What Skills to Include on Your Resume
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Identifying and featuring core skills correctly on your resume can be tricky! However, finding the right mix of keywords that boost your applicant tracking system (ATS) compliance and candidacy for your target roles can be the “make it” or “break it” element in securing your next opportunity.
Hiring managers are often faced with overly generic, outdated, or irrelevant information within the applications they receive. How does your resume stack up against other applicants? What can you do to set yourself apart?
Our team of career advisors believes that a strong resume begins with a well curated skills section, right at the top of your document. This helps you take control of your professional narrative by priming the recruiter, hiring manager, or prospective employer with what’s to come.
Like many of our clients, you may be asking yourself, “How do I know what skills to include and how do I maximize their impact?” Our team has pulled together some proven strategies to help you position your skills in a way that sets you up for success!
Where to Feature Skills on Your Resume
While it’s wise to feature a combination of hard and soft skills throughout your resume, we recommend including a separate “Skills” or “Core Competencies” section within the top one-third of page one of your resume. Grouping your core skills together makes it easier for human eyes (hiring managers - who are notorious for skimming) and robot eyes (applicant tracking systems AI - that parse text-only information) to understand your skill set and alignment with target opportunities.
Include a Variety of Skill Categories
You are uniquely differentiated and qualified as a candidate - own it! Including a variety of competencies spanning technical skills, soft skills, and more characteristics-based skills helps you articulate what makes you the best possible candidate for your target role.
TECHNICAL SKILLS
Technical skills (also referred to as “hard skills”) are the learned knowledge or training required for your profession. These skills tend to fall into larger categories specific to your industry and provide insight into your on-the-job responsibilities.
For example, if you are applying for a Senior Project Manager role, some of your technical skills might include Requirements Gathering, Project Roadmapping, Timeline Management, Vendor Management, Team-Building, Stakeholder Engagement, etc.
Some examples include: Project Management, Coding, B2B Sales, Marketing Campaigns, Ecommerce Web Development, Technical Roadmapping, Administration, Operations Management, Bookkeeping, Corporate Finance, Recordkeeping, Data Entry, SEO Marketing, Banking, Nursing, Agile Methodology
Technical program examples include: Adobe Creative Suite, PHP, Trello, Canva, Salesforce, Workday, C++/C#, Google AdWords, Jira, Laravel, Google Suite, Microsoft Office Suite, SQL
SOFT SKILLS
To further build out your skills list, soft skills emphasize how you work individually or with teams. Some of these skills may be learned over time or come more naturally to you both personally and professionally. Soft skills provide an excellent opportunity to not only share with a prospective employer what skills you are prepared to contribute to the team, but also how you will leverage your skillset to generate impact.
Some examples include: Problem-Solving, Communication, Census-Building, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Relationship Building, Teamwork, Strategic Leadership, Executive Leadership
ATS Alignment & Core Skills Selection
It may be tempting to “fluff” up your skill list to ace the ATS system, but this typically doesn’t bode well for the applicant or their prospective employer in the long-run. A recent survey from CareerBuilder reported that more than 75% of HR Managers have caught a lie on a resume - yikes!
Be mindful of the listed skills you include within your “Skills / Core Competencies” section, and avoid including skills that are not also substantiated throughout the body of your resume. The bottom line is, if you can’t confidently list at least 50% of the required skills for a target role on your resume, perhaps consider opportunities your background is better aligned with.
Learn more about resume best practices and ATS compliance here!
What Skills to Avoid Including
When considering what skills to include or omit, target skills that are specific to both your experience and your target opportunities. We recommend avoiding overly-used skills that feel stale, outdated, or obsolete.
Some examples of “stale skills” might include: Detail-oriented, dedicated, passionate, go-getter, hard worker, team player, etc.
Notice how the above terms are generic and that they are non-specific to what makes you the best possible candidate for the job.
Also be weary of including outdated technical skills that may reveal you’re not up-to-date on current tools, programs, and technologies. If you’ve been out of the workforce for some time or are making a career pivot, do your research beforehand to identify any skill gaps you may need to bridge before applying.
Lastly, if you have skills that do not directly apply to the role you’re considering, we recommend either omitting these skills or tailoring them to be more relevant to the role, company, or industry you’re targeting.
The key takeaways from our team of experts:
1) Know and own your skills
2) Feature a skills section to emphasize your alignment with target roles
3) Substantiate your listed skills throughout your resume
4) Select your skills wisely for humans and robot eyes
5) Authenticity and transparency trump “fluff”
Claire Webber
Founder / Lead HR & Career Consultant
Founding member of Clarity Career Solutions’ team of rockstars. Leverages a background in HR, Talent Development, Recruiting, and Consulting to help others achieve purpose driven careers.
Are you still unsure of what your core skills are and how to align them with your next great opportunity? Our team of career experts would be happy to be a resource for you!
Learn more about the Clarity Career Solutions team here. We’d love to learn more about you and your career goals!