Time Management Skills for a Resume: Examples & Definition

Here’s the deal:

More than likely, you’ve found yourself in a place where you’re COMPLETELY overwhelmed by work.

Do you remember what you did in order to finish everything on time?

If you’re like most people, you probably started doing everything at the same time.

But then you still found yourself leaving the office late… or very late.

Perhaps it’s time to look into your time management skills and find out how to effectively prioritize your work, so you can achieve the greatest success each day. 

See what are the most effective time management skills and learn strategies to improve them.

In this article: 

• What are time management skills and why it’s important to improve them.
• Examples of effective time management skills to put on a resume.
• How to put time management skills on a resume.

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Want to learn more about skills and qualifications for a job? Check out these articles:

• Interpersonal Skills
• Leadership Skills
• Communication Skills
• Computer Skills
• Technical Skills
• Marketing Skills
• Conflict Resolution Skills
• Critical Thinking Skills
• Conceptual Skills
• Creative Thinking Skills

Before we talk more about what time management skills are and which ones to include when writing a resume, let’s take a quick look at a sample resume:

Time Management Skills Resume Example

1. What Are Time Management Skills—Definition

Time management skills are about planning, organizing, and consciously building good productivity habits.

Effective time management is all about optimization and consistency, and in many cases—about making the most of your time. That means learning to make productive decisions quickly and prioritizing the right daily tasks. 

Adaptability is also an important factor, as you need to be able to change your tactics depending on how much time you have or don't have on a given day. 

Unexpected things can occur in a daily schedule that can throw us out of our normal routine, and time management is a skill that can help you balance that and still get things done. 

In order to develop these skills, you need to apply specific techniques that will require real commitment, especially if you’re just beginning to work on these new habits. 

2. Good Time Management Skills in the Workplace

In today's world, almost everything has to go according to plan and schedule—at work, at home, at school, time management has become fundamental. It allows us to adapt to new challenges and the requirements of the environment. 

But what are these skills exactly?

Check out these time management skills that you can put on your resume:

Effective Time Management Skills List

• Awareness
• Adaptation
• Prioritizing
• Delegating tasks
• Goal setting
• Self-awareness
• Self-motivation
• Concentration
• Decision-making
• Problem-solving
• Planning
• Effective communication skills
• Stress management
• Responsibility
• Organizing skills
• Teamwork
• Self-discipline
• Strategic thinking
• Scheduling
• Managing appointments
• Filing
• Documentation
• Multitasking

A person who manages their time well is consistent in executing their plans. Good time management requires careful planning and thoughtful decisions. 

You need to stick to your established priorities and not get distracted by other people or other tasks.

But that’s not easy to do.

In every industry, employers seek those who have the best time management skills. 

Which is why it’s important to include at least one or two of them when writing your resume.

3. Effective Time Management Skills—Examples for Your Resume

It seems as if our professional lives keep going faster and faster. 

For many companies, speed is key to staying competitive, meeting customer needs, and responding to market changes. 

Unfortunately, it puts enormous pressure on the employees—a heavy workload, a multitude of deadlines, and a culture that places urgency on EVERYTHING quickly turn into stress, procrastination, and demotivation.

Poor time management can be detrimental to work efficiency, but also to your well-being. This is why you have to learn to organize yourself well and manage your stress, especially when faced with a busy schedule and never enough time in a day to do all of the things you had planned.

Here are just some examples of the most important time management skills that are good to have:

1. Prioritizing

Recognizing what needs immediate attention is one of the most important time management skills. That means starting working on those tasks that if not completed within the next few hours or by the end of the day will have negative consequences. The main criterion here is the deadline, or its proximity. 

2. Adaptation

Adaptation is the ability to adjust emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to changing situations and conditions. Adaptation includes flexibility in dealing with change and challenges—it allows you to be open to new ideas and unpredictable events, including adjusting to interruptions or changing priorities.

3. Delegating tasks

Delegation of work means assigning specific tasks to other employees, with all the necessary authority and responsibility. Delegation helps save time, as it allows more work to be completed faster. 

4. Goal setting

If you want to manage your time well, you should always be able to define the purpose of your efforts. You need to ask yourself what you want to achieve, where you are going, what tasks you want to get done and what situations to avoid. 

