300+ Must-Have Skills to Put on Your Resume in 2022
What resume skills do applicants most often use? We analyzed more than 1 000 000 resumes to help you improve the skill section of your resume. You’ll find a list of 200+ skills with examples to put on your resume. They will help you increase your chances of landing a job interview.
Art & Design
You’ll find below examples of skills that show your design software proficiency. Use them to update your art & design resume.
Business, Finance & Administration
Administration, finance and business skills are fuelling office operations all around the world. Working in a big or small company, you’re going to need those to succeed in a business-related career.
Communication & Interpersonal
Oral and written communication skills are on top of the requirement list in every industry. Hiring managers give advantage to candidates who are able to get their point across well during the interview process, especially if their hard skill set is identical to other applicants.
Education
If you’re in the education sector, chances are, you’ve got a wide range of soft skills that topple your technical ones. However, there are some important hard skills observed here.
Engineering
Engineering involves a wide range of specialisations, therefore, some technical skills are only applicable to certain industries. Depending on how complex the field is, you may need to back up your skills with a formal education degree.
Human Resources & Recruitment
These skills will help you find and keep the best talents for your organisation. If you’re looking for a role as a HR specialist or a recruiter, you’ll need to demonstrate those skills in the resume, as well as in the subsequent interview.
Information Technology & Data Management
Your level of IT skills proficiency depends on years of hard work and investment. Have a look below for reports on which are the most popular skills in devops, data scientists and software engineer resumes. We go on by showing practical examples how to demonstrate these skills.
- active directory
- as400
- c++
- bpm
- ccna
- cms
- cloud
- data management
- css
- data collection
- data center
- artificial intelligence
- sql server
- iot
- data modelling
- database management
- machine learning
- spark
- vba
- hadoop
- microsoft access
- statistics
- wordpress
- penetration testing
- mainframe
- oop
- software testing
- gis
- spss
- microsoft office
- data warehouse
- react
- statistical analysis
- unix
- etl
- oracle
- scripting
Management
Skills listed below will help you run your team or organisation better, as well as manage your own tasks effectively.
Office
You usually acquire most office-related skills while you are still a student or at your first job. However, they are the foundation of your development as a modern office worker.
Personal
These skills below are unique from person to person. The combination between those comes as a result of years of hard work, education and work experience. Personal skills make or break your job spell.
Project Management
These skills prove your ability to run organisation processes smoothly and use multiple resources, such as people, finances and programs to complete different projects in time.
Sales & Marketing
These skills help you sell products, services and concepts. Every employer in almost all industries highly appreciates them.
Teamwork
Unless you run your own business yourself, chances are, you are going to be working in a team of at least two people. Teamwork skills show how well you work with others, as well as your ability to influence others towards completing a common goal.
Thought Process
Thought process skills are going to help you with problem solving, coming to understanding with colleagues and with thinking creatively in different situations. Recruiters look for these skills across all industries and verticals.
Resume Skill Examples: The Right Mix of Hard Skills & Soft Skills
Hard skills are very specific abilities for each job or industry. You gain them through learning in school and in extracurricular classes, or through your job experience.
Soft skills, on the other hand, are different for each person. This is why recruiters consider them invaluable once they understand you demonstrate them on a regular basis. Soft skills can be used across every job industry, and often help in doing your job better.
Candidates with the right combo of hard and soft skills create a match between what they offer in terms of abilities, and what the company’s needs are. This is called a value proposition.
According to a 2018 job outlook report by National Association of Colleges and Employers, companies seek the following skills on applicants’ resumes:
Here’s a List of Top 20 In-Demand Resume Skills:
- Problem-solving
- Teamwork
- Written communication skills
- Leadership
- Work ethic
- Analytical skills
- Verbal communication skills
- Initiative
- Detail-oriented skills
- Adaptability
- Technical skills
- Interpersonal skills
- Computer skills
- Organizational skills
- Strategic planning
- Creativity
- Friendly personality
- Tactfulness
- Risk-taking
- Language fluency
PRO TIP
How to List Skills on Your Resume
Study the company and match the job description
Before you list every single skill you’ve got, hear this - do you want to send your potential employer any irrelevant information? Instead, read the job description carefully, pinpoint the skills and abilities that match your own and back them with examples.
In addition, explore the company further through its website or social media profiles and learn more about its culture. You’ll be surprised to find other touchpoints you have between each other which weren’t obvious from the job description.
Let’s say, a job ad for a Mechanical Engineer may feature the following skills and experiences:
- Must be customer-focused, multi-tasker and detail-oriented
- Strong CAD skills with a focus on AutoCAD
- Experience in industrial design and knowledge of ACME is always a plus
- Must possess strong self-organisation skills
- Great verbal and written communication skills
- A minimum of Bachelor’s degree in Engineering/Industrial Design or equivalent
Therefore, you will have to include skills, like:
- Customer focus
- Multi-tasking
- Detail-oriented
- CAD
- Industrial Design
- Acme
- Organisation
- Communication
Use the STAR methodology to talk about your skills and experiences
STAR stands for situation - task - action - result and it’s a term recruiters use to describe your relevant experience by providing a context as to what specific actions you took and how they brought a beneficial result. Quantifying your achievements using numbers will make up for a stronger case in point.
Here’s an example:
- Situation: a devops engineer for a finance website
- Task: eliminate poor website performance during peak hours (stock opening hours)
- Activity: migrated the existing website’s database to a more optimal noSQL solution
- Result: reduced complaints rate to 3% and 100% website uptime during peak visit hours
Run every single line of your resume through the STAR method. Quantify your achievements whenever possible.
Select where in your resume to place your skills
Depending on your level of experience, you can place your skills in several sections of your resume.
Write a summary of qualifications
A resume summary is a short paragraph that delves into your top skills you gained throughout your career. They should be the most relevant for the job you are applying for. The resume summary sits on top of your resume, following the header section - that is, your name and contact data. A summary of qualifications is great when you’re switching careers or when you’ve got any employment gaps.
Create a separate skills section
With a separate skills section, you can highlight several important skills that can make them easily noticeable. We’ve seen examples of people using this section to highlight both their soft and hard skills.
Include your skills in your experience
The worst thing you can do for your resume experience section is to make a generic copy-paste of your previous job duties. Instead, write down how you’ve used specific skills to achieve goals using the STAR method mentioned above.
Map Your Skill Proficiency
You’ve probably seen fancy charts and level bars on resumes. They’ve become untrustworthy mainly because candidates apply an arbitrary assessment of their skills.
Instead, let’s introduce you to one the few widely accepted frameworks to evaluate your skill level - published by the National Institutes of Health.
Use that framework as a reference point when evaluating your skills. You’ll be able to show your right level of competency on your resume.
- Fundamental knowledge - you possess common knowledge on basic concepts and theories. You’re expected to still learn the ropes around the skill at hand.
- Beginner - your level of experience with a particular skill is at a school/university level or just after a traineeship period. You’re expected to receive help from more experienced people.
- Intermediate - you can operate with this skill almost independently, and will need an expert eye from time to time. You’ve applied the skill in practice with minimal guidance and interference from senior level colleagues.
- Advanced - you’re one of the few immediate choices for “a person to ask” about a problem or idea associated with that particular skill. You’ve applied your knowledge in practice multiple times and you can teach others how to use it, too.
- Expert - you’re widely recognised as one of the highest authority figures in this skill area both your own organisation, and outside of it, too. You’ve consistently demonstrated excellent application of that particular skill.
