A resume is a summary of your information on a piece of the paper judged by hiring teams of the company. The main objective is to analyze and evaluate your credentials for the open position before calling you for the interview.
You are 7% more likely to have a boosted earning potential with a well formatted resume.
So, why not take this chance, right?
A rotten resume with outdated information and boring layouts would cut out your opportunity to being tested in a one-to-one job interview. On the contrary, if you have professionally planned your resume, carefully schemed its sections – like skills, qualifications, accomplishments, professional background – and given time to proofreading, there is a higher chance to land a job interview and eventually the vacant position!
A resume does this to your professional outlook:
| Your Summary | A resume shows your professional career in a glimpse. Each section and keywords thus utilized communicate (should communicate actually) that you are a fine fit. If you have nil experience, your internships, participation, training, and certifications would do this work. |
| Your Skills | What a company is really interested in is: would you be a contributor or just a salary sucker and all of us know they desire the former. If you are applying for a marketing job – even if you own logo designing skills, they won’t be of much use and it would be wise to skip stating/ referring to them in your resume. The company would be much interested in your know-how regarding SEO, market analysis, social media marketing, etc. |
| Your Accomplishments | Are you pro and energetic? Have you been an achiever in your previous job or university? Go ahead and tell it in your resume. |
| Interview Call | Your resume’s ultimate goal is an interview call to try your best for the job position. So, why not try all possible professional and smart ways to produce a winning resume. |
Skill Section of a Resume
This section gives the reader a trailer of what you are capable to do if hired in their company. If a smartly formatted and powerful skill portion is positioned at the resume’s top, the hirer has a reason to spend more time on your application instead of stacking it in the rejection pile.
While planning this section, your agenda should be:
- What to exactly include in this section?
- What skills would catch the attention of this hirer/ hiring team? What are good skills to put on a resume?
- What significant keywords – picked from resume templates, job descriptions, job ads – do I need to pepper in this section?
- What skill section format would be most apt?
Results-Driven Skill Section
Experts advise setting the tone of this section as result-oriented. As compared to the stack of skills you have got, the employer is more interested in how well did you do with such skills and eventually how you would contribute to the organization later.
What does skills mean on a resume?
It is interpreted as capabilities and the tasks you can perform well/ as required. There are myriad ways people distinguish between types of skills (would be discussing details of some later in the article!)
Some skills are a part of your personality while others you learn – through training, job experiences, education, etc. Some skills are tangible – programming, writing, software ability – while others could be intangible – follow-up skills, integrity, and work ethic, etc.
Why do I need the skill section on my resume?
Well, to reflect that you have got the majority of what is required!
There could be hundreds of skills relevant to one job or field but the wise plan is to pick and explain the ones which matter the most.
The modernity of today’s hiring procedures demands this section too. By this, we mean that companies today utilize ATS Automated Tracking Systems to skim resumes with relevant keywords only.
A good skill section can pass your resume through ATS and increase the chances of an interview call.
How to write a skills section for your resume? | What to put in the skills section of resume?
| “Make a List of All Your Skills” | To begin with, make a list of all the skills you have on paper, Excel, or MS Word. Later you would distribute them in hard/ soft/ technical skills. |
| Job Description, Company Website, Resume Template | To pick out the most relevant skills from the master list, go through the website, job ad, job description, templates of resumes available online. |
| Tailor to the Job Position – Filter and Skip the Irrelevant Skills | What skills/ expertise is requested by the company? Does my skills set to align with the company? What is the proficiency level of my skills? (if you are a skill learner, it is advised not to mention such skill in a resume) Is it better to mention or to skip this specific skill on my resume? These points would help you decide on good skills to have on resume. |
Related: MS excel skills in resumeTypes of skills for resume
What are soft skills on a resume?
97% of hirers consider soft skills as significant to attain company objectives, while only 37% believe their employees have the crucial soft skills.
Soft skills are mainly the personality qualities that aid you to perform better at the workplace. They are usually intangible. List of soft skills for resume could be:
- Conflict Resolution
- Delegation
- Adaptability
- Team working
- Oral Communication
Employees today give equal weightage to soft skills as they do to soft skills. The best soft skills to put on the resume are the ones included in the most natural and wise ways. Instead of writing ‘team player’ as a soft skill, you may say: Cooperated in a team of 8 to produce a marketing strategy that yielded 10% more profits quarterly.
This is the better way to add soft skills in resume, indeed.
What are hard skills on a resume?
A job requires certain expertise and knowledge to perform the said tasks, this expertise/ knowledge which can be measured, proven, or seen is specified as hard skill.
These are measurable. For instance, today’s content writer’s hard skills could be SEO and social media management. Courses in exercise physiology and certifications in safety techniques and nutrition are some of the prerequisite skills of a personal trainer.
List of hard skills for resume could be produced after analyzing the job ads. These employer requirements would help you judge your available skills and include the most pertinent ones.
Other hard skills are:
- Blockchain
- Sales processing
- Business analysis
- Market Analysis
- Product marketing
What are technical skills on a resume?
These skills are the specified versions of hard skills mostly related to:
- STEM fields
- Number-based methodologies
- Computer programs
- Hardware tools
Learning/ training setups or employment experiences help you initialize or improve these kinds of skills. “By this we mean, either you have these or you don’t.”
They are required by positions in:
- Science
- Tech
- Engineering
- Finance
- Manufacturing
What to write in technical skills in resume?
As mentioned earlier, you gotta choose the ones that are uber relevant to the position requirements and skip the ones which have nothing to do with the job ad and job tasks.
Some examples of a list of technical skills for resume are:
| Graphic Designing | Photoshop InDesign Canva Acrobat Illustrator Corel Draw |
| Programming | JavaScript Java C++ HTML Python Perl |
| Social Media | Twitter |
How many skills should you put on a resume?
“How many skills to list on resume?” Well, stating 5-10 skills is ample! You have to be smart enough to select the skills – both hard and soft – which are demanded by this specific position and might interest an employer so you get called for the job interview.
If you have more worthwhile skills, sprinkle them in other areas like the experience and certification section.
If you are certified in Python or JavaScript, it tells you to own this skill.
Skill Section Tips
“What if you don’t have the required skills?”
You should abstain from lying about your skills/ expertise, in case you lack them. Two grounds of doing so are:
- It may wound your reputation.
- The truth would eventually divulge in interview or later.
Analyze if you can really do this job. If you think you own some of the skills, describe them in a way that sound relevant to the vacant job.
What skills should I not include in my resume?
Your final skill list should pass these filters:
- Cliché Skills
- Skills you don’t have
- Outdated Technologies
- Unrelated to the job