5. Responsibility

Taking responsibility for your duties means taking them more seriously. Owning up to your actions helps you do what needs to be done in order to complete your tasks. 

6. Organizing skills

A person with strong organizational skills knows where to look for what they need. A well-organized employee is also timely and effective. They’re able to schedule their work in a way that will not be disturbed with interruptions.

7. Strategic thinking

Strategic thinking is one of the most important skills needed to successfully manage time. By thinking strategically, you can ensure that your efforts are directed at tasks that will have the biggest impact overall. Strategic thinking also allows you to anticipate upcoming changes in the business environment and competitors' actions, and then react to them in a timely manner.

8. Multitasking

In the simplest terms, multitasking is about doing multiple things at the same time and performing them at an appropriate level. Multitasking can increase your motivation, as it gives you the feeling that you are doing a lot, being productive, and growing.

9. Self-discipline

Self-discipline is the ability to push yourself forward and stay motivated, regardless of how you're feeling, physically or emotionally. It is, so to speak, your inner coach, the teacher who tells you how and when to work. It’s our internal motivation that allows us to be persistent and strive to achieve our goals. 

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4. How to Put Good Time Management Skills on a Resume

When deciding what to include in your resume, remember to write an impressive skills section that will highlight your qualifications, and offer you a chance to get some resume keywords in.

Here’s how to do it right:

1. Start With a Resume Summary or Objective

Right after your resume has been properly formatted, you should move on to writing your introduction—the professional profile.

If you’re an experienced candidate, you should write a resume summary that includes a short statement of your experience and goals.

Writing a resume with no experience?

Go for a resume objective, where you talk about ambitions and what you want to accomplish. 

Here’s an example of a resume summary:

Time Management Skills in a Resume Summary

Result-driven and self-motivated product manager with 5+ years of experience leading product development in managing tasks required to successfully launch multiple software products. Managed companies' Software RIP division, increasing national sales by 55% in 3 years. Produced the division's wireless software product strategy & road map that resulted in a 23% increase of product offerings. 

Being self-motivated and having experience in managing tasks is a great way to show that you know how to properly manage your time and your assignments.

2. Include a Stunning Work History Section

The best way to prove you have time management skills is working them in to your resume’s work experience section.

Talk about your previous duties and responsibilities by highlighting your achievements with the use of numbers and measurable results.

Like this:

Time Management Skills in a Resume Work History Section

Cosmolon

Junior Product Manager

2016-2018

• Followed a Scrum product development cycle managed via Jira and Notion, with a Postgres, Node, GraphQL (Hasura), and React tech stack.

• Supported and conducted user research in collaboration with product managers and designers; evaluated weekly sales data to identify trends and capitalize on potential opportunities.

• Instituted and enforced new quality process to improve update success rate from 10% to 80%.

• Researched infringements and developed a marketing initiative which generated a 7% response rate.

Always remember to target your resume to fit the job description in the advertisement. 

Now, the above example may not necessarily scream “I HAVE GREAT TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS”, but it definitely suggests that.

Someone who’s successful in a position is someone who has great organizational skills and knows how to manage their most critical resource – time. 

3. Use Your Education Section to Showcase Your Time Management Skills

When writing an entry-level resume, your education section can give you an advantage over other candidates.

Since you don’t have much professional experience, use this as an opportunity to show off your skills and talents.

Let’s take a look at an example:

Time Management Skills in a Resume Education Section

Education

M.S. in Economics 

Florida State University

2016

B.S. in Computer Science

University of Miami

2014

• GPA: 3.8
• Extracurricular activities: played varsity hockey for 2 years

Achieving a high GPA and still managing to squeeze extracurriculars into your schedule: 

If this doesn’t prove you have excellent time management skills, nothing will! 

When putting your education section together, you can spice it up by listing anything that will prove you have the skills and experience that are required for the job:

• Relevant coursework
• GPA
• Extracurricular activities
• Publications
• Projects
• Scholarships
• Honors and awards

Expert Hint: Remember to list your education and work entries in the reverse-chronological resume order.

4. Create a Jaw-Dropping Resume Skills Section

7 seconds.

That’s how much time a recruiter spends skimming through your resume. 

You have to make sure that yours really makes you stand out from the crowd and proves you have all the required qualifications.

