skills. That’s too many, so it’s time to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Have you heard of the so-called presenter’s paradox? In short, listing low-ranking skills does not add any value to your resume. More than that, it takes value from it.
So, if you feel like some of your technical skills, management skills, or computer skills are basic, keep them to yourself. Let your resume strengths highlight your best professional side.
There are quite a few sections on your resume that will welcome a skill or two.
The resume skills section is just a bulleted list of the skills-related keywords you’ve extracted from the job ad and other sources. Continuing with the example of a personal banker, this section could look like this:
Do the above skills ring any bells? Yes, they were in the job description you could see in the previous chapter.
Revisit the job posting to make sure you didn’t miss any important skills the employer expects. That way you’ll be on the right track to creating a targeted resume that almost guarantees success.
Having a separate list of skills may not always be enough. For better results, sprinkle your skills all over your resume, no matter if you’re writing an entry-level resume or applying for a senior position.
Here’s how you do it when writing your experience section:
The above statements are the so-called resume achievements. To create such, grab a skill that fits, combine it with an impressive number, and you’ve crafted an irresistible bullet point.
What are your top skills? You know, those 2–3 skills that should catch the recruiter’s eye within a second of looking at your resume?
These are the skills that go into the resume profile of choice. They can be a resume summary (if you’re a seasoned pro) or your resume objective (if you’re just starting out).
Adaptable and well-organized personal banker with 10+ years of experience. Eager to take on new professional challenges at JP Morgan Chase. Thanks to excellent communication and follow-up skills diversified the client portfolio by adding 20+ high net-worth individuals. Increased the branch revenue by 30% in Q4 2018.
Your profile is where you can supplement the skills with some power words and action words to maximize impact.
Now, let’s look at sample skills lists for resumes in different fields:
For better skills targeting, see our Marketing Resume Example.
Learn more about sales skills in our Guide to Writing a Sales Resume.
If you’re looking for more advice on nursing resumes, take a look at our step-by-step Nurse Resume Writing Guide.
Don’t forget to check out our Step-by-Step Writing Guide for a Customer Service Resume for more clues.
If you get stuck crafting your resume skills section, take a look at our Guide to Writing a Retail Resume.
Need more? Check out our Full Guide to Writing a Teacher Resume that’s top of the class.
To see a wide range of technical skills you might need, check our Resume for an IT Job.
To help you come up with the best skills list, see Web Design Resume Example.
Double your impact with a matching resume and cover letter combo. Use our cover letter generator and make your application documents pop out.
Want to try a different look? There's 21 more. A single click will give your document a total makeover. Pick a cover letter template here.
Things to remember when putting skills on your resume:
What do you think are the best skills to put on a resume? Have you recently landed a job because of a unique set of skills? Are you an employer looking for specific skills and talents? We’d love to get to know your opinion. Give us a shout in the comments below.
At ResumeLab, quality is at the crux of our values, supporting our commitment to delivering top-notch career resources. The editorial team of career experts carefully reviews every article in accordance with editorial guidelines, ensuring the high quality and reliability of our content. We actively conduct original research, shedding light on the job market's intricacies and earning recognition from numerous influential news outlets. Our dedication to delivering expert career advice attracts millions of readers to our blog each year.
Here’s how to decide which skills would look good on your resume:
Check out the ResumeLab resume builder for professional resume templates and more expert tips for writing a job-winning resume.
These are the 7 soft skills that employers are particularly looking for:
Make sure you include at least some of these key skills on your resume.
These days, almost any job requires computer skills. So if the job ad mentions specific hardware or software skills, make sure you add them to your resume. Some common computer skills are:
Avoid adding any irrelevant computer skills and make sure you’re honest about your skillset.
To learn more, check out our guide to putting computer skills on your resume.
Soft skills define how you manage your work and how you interact with other people.
This is why employers want candidates with strong soft skills like communication, teamwork, time management, and so on.
So, even if you’re applying for a highly technical job, always include at least a few soft skills on your resume—like the ones you’ll find in our guide to interpersonal skills.
Shoot for a list of 5–10 skills on your resume. In most cases, 8–10 bullet points are ideal.
When you’ve prepared your list of resume skills, make sure to weave the relevant keywords into the other sections of your resume like your resume summary, resume objective, and resume work experience.
First, study the job ad to find what skills the employer is looking for.
These are the relevant skills that go on your resume. But make sure you only include the skills that you can prove by giving examples of life events where you used them.
You can find real-life examples of skills for a beginner resume in our full guide to writing a resume with no experience.
Olga is a career expert with a background in teaching. At ResumeLab, she writes actionable guides to help job-seekers highlight their unique strengths and unlock their career potential.
Should you put hobbies on resumes? Explore our expert guide to find the perfect hobbies and interests to elevate your resume and learn the art of doing it like a pro.
Mariusz Wawrzyniak
Career Expert
Your administrative skills are preventing the workplace from being in a constant state of panic. But what are they, how are they so effective, and how to put them on a resume?
Mariusz Wawrzyniak
Career Expert
Resume AI writing is a hot topic as of late. And the growing potential of ChatGPT is stirring up the creative industry. Let's explore the pros & cons of AI tools for resume-making.
Mariusz Wawrzyniak
Career Expert
