How to Effectively List Professional Skills on Your Resume (+Video)

Wondering “What skills should I put on my resume?” We’ve got you covered.

Your resume will only get noticed if the job skills list matches the job needs. Padding your resume with a list of skills, as impressive as it looks, won’t help your application if those skills aren’t related to the job.

In this article, you’ll learn how the different types of professional skills that are relevant. Plus, we’ll review how to select which of those skills to include in your resume skills section. I also cover how to list skills on a resume so it stands out and fits the job you’re applying to best.

How to List Professional Skills on Your Resume (Quick-Start Video)

Listing the right professional skills on your resume is important; let’s begin by looking at why that is. The skills section of your resume might just hold the key to a recruiter noticing you.

In the screencast below, you’ll learn more about how many skills to list on resume designs. Check it out if you’re feeling lost about how to make your resume.

If you want to learn more about “What skills should I put on my resume?” then read on. We’ve got even more tips.

You’ll learn the difference between soft and hard skills in your list of job skills. Plus, you’ll get ideas for how to build your own skills and abilities for resume designs.

What Is a Resume Skills Section? Why Is It Important?

Having a section dedicated to an applicant’s skills makes it easy for recruiters to check qualifications quickly. For candidates, it’s another opportunity to add keywords and highlight their skills.

The resume skills section is often listed after the professional experience section. However, some resume templates have the skill section in a separate column on the left or right-hand side of the document.

Some candidates group their skills according to the main responsibilities of their job.

Using a template available through Envato makes your professional skills easier to read. Above is an example of how to list programming skills on a resume (based on a template from Envato). It clearly shows the applicant has more experience when it comes to programming compared to graphic design.

2 Major Types of Skills to Put on a Resume

There are different kinds of professional skills for your resume, but the two main types are hard skills and soft skills.

1. Hard Skills to Put on a Resume

Hard skills are quantifiable and often learned from school or on the job. Operating machinery, programming languages, SEO, and data analysis are all hard skills.

2. Soft Skills to Put on a Resume

Soft skills, also known as ‘”people skills” are subjective. That’s why it’s harder to quantify.

For instance, an applicant’s definition of “good communication skills” might not match what an employer is looking for. Public speaking, communication, patience, decision-making, and conflict resolution are all soft skills.

Use Both Types of Skills on Your Resume

Both are important to include in the skills section of a professional resume. These types of professional skills can be categorized as transferable or job specific.

As the name implies, job-specific skills are required for a particular job, while transferable skills are relevant in different industries and roles.

For example, an animator has 3D modeling, time management, and communication skills. 3D modeling won’t be useful after changing careers, but the remaining skills might be useful despite switching to a programming or sales job.

Hard or Soft Skills: Which Is More Important in a Great Resume?

Logic suggests hard skills are more important. The answer isn’t so simple.

In a tough economy, applicants with hard skills are hired more quickly. That’s because employers think they can do the job with little or no training.

In a niche or competitive market, applicants with sought-after skills are prioritized. It happened when iOS apps were gaining popularity. Companies had to hire from a very limited pool of qualified candidates. It’s happening again now. Google and other tech companies are fighting over candidates with machine learning expertise.

In industries with a plentiful supply of talent, employers like applicants with strong soft skills. They argue that soft skills aren’t easily learned.

As Peter Schutz, the former CEO of Porsche said,

“Hire character. Train skill.”

A new report from LinkedIn lists the most in-demand skills that employers look for. The top three? Management, communication, and customer service. Note that these are soft skills, not “hard” technical skills. They are innate, and they can be learned while working in any industry or any arena.

Similarly, Bernard Marr lists critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and collaboration as top skills that employers need over the next ten years.

