There are a lot of things that your resume must include. You need to list your academic or career accomplishments for the recruiter to understand what kind of applicant they are dealing with. You need to have keywords for your resume to appeal to the applicant tracking system. But there is one important section on your resume that will help you to land an interview.
Your resume must include the skills section that will help a hiring manager and your prospective employers to figure out whether you correspond to their demands or not. Yes, you can always get professional help from https://skillhub.com/resume-editing, which will bring you a bot-beating resume. But it’s better to know a thing or two about resumes on your own.
Why Is The Skills Section Important?
Quite often the skills section is forgotten, as the job seekers focus more on their work experience. And while showing your career path is important in displaying the applicant’s professional growth, to get more interviews you need to list your key skills. The list will allow the recruiters to check out how valuable you can be for the position.
The recruiters or the resume-scanning software may skip all the details of your career experience. After all, you can provide this information during the interview. It’s important that you have the necessary years of experience, and then the focus will shift to your skills. Thus, listing your skills may be crucial to landing your dream job.
Moreover, listing down your skills will provide you with more keywords. So, you can craft a winning resume that ranks high on the job search. The inclusion of the section is a win-win situation for you and the recruiting firms. Your resume is more visible on the job market, and seeing you have the necessary qualifications makes employers more inclined to hire you.
Types of Skills to Put on a Resume
Depending on the occupations you apply for, you may be required to list both hard and soft skills. While you may think that only your knowledge of PHP is relevant for your resume, it is possible that recruiters are looking for a project manager or team leader with the knowledge of this or that programming language. In this case, a resume with the listed soft skills is the winning one.
Hard Skills:
- Lean manufacturing;
- Data analysis;
- QA automation;
- Prototyping;
- Workflow development;
- Web: HTML, CSS, Javascript;
- Payment processing;
- Automated Billing Systems;
- CRM Platforms;
- Troubleshooting;
Although this list includes a lot of stuff that may have nothing to do with each other, you can get a clear picture about what to include on the list of hard skills. As you can see, the list is pretty much straightforward. When it comes to soft skills, things may look a bit vague at first glance.
Soft Skills:
- Interpersonal skills;
- Leadership;
- Project management;
- Problem-solving;
- A good work ethic;
- Team working;
- Adaptability;
- Perseverance;
- Communication skills;
Depending on the position you would like to fill, you need to make an emphasis either on your soft or hard skills. After you finish the hard writing job of filling in all the sections of your resume, you will have greater chances to land a job.
How to List the Skills
While everything seems plain and simple, you need to learn how to list your skills on your resume. There are several ways to do that. And it has nothing to do with the placing of the section. Generally, it goes below your professional experience. Still, in certain templates, you can place the section in a separate column on the right or left side of the document.
Aside from the placement, there are several ways to list your skills, so you can land a particular job. Depending on which skills are on your list you may or may not get employed for the target position. So, without any further ado, let’s check out the tips on listing your technical skills.
Job Specific Skills Only
Millennials rarely have a straightforward career path. Supposedly, you’ve started as a customer support manager, then you’ve finished your studies and become a UX designer. And you are only interested in pursuing a career as a UX designer. The best option here would be removing anything related to your past jobs. This way, you will get only relevant offers.
If you want to become a successful Elixir developer, you don’t want to be bothered by recruiters looking for waiters. Appearing in their search is more of the ATS fault. But when your resume is viewed for the relevant vacancies, it may look a bit confusing. So, leave only the skills related to the position you’re currently looking for.
Applicable Skills Only
The thing that most job seekers are missing is that the resumes in general and the skill section’s goal, in particular, is to convince an employer that you can do particular tasks, rather than all the tasks imaginable. If you want to get hired as a Talent Acquisition manager, there’s literally no need to mention dancing or singing competitions that you have won.
Put the Skills into Categories
You can divide your skills into major categories related to the targeted position. Seeing a mix of different skills may be confusing for the recruiter. October CRM, communicative skills, data analysis, leadership… Your resume looks reckless this way. It is way better to divide it into programming languages/software/softs skills.
Use Synonyms
You can use different relevant synonyms and phrases for your skills. If you’re skilled at social media marketing, you can also put it as SMM. In case you had an experience with a particular platform, you can use it in the list. Like Instagram marketing or Pinterest marketing. It helps trick ATS bots.
Use Important Skills Several Times
Skills can be used as keywords, and you can rank higher in the ATS search by listing your skills a few times on your resume. Scatter them across your resume. Aside from having a separate section, you can mention your skills in the summary or your work experience. The applicant tracking software picks up the resume that has more relevant keywords.
Final Thoughts
Summing everything up, you might get a clear idea of what skills to put on your resume and how to put them. Mind that technical skills are extremely important nowadays, and will only get more relevant in the future. Still, if you want a perfect resume, you should not forget about making a great summary and providing detailed information on your work experience.
Author Bio
Perla Aroyo
Content Writer at Skillhub with more than five years of experience in the resume writing service industry. Her primary specialization is English and Marketing, but she writes on a great number of other topics.
