How to Showcase Your Facilitation Skills: Professional Resume Guide, Skill Set, and Tips
Having strong facilitation skills allows you to provide training and all sorts of growth opportunities to others, usually in a group, for the sake of helping them progress and succeed.
Good facilitators are usually also productive, dependable, and good at time management. They rarely judge others and always keep an open mind.
What’s more, people who exhibit this trait are expected to maintain neutrality even in difficult situations, help the group overcome challenges, and stick to a pre-defined plan.
Some situations that require people with strong facilitation skills include training new colleagues, organizing events, managing conflicts, and brainstorming new ideas.
But why are facilitation skills considered a must for your resume? Read on!
Why are Facilitation Skills wanted by recruiters on your resume
Quit guessing whether the position you’re applying for requires you to demonstrate at least some form of facilitation skills on your resume. It does.
Regardless of whether you are an entry-level applicant or a renowned manager, employers would expect you to use your facilitation skills in various settings – when you’re working on a project, during a client meeting, or even during brainstorming sessions with your new team.
In addition, facilitation skills are useful in handling conflict situations.
Something more – good facilitators are also great team players and leaders. Usually, they demonstrate high levels of flexibility, as well as strong active listening and communication skills.
But although facilitation skills are considered important for almost any position, they’re not something you should list explicitly on your resume.
Rather, we advise you to prove it through your experience and achievements. Let’s see how.
What skills, activities and accomplishments help you highlight your Facilitation Skills
Being a great facilitator is not a talent you’re born with, it’s something you learn and master with time. The best way to prove this is by mentioning the skills that contribute to your overall facilitation skills. For instance:
- Leadership skills: having them shows your potential to facilitate meetings, training sessions, and even informal conversations. Leadership qualities such as empathy, patience, and respect for everyone are all prerequisites to proper facilitation.
- Communication skills: picking the right words, listening actively, and showing compassion when needed is essential. In fact, handling conflicts and motivating others to do well is intrinsically linked to how well-developed your communication skills are.
- Organization and time management: being organized and managing your time properly increases your efficiency. What’s more, it helps you keep everyone in the group focused and ensure that timely progress is being made.
Check this out: How to Create a Resume Skills Section to Impress Recruiters
How to demonstrate Facilitation Skills on your resume:
- Mention times when you had to lead a group of people;
- Share more about your approach to handling difficult situations;
- Highlight your ability to meet tight deadlines and stay focused;
- Discuss how your communication skills have developed over time;
- Talk about situations when you had to guide a large group of people to a common goal.
Remember: when it comes to soft skills, adding them plainly to your resume is a big no-no. It sounds thrown out of context and might make your whole application appear shallow and unprofessional.
That’s exactly why we advise you to focus on demonstrating your facilitation skills, rather than simply stating them.
This will prove to recruiters that you’re a strong facilitator who uses their skills far beyond their daily tasks.
Looking for specific examples of how to put this into practice? Check out the resume snippets below!
You can also use them as inspiration to build your own resume when using our easy-to-use resume builder!
Example 1: Demonstrate Facilitation Skills in the experience section
This operations manager has done a great job at highlighting their facilitation skills on their resume. Even more so, they’ve done it smoothly – just as it needs to be done.
They have pointed out their ability to lead training sessions for both new and existing employees, which requires a great deal of proactivity, communication, and (you guessed it) facilitation skills.
What’s more, they have demonstrated their ability to take action by beginning each bullet with a power verb.
They have also smartly mentioned that they’ve facilitated large meetings, which works great for passing ATS.
Hint: Applicant Tracking Systems (or ATS) screen applicant documents (i.e. resumes, cover letters, letters of recommendation) for certain keywords.
Read this: How to Beat the Applicant Tracking System
Example 2: Demonstrate Facilitation Skills in the resume summary section
Your resume summary should be no longer than 3-4 sentences. Think of it as a short guided walk around your career.
Here, you need to mention one or two highlights that make you stand out from other applicants.
For instance, this HR Specialist has pointed out that their young age shouldn’t be treated as a sign of incompetence by sharing an impressive achievement.
They have also drawn attention to their facilitation skills – by mentioning the fact that they’ve organized workshops on different topics.
Example 3: Show your Facilitation Skills in your achievements sections
The achievements section is one of the best places to ‘show off’ your accomplishments. And it doesn’t really matter whether they’re work-related or something you’ve done in your spare time.
If we look at the example above, we see that this Enhancv user has used the achievements section to showcase their facilitation skills in a subtle yet impressive way.
Linking your accomplishments to your facilitation skills during the interview is also worth considering.
Wondering why resume accomplishments can get you hired? Check out this article!
Example 4: Demonstrate the skill through other sections of your resume
The things you’ve done outside your full-time job can also help you highlight your facilitation skills.
What’s more, recruiters value applicants who are passionate about improving their skill set in their free time. And this is valid for both entry-level and experienced professionals.
Maybe you’ve done a bit of volunteering as a facilitator? Or have taken a course on improving your facilitation skills?
It doesn’t really matter. Just make sure to mention only things that are relevant to the job you’re applying for.
Facilitation skills: key takeaways for your resume
- Demonstrate the skill rather than just listing it plainly in your resume’s skills section
- Prove you’re passionate about developing your facilitation skills by linking them to your accomplishments
- Be prepared to discuss the impact your facilitation skills can have on your future job during the next stage of the application process
Struggling to find the right format for your resume? Check out this article for some expert advice!
About this report:
Data reflects analysis made on over 1M resume profiles and examples over the last 2 years from Enhancv.com.
While those skills are most commonly met on resumes, you should only use them as inspiration and customize your resume for the given job.
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