How to List Skills on Your Resume: 5 Quick and Easy Tips

Let’s narrow down how to list skills on a resume so that it makes its way through resume tracking software, stands out professionally, and catches the eye of potential employers. Here are some quick tips to keep in mind:

1. Use Job-Specific Skills on Your Resume. Only write job-specific skills currently used and recognized in your job. Don’t bother including old programming languages and old machinery as it makes you look out of touch with current trends.
2. Limit Your List to Only Include Applicable Skills. A skill section’s goal is to convince an employer that you can do the job, not every task imaginable. Write only the professional skills relevant for the job. It would also be helpful if you include the levels of proficiency on the resume.
3. Organize Your Skills into Categories. Divide skills into major categories related to the position. For example, a web developer’s skill set could be divided into programming languages, software, design, DevOps, and soft skills.
4. Include Relevant Synonyms. Use synonyms and different phrases used for your skills. For instance, social media marketing also goes by SMM and can sometimes refer to specific platforms, such as Facebook marketing or Pinterest marketing. A resume builder can help you find the perfect wording so your resume looks professional.
5. List Your Important Skills a Few Times. Recruiters also use skills as keywords for Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) searches. That makes it important to list your skills a few times in your resume. An ATS counts keyword frequency and ranks the applications based on usage.

How to Customize a Resume Template With MS Word

A resume is more than a list of job skills—it’s your introduction to potential employers. Thus, it’s essential to make a winning first impression.

Premium Microsoft Word resume templates help you do exactly that. They’re designed and styled by creative experts. All you’ve got to do is drop in your own credentials.

Envato is the best source for skills on resume templates for Word. With thousands of designs to choose from, it’s easy to find the perfect option. Browse today!

1. Download a Premium MS Word Resume

We’ll learn how to customize a resume Word template with the beautiful Resume from Envato. Log in to your Elements account and choose Download. Select a license use, and then click Add & Download.

Your premium resume will download. Next, go ahead and open the download folder. Inside, you’ll see a list of other files and folders. Remember, we’re working in Word here, so open the Microsoft Word folder.

Then, double-click on the .docx file to launch your resume template in Word.

2. Add Your Skills and Experiences

Now, it’s time to add your job skills list. The skills section of resume designs is crucial for establishing your credentials.

When you think of how to list skills on resumes, premium templates like this are your best friend. All the content placeholders are already there, and you simply need to replace the existing text with your own details.

Begin by clicking on one of the text boxes to select the contents. Then, start typing! Add your relevant education details, career experiences, skills, and more. Skills and abilities for resume designs like this help you stand out in the stack of resumes many hiring managers see every day.

As you work, keep a few things in mind:

1. Be brief. Lengthy, multi-page resumes aren’t well received. If you can, keep your resume design to a page or two.
2. Be relevant. If you’re well into your career, you likely won’t have the space to list every single job that you’ve ever had. Nor is it necessary. Stick to your most recent positions, listed chronologically.
3. Focus on your strengths. Always focus on your strongest areas as you work. Be sure that your top skills are readily identifiable. And ensure that key past job experiences are called out. Newer in your career? You may not have as much relevant job experience. But you likely have skills to focus on, like those developed in your academic coursework.

3. Save a Finished Copy

Finished adding your list of job skills? Great! Now it’s time to save a finished copy of your MS Word resume.

Here’s an important note. While Word is a powerful way to edit a resume, it’s not the best way to share one. That’s because formatting can often change from screen to screen. Your best option is to save a PDF copy of your resume.

PDF files are easy to share, and they’re viewable on virtually any device. And they’ll never rearrange your carefully constructed layout. There’s nothing worse than accidentally sharing a messy resume with a layout that you didn’t intend. PDFs avoid this possibility.

To save a PDF resume in Word, go to File > Save As. Give your resume a name. Then, in the Save as Type dropdown, select PDF. Lastly, click Save.

That’s it! In moments, you’ve created your own beautiful, shareable MS Word resume. You’re ready to land your dream job!

How to Write Soft Skills on Your Resume

Show, don’t tell. That’s the important rule in making your soft skills believable for a recruiter.

