How can job skills affect your hiring chances? This section of your resume helps recruiters gauge how adept and qualified you are as a professional. Likewise, they serve as keywords that make your job application tool searchable online.
Recruiters make sure your skills set best matches what the post demands. Although significant, many job seekers still fail to use this section to their benefit. As an applicant, you have no reason not to perfect this part of your job application tool if you want to be successful in your job search. So how do you write it?
Headings You Can Use for the Job Skills Section
Depending on how you want to present your abilities and your personal circumstance, you can come up with a perfect heading for this section. Choose from these options:
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Areas of Expertise
You list attributes from the same or linked categories in two or three lines with vertical bars placed between the items. For example, if your areas of focus are public and media relations, and/or communications, your areas of interest may include public speaking, consultative aid, and social media platform utilization.
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Key Strengths
Your versatility as a professional makes “key strengths” the most applicable heading for your diverse yet unrelated skills. As an example, if you’re good at web and graphic designing, human resource management, and sales planning, list them altogether as your key strengths.
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Technical Acumen
If you got great technical skills, then use this as heading and place it on the last part of your job tool. Engineers, information technology (IT) experts, and computer scientists often include this in their copy to highlight their ability. This may contain jargons as to the field’s systems, hardware and software, tools, and others.
Note: These labels could vary; thus, you should follow the latest trends in naming your job skills in your resume. You may check our samples with different, trendy headings for each field.
Ways to List Your Skills Set
Below is a list of ways to add your job skills in your resume.
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Table
Break text dullness by using a table to detail your abilities. If applicable, you can make patterned and shaded squares for visual appeal.
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Columns
You can present your skills by placing a bulleted list of abilities inside two or three columns to make it neater.
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Lines
You can arrange the items in a series using symbols or other markings between them.
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Subtle listing
In the qualifications and work experience sections, mention your skills in narrative form. Likewise, you can include your communication, leadership, multicultural awareness, planning, and problem-solving skills.
Where to Put Job Skills Section in Your Resume
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Below the career tag
If the functional format fits, you can list your skills right under your target post or field of focus.
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First page’s upper half
This applies to career shifters, new graduates, or those with work gaps and helps them highlight their skills more than their education and work experience.
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KSA
For federal applications, you must add the “knowledge, skills, and abilities” section into your piece. Follow the hiring agency’s set guidelines.
What Makes the Skills Section Effective?
- Tailored to a target post
- Specific (quantifiable – e.g., 70 WPM typist)
- Organized (care for soft and hard skills)
Do you have the right job skills but can’t write them well in your job application tool? Count on our experts! Check our CV writing service and pick a package that fits your job hunt needs.
Sources: TheInterviewGuys.com
Image courtesy of Ed Gregory at Stokpic.com
