So how many skills should you have on your resume? There’s no perfect number of skills to present on your resume. A good rule of thumb here is 8–12 targeted skills.
This range ensures you focus on quality over quantity, highlighting abilities that match the job description without overwhelming the reader. Tailoring your skills section to the position shows hiring managers you understand their needs while keeping your resume concise and organized.
Dividing your skills into technical, soft, and industry-related skills can improve the way your qualifications are displayed. In this guide, we’ll explore how to choose the right skills, organize them for maximum impact, and avoid common mistakes to make your resume stand out.
Key Takeaways
Soft skills are those important, people-focused skills like communication and adaptability. They create better work relationships and encourage individual and career development.
Soft skills are non-technical and not easily measurable. Soft skills are more about one’s character and are often cultivated through real-world experience rather than the classroom.
As many employers have recognized, these soft skills lead to greater teamwork, customer service, managerial effectiveness, and creativity on the job.
Examples of important soft skills include active listening, collaboration, innovative thinking, organizational skills, flexibility, emotional intelligence, and mediation.
You can build your soft skills by soliciting feedback, practicing active listening, enrolling in courses, identifying mentors, and welcome adversity to grow.
Make your job application shine by showcasing the soft skills most applicable for the role you’re applying on your resume. When you interview, deliver concrete examples that highlight the value they create.
Why Include Skills on Your Resume?
It emphasizes your skills and talents, and instantly shows employers your potential value right from the start. Skills show you what value you bring to the table and what you can offer. They showcase how well your skills align with the needs of the job.
When you’re applying to a role where expertise in Adobe Creative Suite is required, make sure to list out relevant skills. Include skills like Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign to indicate that you already have a skill set that will prepare you for the job. This pragmatic mindset will help you maximize your potential as an attractive candidate to employers from the very beginning.
Finally, skills allow you to rise above the intense competition for today’s most popular jobs where standing out is essential. With so many candidates competing for the same roles, a strong skills section can set your resume apart from the other applicants.
Your creative skills can really make 300+ blog posts shine. As a result of this undertaking, organic traffic has increased by 33% while conversion rates have risen 15%, resulting in great, measurable results. Listing relevant certifications and technical proficiencies, including SOC 2 and GDPR compliance, will provide a credibility boost to your application.
It makes you more competitive for roles in data security. Plus, the skills section can serve as a key worded-in snapshot of what you bring to the table, customized to the job description. Whether it’s typing 70 words per minute, confirmed using free typing test websites, or showcasing expertise with NFC Business Cards, employers can quickly gauge how you meet their needs.
Overall, a well-crafted skills section brings all of your qualifications full circle, making for a neat and tidy, yet impressive resume that showcases your best self.
What Skills Should You Include?
When choosing which skills you’re going to highlight on your resume, take a focused, measured approach. Employers prefer to see all skills listed but in a direct manner. The best skill list length is about 8-10 skills long.
Every technical and soft skill you include should be purposefully chosen to highlight your strongest qualifications for the particular position you’re seeking. Including both hard and soft skills ensures you present yourself as a well-rounded candidate capable of meeting diverse job demands.
Hard Skills Explained
Hard skills are defined as the tangible, measurable skills one learns from school, training, or hands-on experience. These skills tend to be extremely tailored to the exact job.
Skills in programming languages such as Python and Java are critical for today’s software developers. Data analysis skills and proficiency in tools such as Excel are keys to success in finance-related occupations.
Emphasizing hard skills shows that you have the technical skills and job-specific abilities needed to get things done. When you formulate your list, focus on things that matter the most to the job description.
Prioritize certifications, licensures, and technical proficiencies that connect specifically to the role.
Soft Skills Explained
Soft skills are the communication and interpersonal skills that make you an effective collaborator. These are such skills as teamwork, adaptability, and problem-solving.
Attributes employers have long prized. For example, excellent interpersonal and collaborative skills are table stakes for high performing project-management professionals, whereas being adaptable might be your biggest asset in a corporate restructuring.
Listing soft skills on your resume demonstrates that you can provide value beyond getting the job done. It shows that you’re pretty great at creating an efficient workplace where people actually get along.
Distinguish Hard and Soft Skills
Hard Skills | Soft Skills |
|---|---|
Quantifiable abilities | Interpersonal traits |
Job-specific | Transferable across roles |
Learned through training | Gained through experience |
Although hard skills demonstrate technical skills, soft skills show your willingness to adapt and work within a team. Balancing both types ensures employers see your full potential.