Use numbers, awards, and any other quantifiable metric to make the recruiter see your claims of being a good team player and communicator are real.

Let’s look at a few helpful examples of how to list skills on resume:

1. Time Management and Teamwork

“Coordinated with 3 animators to successfully complete a 30-second video animation project before deadline.”

2. Initiative and Interpersonal Skills

“Organized different team building activities to improve morale after a company merger.”

3. Communication and Leadership Skills

“Managed a team of volunteers and sponsors to schedule activities, pack giveaways, and conduct a successful community outreach campaign.”

How to Write Hard Skills on Your Resume

Hard skills are often transferable and job specific skills that a recruiter would input in an ATS. Here’s an example of hard skills for an editor or copywriter:

1. Show Quantifiable Evidence of Your Skills

Taylor Dumouchel, Career Expert at Peak Sales Recruiting, says:

“Top performers in the business and finance sectors understand exactly how their efforts contribute to the company’s bottom line, so a top resume should also include the metrics that quantify their efforts.”

2. Remove Unnecessary Jargon From Your Resume

For example, a specific program you used at your old job might be unheard of to your new boss. You should replace it with a generic name to describe what the application does instead.

Customer service and phone sales agents, for example, use software specific to the company they work for. Instead of naming the sales software, it’s better to write “lead management application” or “customer database application” in your resume business skills.

3. Rate Your Hard Skills With a Clear Metric

Using numbers to rate your skills might sound good, but it doesn’t clearly convey your skill level.

On a 10-point scale with 10 being the highest, what’s 7? To you, it might mean that you’re ‘proficient’ in that skill, but what if the recruiter thinks ‘proficient’ is more of an eight or nine?

Use an easily understood metric to show levels of proficiency on your resume:

• Beginner. You can handle the basic features of the program, but you can’t do complicated tricks or troubleshoot problems yet.
• Intermediate. You can also troubleshoot and do some fancy tricks. But you might need to Google some functions or ask in forums from time to time.
• Proficient. You’re not yet an expert, but you can handle advanced functions and troubleshoot problems by examining things on your own. You don’t need a manual.
• Expert. You know the program like the back of your hand. You know of obscure features, tricks, and weird problems, so much so that other people often come to you for help.

4. Order Hard Skills on Your Resume Logically

Let’s look at how to list skills on a resume in the right order.

Some jobs require more technical skills than others, like nursing, engineering, video animation, and programming. For jobs like this, it’s important that your skills are listed in a logical manner.

Here’s how to list programming skills on a resume without making it look like a laundry list of jargon:

Option 1. List Your Skills in Order of Relevance

List the job-specific skills most relevant to your target job, and then move on to the secondary or routine skills expected. This layout makes it easy for recruiters to see that you’ve got the skills required on the job description.

Option 2. Categorize Them by Type of Skill

Hard skills can be categorized in different ways, depending on your job title. Below are hard skills examples for graphic designers, grouped according to the skill type:

• Design Skills: Layouts, typography, drawing, sketching.
• Design Software: Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop.
• Additional Skills: Skills useful for designers, but not directly related to their current niche. For example, CSS and Web Development are good secondary skills for a print layout artist.

Option 3. Place Them in Order of Experience

List hard skills followed by the years of experience. Listing your professional skills in this fashion shows your career’s progression.

Where to Place Skills on Your Resume

Have you noticed how some resume skills sections have the skills listed in a separate column? Others put the job skills list below the main experience details.

There’s no such thing as right and wrong placement; it just depends on your goal. The recruiters and resume experts I talked to have varying but equally logical opinions on this subject.

1. Place Skills After the Professional Summary

“Write your skills below the professional summary because the top one-third of the resume is the prime real estate. Since resumes are only read for five to seven seconds, you want your key skills to grab the employer’s attention early,” says Weiner.

