How to Write Skills Section in a Resume

While each one of us possesses zillions of skills that we’re great at, not everything can be added to our official resume. As a resume highlights your technically relevant abilities that establish your candidacy for the job role, the skills section in a resume is indispensable to woo the hiring committee.  Moreover, with a well-defined skills section, resume reading bots such as ATS will pass your resume with flying colors!

Types of Skills for Professional Resumes

Also called the Additional Skills, Technical Skills Section in a Resume lists the technically important abilities that cannot be added to work history or other sections in a resume. Based on your professional, personal and technical abilities as a candidate and its end-results, we have divided the total set of skills that can be added to a resume of five parts.

· Hard Skills

Considered the most important skills that establish your qualification as a candidate, hard skills are quantifiable abilities of a candidate. Hard skills are often taught via classrooms, internship opportunities, and practical workshops. Some of the common hard skills prominently used in resumes are Coding, Graphic Design, Data Mining, Copywriting, SEO Marketing, and CRM Analysis.

· Soft Skills

Contrary to Hard Skills, Soft Skills or Transferable Skills are not quantifiable or teachable via teaching aids. They are acquired interpersonal skills that are unique to the personality of each candidate. We learn soft skills through our life experiences and decisions. Important qualitative soft skills on a resume are Organization, Teamwork, Creativity, Amiability, Leadership and Communication Skills.

Transferable skills are abilities that we use and apply in every routine job.

· Specific Technical Skills

Also termed as job-specific skills or industry-specific skills, these are technical skills that apply exclusively to the job role you’re aspiring to fill. Important technical skills are Accounting, Mastering Audio Files, JAVA, Adobe Photoshop, CAD Designing, and Manuscript Editing.

· Computer Skills

In this racing age and date, being acquainted with popular resume computer skills such as MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, Oracle, Quickbooks, Teamviewer, WordPress are important to prove your efficacy in any job. Knowing how to manage Social Media Campaigns or having a high typing rate is beneficial to prove your ease of using computers to the recruiter.

Guide to Write Skills Section in a Resume

An ideal skill section must list relevant and exceptional skills that establish you as a commanding professional and fitting candidate. To add value to your skills section in the resume, candidates must specify how each technical skill on your resume leads to a profitable result for your past employer.

· What Skills Does the Job Demand

It is certainly impressive, but simultaneously ineffective to fill your skills section with a random list of skills. To captivate the hiring manager’s attention, candidates must assess the job description for mandatory skills that the job requires and add them in the skills section if you possess it.

· Match your Skills with the Job Role

An important part of writing an attractive skills section, candidates must begin narrowing-down technical skills from the older resume that also applies to the current job role. After collecting your individual skills, compare it with the skills in the job description to shortlist the essential skills that can prove your technical proficiency as a candidate.

· Add Multiple Skill Sections

In case you have a wide variety of technical skills that specifically apply to the job description, it is wise to split the skills into specific sections under the work experience as in a combination resume format.

· Edit to Create Result-Oriented Skills

If your skills section consists of too many repetitive or generic skills, it is best to restructure the same to specify the results of merits your skills achieved in the past jobs. As Hiring Managers take but a few seconds at review resumes, the best way to attract attention in a short span is by specifying the potential profits you can guarantee than, letting the reader dissect it on their own.

Tips for Writing a Winning Skills Section

Skills Sections spotlight your best actionable skills that are beneficial to the employer. If your resume mentions irrelevant skills, resume scanning robots will reject it right away.

To create a good skills section that impresses the manager and outwits the other candidates, you must follow the above guide to write the resume skills section and following tips to avoid the commonest of errors.

· Where to Place the Skills Section

It is true that there is no concrete rule that says that the skills section must be placed above or beneath another resume section header. Depending on your industrial experience, job application, and the company that you’re aspiring to join, there are many ideal places to insert your Skills Section in the Resume.

For job applications where technical skills are specially requested, it is best to place your technical skills on top of the resume, immediately beneath the name and contact information of the candidate for the spotlight.

· Avoid Irrelevant and Repetitive Skills

It is important to cut maximum fluff and clutter from an official resume and one way to do so is by revamping your skills section. Candidates must strictly avoid listing skills that add no value to your candidacy. In addition, listing the same technical skills for every job history is considered damaging to the resume evaluation process.

· Bullet your Skill Points

As an astute answer to prevent your technical skills from exceeding the resume length, you must condense your skill points to list technical precise and relevant phrases that add to your resume credentials. Moreover, arranging the Skills Section entries in bulleted points will improve the visual appeal of your resume.

· Proof of Skills

In addition to a long list of technical skills that apply to the job application, it is important to mention your proof of executing the same skills during your past employment tenures.  Unless you can prove that you’re an excellent Audio Mastering Expert by listing your acquaintance with Ableton Live or Fruity Loops, the hiring manager will not buy your musical skills!

Conclusion

Skills Section in a resume is easy to write if you have prepared your own unique list of technical skills that apply to the job already. It is best to refer to technical skills that you’re adept at, as you will be asked to elaborate the same with examples during the interview.