Use the skills section to saturate your resume with keywords and phrases that describe specific job requirements.

Take a look at an example:

Time Management Skills on Resume

Remember that your time management skills can be proven through listing both hard and soft skills. Knowledge of timesheet, task, or project management software complemented with soft skills can lead to excellent overall time management results.

5. Add Bonus Sections to Your Resume 

Adding extra resume sections is a great way to show your commitment and values.

You can put anything from professional membership associations, certifications, courses, foreign languages, and hobbies on your resume.

Any extra activities show you can manage your time productively and efficiently.

Time Management Skills in the Resume Bonus Sections

Foreign Languages

• Spanish—fluent
• German—intermediate

Certifications

• The Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification from PMI, 2018

Expert Hint: To make an even better impression, write a cover letter that will convince hiring managers to call you for an interview. 

5. How to Improve Time Management Skills

There are many time management techniques that can help boost your productivity. 

However, there are also certain things that you can do on a daily basis to help you finish your projects on time. 

1. Start your day early

Most successful people have one thing in common—they start their day early. Studies show that when you wake up early, you are calmer, more creative, and clear-headed. As the day progresses, your energy level begins to drop, which affects your productivity, motivation, and focus. If you’re not a morning person, you can just try waking up thirty minutes earlier than your normal time. You will be amazed at how much more you can do in that time.

2. Take breaks

Think taking a break is a waste of time? Think again! Whenever you feel tired and stressed, take a 10- to 15-minute break. Too much stress can harm your body and affect your productivity. Take a walk, listen to some music, or do quick stretches. Schedule the time and duration for your breaks, and make sure you do something that helps you relieve your stress.

3. Set deadlines

When you have a task to complete, set a realistic deadline and stick to it. Once you've set a deadline, write it down on a sticky note and place it near your workspace. This will give you a visual cue that will help keep you on track.

4. Prioritize

If you don't set your priorities, you’ll treat all of your tasks the same. Whether they’re less important, unnecessary, optional, you’ll put all the eggs in the same basket. Accomplishing a large amount of tasks is satisfying, that's for sure, but some of them deserve more of your time and attention because they bring you closer to your goals, while others are purely distractions that take up your time.

5. Overcome procrastination

Avoiding procrastination can be difficult. We tend to procrastinate when we feel bored or overwhelmed. Try to schedule smaller, fun activities throughout the day to separate the more difficult tasks. It can help keep you on track. 

6. Divide large tasks into several small ones

Big projects are scary. Sometimes you simply don't know where to start, and that’s something we all deal with. To make it easier for yourself, don't start everything at once. Think about how you can divide the big pile of work into individual, small tasks, and work on them. Every step, no matter how small, brings you closer to your goal. Before you know it, you’ll be halfway through the project, and it won’t seem so overwhelming anymore.

7. Delegate

If you find yourself using several time management techniques and still not getting everything done, you may be trying to do too much. Depending on the type of work you are doing, you may be able to delegate some tasks. Knowing what and when to delegate is an important skill and will significantly increase your productivity and growth.

8. Manage your stress

Stress often develops when we take on more work than we are capable of doing. As a result, it causes our bodies to fall out of balance, so we start to feel tired and have difficulty concentrating. You can relieve stress through various techniques: take a walk, do some exercise, meditate, call a friend, listen to some music. 

9. Distribute tasks according to the time of day

You've probably already noticed that in the morning you have much more energy, and you are able to concentrate more, so you procrastinate less. You can therefore choose to reserve a time slot every morning for the most difficult tasks—those that you least like to do and that require more effort. By the end of the afternoon, you are probably tired, so save this time for something that requires much less energy, like answering emails.

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Key Points

Good time management skills help you structure your work in a way that allows you to accomplish goals. This set of skills is very important to have in the workplace, especially in today’s world, where only highly productive people succeed. 

Fortunately, there are certain strategies that can help you find a way to keep sane and balanced with an overwhelming workload. Including time management skills on your resume will show your future employer that you know how to prioritize work and get it done in a reasonable time. And that will make you a valuable candidate for any job.

Got any questions? Need further help with including time management and organizational skills on your resume? Let me know in the comments, I’ll be more than happy to help!

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