2. Consider Whether or Not to Use Side Columns

Dr. Dawn D. Boyer of Dboyer Consulting advises against using templates with complex layouts.

She continues, “An ATS takes the text it finds and parses it over into data blocks for future searches. Resumes with text boxes, fancy graphics, tables, and weird columns may confuse the ATS system, which can lead it to mix up the text, or ignore it totally.”

According to her, it’s also the reason why putting your information only in the header or footer is a bad idea. ATS often can’t recognize text embedded in headers, so your contact details won’t be included on your application.

3. Place Your Skills Depending on Job Requirements

“If technical skills are required for the position, I list them after the professional summary then include soft skills in a separate section labeled ‘Areas of Strength’ below it”, says Dr. Heather Rothbauer-Wanish of Feather Communications.

So the order is:

1. Professional Summary
2. Technical Skills
3. Soft Skills

For professional jobs where the hard skills are standard and often transferable to a lot of positions, Dr. Rothbauer-Wanish lists them at the bottom of the resume. Some of these hard skills examples include sales and online research.

Not sure how to structure your resume? Check out this guide.

7 Lists of Skills to Put on a Resume (Organized by Type and Job Function)

Wondering “What skills should I put on my resume?” This list has all the answers you need.

Here are lists of professional skills for resumes, which you can use to write your resume skills section.

1. General Soft Skills

Below are some soft professional skills for your resume:

• written and verbal communication
• teamwork
• openness to feedback
• initiative
• meeting deadlines
• problem-solving
• public speaking
• time management

2. Management Soft Skills

Here are the must-have professional skills for the resume of anyone interested in a management role:

• team management
• mentoring
• writing reports and proposals
• coordinating cross-functional events

3. Hard Skills: Design

Here are some professional skills examples for design professionals:

• Photoshop
• 3D modeling
• print layout
• typography
• Maya

4. Resume Technical Skills: Programming

Below are different hard skills examples for IT and programming professionals:

• programming languages: C++, Python, Perl, Ruby
• operating systems: Linux, macOS, Windows, Ubuntu
• data analysis
• iOS app development
• troubleshooting
• penetration testing
• Android development
• process improvement
• technical documentation
• network and information security
• software Q&A user testing

5. Hard Skills: Online Marketing

• Facebook marketing
• video marketing
• link building
• Google Analytics
• Majestic SEO
• content writing
• email marketing
• search engine optimization (SEO)
• influencer marketing

6. Business Skills for a Resume

Different types of professional skills you may want to include in your resume:

• accounting
• bookkeeping
• project management
• MS Excel
• shorthand
• SQL
• human resources
• talent management
• technical recruiting

7. In-Demand Hard Skills for 2023

Below are some of the most in-demand hard skills for 2023, according to data from LinkedIn:

• software development
• SQL
• finance
• Python
• Java
• data analysis
• JavaScript
• cloud computing
• operations
• customer relationship management

More Top Templates for Resume Design

Here’s the thing: it can be challenging to know how to add your skills and abilities to resume designs. That’s why I love resume templates. They make it easier to know how to list skills on resumes.

Resume templates have pre-built placeholders for you. That means that you’ve got cues on how to add professional skills for resumes. Check out more of our favorite templates with skills and abilities for resume prompts below:

• 30 Best Job Resume Templates With Simple Professional Examples
• 30+ Best Infographic Resume Templates
• 20 Best Visual CV Resume Templates for Artists & Creatives

Show Off What You Can Do… But Not Everything

Conserve space on your resume and write only the skills related to the job opening you’re applying to. Remember, every skill you include in your resume skills section comes with an opportunity cost. You risk losing the attention of the hiring manager.

Use a well-organized resume template from Envato. These help you showcase your skills and abilities for resume designs, and they avoid messy, cluttered layouts.

Now that you know how to list skills on a resume for best results, and what technical and soft skills are important to include, you’re ready to take action. Why not download a professional resume template to show off your professional skills today?