Best Skills For Your Resume (Examples + How To List)

Maybe your like

Skip to Content
Skip to Sidebar
Skip to Footer

Blog Resume Help Skills for Resumes

How to Put Skills on Your Resume (What NOT to List in the Skills Section)

Written By Nathan SotoCareer Expert & PR Specialist+1 more

Reviewed By Conrad BenzContent Manager & Hiring Manager

Nathan Soto

Career Expert & PR Specialist

View Profile

Your resume needs to prove that you’ve got the right skills for the job. But there’s a right way to list skills on your resume, and not all of them should go in the skills section.

Build My Resume NowUpload Existing ResumeNovember 5, 2025 Skills for Resume Featured Image

Table of Contents Table of Contents

How to Put Skills on Your Resume (What NOT to List in the Skills Section)
- Only put hard skills in your resume skills section
- Hard skills vs. soft skills
- Demonstrate soft skills in your work experience section
  - Communication skills
  - Organizational skills
  - Analytical skills
- Don't forget your transferable skills

3 resume templates available in the Resume Genius builder with a banner explaining how quickly you can make a resume

Struggling to get interviews?

Make a professional resume

Copied

You should include both hard skills and soft skills on your resume, but only hard skills belong in the skills section. Soft skills should be demonstrated in other sections.

This video explains 5 of the best skills to have on your resume, and how to list them:

ViewsLikesOur Expert:

Sebastian Morgan

Only put hard skills in your resume skills section

Hard skills, also known as technical skills, are job-specific abilities gained through education, training, or experience.

These skills are concrete and measurable, and you should list them in your resume’s skills section. Here’s what that looks like:

SKILLS

Proficient in POS systems
Operations management
Merchandising and product display strategies
Loss prevention

Employers list the hard skills they’re looking for in job ads, so if you have those skills, you should highlight them on your resume.

You can also try using our AI skills generator to find industry-specific hard skills:

AI Resume Skills Generator

Make a high-impact skills section for your resume in seconds with our free software. Simply enter your job title and you’ll be matched with the most impactful skills for your industry.

Job title Step 1 / 2 Generate Skills for My Resume List of resume skills Step 2 / 2 Copy Text Copy Copied

Use these job-specific skills to make a resume that lands you interviews.

Back Build My Resume Now

Hard skills vs. soft skills

The difference between hard skills and soft skills is: hard skills are teachable abilities that can be tested and measured in a standard way, but soft skills are personality traits that are more difficult to quantify.

For example, employers understand when you just list a hard skill like “Fluent in Spanish” or “Python” on your resume. However, soft skills like “teamwork” need to be described with context in order to be convincing.

When possible, demonstrate your abilities in standardized and measurable terms. For example, it’s better to list your proficiency with organizational tools like Notion and Jira than to just write “organizational skills” on your resume.

A hard skills vs soft skills infographic with definitions and lists of examples of both skill types

Demonstrate soft skills in your work experience section

Soft skills are non-technical abilities that are valuable in the workplace.

These skills generally fall into three categories:

Communication skills
Organizational skills
Analytical skills

You shouldn’t just list “organizational skills” or “communication” in your skills section, though, because putting soft skills there doesn’t show employers the results you achieved.

Instead, demonstrate how you’ve applied these skills in your work experience section through targeted bullet points.

An infographic demonstrating how to include soft skills on your resume effectively by giving specific, detailed examples in your work experience section

Here’s an example of what NOT to do:

SKILLS

Problem solving
Communication
Teamwork
Time management

And here’s an example of how to list each of the soft skills above the right way — in your bullet points:

WORK EXPERIENCE

Identified issues in a workflow and suggested improvements that made daily tasks about 20% faster for a 5-person team
Shared project updates weekly with 3 cross-functional teams to keep 15+ stakeholders aligned
Worked closely with 6 coworkers to meet shared goals, contributing to a 10% increase in overall team output during busy seasons
Balanced 4–6 active projects at a time by prioritizing deadlines and maintaining consistent on-time delivery

Communication skills

Communication skills include teamwork, collaboration, and interpersonal abilities. How you describe your experience should align with the specific type of communication skill the job emphasizes.

Here are three sample bullet points that demonstrate good communication skills:

Example of communication skills in a resume’s work experience bullet points
Planned and moderated weekly team syncs across 5 departments, reducing project delays by roughly 20%
Communicated daily with clients and teammates to clarify project goals and resolve issues efficiently
Collaborated with customer support and engineering teams to document recurring issues, improving cross-department communication and reducing duplicate tickets by 18%

Strong communication skills are especially valuable for jobs like:

Customer service
Nursing
Servers
Retail sales associates
Receptionists

Organizational skills

Organizational skills refer to coordinating resources, tasks, and schedules. Time management, project management, and certain leadership skills are key examples of organizational skills.

Here are a few example work experience bullet points that demonstrate organizational skills:

Example of organizaitonal skills in a resume’s work experience bullet points
Created and maintained Asana project boards to track deadlines and deliverables, helping the marketing team complete campaigns 1 week ahead of schedule on average
Oversaw inventory across 3 office locations, maintaining accurate supply levels and reducing last-minute orders
Managed onboarding checklists and training timelines for 10+ new hires, ensuring timely completion of setup and orientation

Strong organizational skills are vital for jobs like:

Teachers
Project managers
Medical assistants
Administrative assistants
Graphic designers

Analytical skills

Analytical skills, also known as problem solving or critical thinking, involve using logic to identify cause-and-effect relationships.

Example of analytical skills in a resume’s work experience bullet points
Reviewed performance data to identify trends and recommend small adjustments that improved results over time
Used reports and metrics to evaluate project success and guide next steps based on what worked best
Analyzed customer feedback to spot patterns and help the team make more informed decisions

To demonstrate analytical thinking on your resume, provide context. Here are two ways to add that context:

List relevant hard skills such as: proficiency in analytical software like GA4 or Tableau
Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to write your bullet points

Strong analytical skills are important for the following professions:

Data analysts
Software engineers
Data scientists
Product managers
Marketers

Don’t forget your transferable skills

Nearly any past experience can be reframed as a transferable skill on your resume. Transferable skills are hard or soft skills that can be applied across different industries or roles.

The transferable skills you should list depend on the requirements of the job posting, so review it carefully. Common transferable skills include presentation skills, research methods, writing, and computer literacy.

Skills are just one part of a winning resume

Whether you’re creating a new resume or updating an existing one, every section matters. Take out the guesswork with our AI-powered resume generator.

Build my resume Share

Facebook

Twitter

Copy link

https://resumegenius.com/blog/resume-help/skills-for-resumeCopiedCopy Rate our article

Click to rate this article

4.8 Average rating

63 people rated this article

Written by

Nathan Soto

Nathan Soto is dedicated to providing practical guidance to job seekers, especially people with nonlinear career paths. Nathan’s articles and career advice have been featured on multiple platforms, including Forbes, MSN, NBC New York, Memphis Business Journal, Newsweek, and Fast Company, offering insights into resume writing, interview preparation, and personal branding. Nathan graduated from the University of Nevada with a double B.A. in French and Music. In addition to writing, he also works as a Mandarin–English translator.