Transferable Skills Explained
These are transferable skills, such as leadership, communication, or time management, that apply across industries and roles.
These skills are most valuable to those looking to make a career jump or varied job applications. For instance, if a teacher is moving into corporate training, he or she could highlight stronger public speaking skills and the ability to create strategic plans.
Being able to recognize and highlight these transferable skills helps indicate adaptability, an essential quality for any role that involves new challenges.
How Many Skills Should You Include?
The answer to this varies based on what stage of your career you’re in and what position you’re applying for. As a rule of thumb, the 8-10 skills should be the perfect number to keep your resume thorough but not overwhelming.
For more senior-level candidates, a list of 10-15 highly relevant skills can be sufficient and even appropriate to show the depth of expertise and leadership. The trick is not to inflate your list with a long, boring dump of skills. Quality over quantity, and make sure everything counts.
1. Determine Relevant Skills by Industry
Whatever your field, employers want in-demand skills. For example, technology roles often prioritize coding languages like Python or Java, while marketing positions may seek expertise in tools like Google Analytics.
You can do this by researching industry trends and available job descriptions so you can see how employers are expecting you to use those skills. If you’re in a specialized field, highlight niche abilities such as multilingual proficiency or advanced software knowledge to stand out.
2. Optimal Number for Entry-Level Resumes
Prospective entry-level candidates should shoot for 5-7 skills, looking more toward their transferable abilities. If you’re a recent graduate, emphasize relevant coursework, internships, or other academic experiences that demonstrate your preparedness for the position.
Similarly, if you’re applying for a data analyst, highlight your proficiencies in Excel or SQL. Showcasing these skills, in particular those obtained from collegiate work, will leave a mark.
3. Resume Format Affects Skill Listing
Some skills, like leadership in cross-functional teams, are better communicated using a Functional Resume, which is designed to showcase unusual skills.
Bullet your skills into columns or tables to improve readability. To make sure that you pass ATS scans, use keywords directly from the job posting.
Essential Skills to Include
When building your resume, choosing the right skills to highlight is key to standing out. Employers today value a combination of hard and soft skills, because both are important to succeeding in any role. Hard skills, such as Microsoft Excel, SQL, Big Data Analysis, and Enterprise Resource Planning, highlight your technical know-how.
For roles in financial or compliance positions, Know Your Customers (KYC) skills come into play as well. These skills are quantifiable and clearly translatable to industry-specific tasks, thus critical.
It’s the soft skills, or emotional intelligence, that make candidates stand out. Relationship-building, critical thinking, and collaboration are all great examples of transferable skills that are needed in any industry.
With 93% of employers emphasizing the importance of soft skills in hiring decisions, qualities like adaptability, positivity, and persuasion can significantly enhance your resume. These skills speak to your character and professionalism when working with others and facing obstacles, both of which are essential in any job.
To achieve the perfect balance, develop a short list of essential skills; 6-15 is a reasonable range. Ensure these skills are specific to the position you are applying to.
Take a close look at the job description as your guide, focusing on skills that best match what the employer is looking for. If the position is data-heavy, spotlight your technical skills with data management tools such as Excel and SQL.
Combine that with impressive analytical thinking, and you’ll really stand out. Be honest about your strong suits, but make sure you’re not leaving an impressive list of skills off your list, and it’s still job-specific.
This method will both show you the best way to prove your qualifications and help make it clear that you’ve carefully customized your application.
How to List Skills Effectively
Clearly and concisely listing your skills will go a long way in helping you stand out from the competition. A focused, easy-to-read skills section will help your qualifications stand out. That way, hiring managers can easily pick out the most important skills that would make you the perfect fit.
Create a Dedicated Skills Section
Having a well-defined skills section really makes your skillset pop and live up front and center. Putting it front and center near the top increases your chances of being seen, even during the cursory scan.
Having a distinct section fits nicely with today’s resume aesthetic and provides space to feature both types of skills. For example, a three-column layout listing nine skills—such as Adobe Creative Suite, bilingual proficiency, and leadership—can directly match job requirements.
Match Skills With Proficiency Levels
Adding proficiency levels (e.g., “proficient in data analysis,” “expert in Python”) gives a sense of the depth of your expertise. It gives employers a better idea of your experience and helps set their expectations.
Don’t lie to mislead or exaggerate—just don’t—because a genuine voice is a trusted voice.
Back Up Skills Throughout Resume
Back up your mentioned skills with concrete evidence in your experience section. For example, “Gre w organic traffic 33% through SEO techniques” simply shows you can do it and backs up your claim with evidence.
Consistency across the sections will add to your credibility.
Use Skills in Your Headline
Including important skills such as “Project Manager | Agile methodologies expert” in your professional headline immediately tells them your worth. Structuring your skills this way will help you match keywords used in the job description, making you more discoverable.
Showcase Skills in Work Experience
Share clear examples of how skills helped you make an impact. For instance, “Improved workflow efficiency through the use of Microsoft Excel, resulting in 12% reduced cost,” focuses on outcomes.
Include Skills in Hobbies/Interests
Include relevant skills developed through hobbies, like “Developed website for local nonprofit,” to demonstrate creativity and follow through. Align these with your professional goals, and you’ll create a more robust profile.
Format Your Skills Section
Your resume’s skills section should give the employer a complete yet quick picture of your qualifications. Take the time to make that section readable and pleasing to the eye! Start by making sure the font and style matches across the section and with the rest of the resume, maintaining its flow with the overall design of the resume.
A clean, unified look shows off the quality of your detail orientation and is pleasing to the eye. Whether you choose a chronological or functional format, both options can complement your skills section depending on your experience and job goals. A chronological resume emphasizes the role first with dates, while a functional resume is more oriented around skill areas.
To increase readability, listing skills within one column or bulleted list works best. Bullet points allow you to check off all of it, in one easy to scan location. Rows allow you to easily display skills across job functions or categories.
Under the other, include your soft skills, like “team player, detail-oriented, communication.” Then, in a separate column, emphasize your soft skills with statements such as “Skilled Team Leader” and “Expert Time Management.” If you’re in an industry where it’s expected such as tech or legal, have a skills column on the first page. This will help bring attention to your unique qualifications.
When deciding which skills to include, follow these steps: evaluate the job description, prioritize relevant skills, avoid generic terms, and tailor each resume to the role. For category headers, you could use headers like “Technical Skills,” “Core Competencies,” or “Professional Skills.
Note that an extra skills section is the norm. At times, it may even take up more real estate than your experience section!
Skills for Various Professions
A few targeted skills listed on a polished resume might be all you need to get the right gig. Including the right skills, specific to your target profession, ensures that you meet employer expectations and stand out in the competitive job market.
Read on, as we unpack these critical skills for what they mean across industries, with practical takeaways to help you reshape your resume.
Retail and Sales Skills
Retail and sales positions require excellent customer communication and product understanding. Excellent communication and persuasion skills are key, allowing you to easily connect with clients and sway them towards making a purchase.
Skills such as upselling techniques and how to use point-of-sale (POS) systems immediately translate into increased sales. As an example, applying these skills correlates with a measurable increase of as much as 20%.
Use this to align them with specific job descriptions to better showcase your skills to the desired outcome of a given business objective.
Customer Service Skills
Essential skills in this profession are conflict resolution, active listening, and the ability to remain calm in stressful situations. These are key to doing right by customers when you need to make it up to them.
Employers genuinely respect candidates who are able to demonstrate tangible, concrete experience dealing with challenging circumstances. These competencies are directly applicable to any industry.
Marketing and Advertising Skills
Technical skills related to digital marketing, content creation, and data analysis are all vital. Tools such as web analytics don’t just help us measure campaign effectiveness, they help us figure out our best strategic direction and priorities.
Creativity is a big one too, helping candidates bring fresh ideas that produce real results.
IT Skills
Technical roles demand skills such as programming, network management, and troubleshooting. Demonstrating your ability to solve problems creatively and thrive in a quickly changing digital environment can help you stand out as an increasingly valuable player.
How ATS Impacts Skill Selection
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) now largely control the highly visible presentation of talent. They filter applicants by scanning resumes for keywords that fit the position description. These systems are meant to quickly screen out applications, so recruiters are only shown candidates with the right skills for the position.
Perhaps the most basic way that ATS interacts with skill selection is in your job posting. The ATS will automatically scan your resume for these specific terms. Without those, even the most qualified candidate may be passed over. To combat this, it’s critical that you read the job description closely and customize your skills section to the position.
So, the more relevant skills you include that closely match the specific job posting will be essential to getting past ATS filters. Showcase the skills listed in the job ad verbatim. Highlight terms specific to your industry like “SEO optimization” for digital marketing positions or “budget forecasting” for finance-related roles.
Steer clear of vague buzzwords like “hardworking” or “team player,” which often do not make it past ATS filters. Replace those with concrete, quantifiable skills that show your related capabilities straightaway.
When optimizing your skills section to be ATS-friendly, it requires more than just dumping in a ton of keywords and phrases. Even the format makes a difference. Use straightforward section titles such as “Skills” or “Core Competencies” to allow your resume to be scannable at a glance.
Don’t use unusual fonts or creative designs that will trip up ATS technology. Being informed about the latest ATS trends will help you stay ahead of the competition. Know how these systems look at soft skills and how they are judging levels of proficiency.
Consistently going back to your resume and tailoring it to today’s ATS standards will keep your application competitive.
Highlight Unique Skills
Your resume is not just a laundry list of everything you have ever accomplished, it’s a marketing tool to demonstrate what makes you unique. By emphasizing skills that make you unique, you’ll get a recruiter’s attention and help distinguish yourself from the competition. Think about what unique skills and experiences really make you different.
Highlight unique skills that might not be the hot-ticket items but are the key to the position you’re aiming for. For instance, if you’re seeking a customer-facing position, great problem-solving skills paired with a high degree of empathy might be your super unique skill.
Unique skills fine-tuned to the idiosyncrasies of specific job functions, which are in high demand, too. Technical skills like coding in Python and mastering data visualization tools become invaluable in these spaces. Just as important is the need to hone in on building students’ soft skills.
Almost 97% of recruiting professionals agree these are equally important, and soft skills frequently dominate hiring choices. Creativity, flexibility, and adaptability are growing in demand as companies learn to pivot as the business environment continues to change rapidly.
As an example, explain how you leveraged creativity to improve or automate processes. Demonstrate how your flexibility drove positive outcomes when moving to remote work—these stories will appeal to talent scouts.
Be sure to include skills that are unique to you in the specific skills section. Further, highlight them by integrating them into your narrative and accomplishments. Focus on your unique skills to help your resume rise to the top.
For instance, showcase how you increased customer satisfaction by 20% or managed a team during a major company-wide transition. Keep in mind, a total of 10-15 skills—5 technical and up to 10 soft—is ideal to maintain clarity while aligning with your career story.
Conclusion
Creating an effective skills section can be the key to turning potential employers into real ones—so what are you waiting for! Demonstrating the ideal combination of technical, soft and creative skills will ensure that you’re one step closer to standing out from the competition. Just make sure it’s clear, focused on the story you want to tell, and targeted toward the job you’re after! Instead, focus on narrowing down to 10 to 15 skills that would best fit the role. Add specific keywords from the job description to make your list even stronger. Don’t forget about formatting—keep it scannable and ATS-compliant.
Your resume is often your first impression. The process by which you showcase the skills you’ve developed can unlock a world of opportunity. Please don’t rush through this make-or-break section! By taking the right approach you can highlight your strengths and get the job you’re worth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it important to include skills on your resume?
Skills show employers your qualifications and strengths. Not only do they help you to stand out, but they show your future employer that you can thrive in the role. Adding the most relevant skills will ensure your resume beats ATS scans.
How many skills should you list on a resume?
Don’t list all of your skills. Include 5–10 of the most relevant skills to the job you’re applying for. Turn them into bullets aligned to the specific job description you’re applying for to see the greatest success.
What types of skills should you include?
Prioritize hard skills and soft skills based on the job you’re applying for.
Hard skillsTechnically learned abilities
Soft skillsCharacteristics that showcase your people skills
Harsh realities
Where should you list skills on your resume?
Put your skills in an easily identifiable “Skills” section. In addition to including them in your skills, you’ll want to incorporate these keywords into your work experience and resume summary for extra impact.
How do you ensure your resume passes ATS scans?
Use skills from the job description as a guide to getting specific. Tailor your skills you’ve got to what’s needed as described in the posting.
Should you include unique skills on your resume?
Of course, one of a kind skills give you an edge. List unique, specialized skills that apply directly to the role, to demonstrate how you add extra value.
How often should you update the skills on your resume?
Tailor your skills each time you apply. Make them fit the specific job description, and of course, update them to indicate your most recent skills.
