How to Feature Key Skills on Your Resume

Including a skills section on your resume can be a fantastic opportunity to list the specific competencies you’ve developed to do a job successfully. Potential employers often look for job skills on your resume, which typically include a mix of technical skills (software and tools you know) and workplace skills (how you do your work and what type of team member you’d be). 

However, you can use a few other places on your resume to showcase your skill set, building on what you share in your skills section. In this article, we’ll go over the important skills a recruiter or hiring manager likely wants to see on your resume, how to format a specific skills section and other ways you can highlight your unique talents. 

Formatting the skills section of a resume 

You have a few different formatting options for your resume, but the two most common are chronological and functional. A chronological resume lists your experience by year and role, usually starting with your most recent position and moving backward. A functional resume, on the other hand, focuses more on your overall skills rather than the defined roles you hold.  

When it comes to a resume skills section, a functional resume might seem to make more sense because it provides you with the most space to discuss your distinctive skill set. Instead, thanks to the number of companies that now use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to parse resumes, it may be better to use a chronological resume so that the algorithm accurately reads the scope of your experience. In that case,  you can use additional strategies to weave your skills throughout a chronological resume, giving you more opportunities than a skills section alone to discuss your know-how. 

Read more: 10 Ways to Improve Your Resume

What to put in the skills section of your resume

When you write the skills section of your resume, you’ll want to include both hard skills—the technical skills you need to perform your duties at work—and soft skills—the people skills that are transferable from job to job. You can also think of these as personal skills and professional skills: skills you use everywhere in your life, like communication and critical thinking, versus skills you use mostly at work, like creating presentations, writing marketing copy, preparing data analysis, or debugging a software program. 

3 ways to highlight skills on your resume

Let’s go over three places on your resume to highlight your skills and strengths: 

1. Dedicated skills section 

Use the skills section on your resume to discuss your technical and workplace skills (sometimes called hard and soft skills). It helps to review a job description, noting the required and recommended skills, so you can list those first (as long as you really do know them).

For example, if you have experience working in several different content management systems (CMS), but a job specifically uses one platform, list that platform first before detailing the others. 

Your skills section should be divided into bullet points that list your skills (see the first example below) or group your skills by major job function (see the second example below).  

Skills

• Proficient in C++ and Python

• Experience with Django, Laravel, and Meteor

• Familiar with Javascript, Kubernetes, Docker

• Knowledge of network security protocols

• Problem-solving, teamwork, attention to detail

Key skills 

• Programming: Python, Java

• Frameworks: Django, Meteor, Laravel 

• Servers: NGINX and Apache

2. Resume summary or resume objective

Not every resume needs a summary or objective, but they can be useful sections to include when you’re just beginning your career or looking to pivot to something new. Use that space to mention your workplace and interpersonal skills, including the attributes you think most align with a job description. The bolded words in the resume summary below are key skills that can suggest your readiness to start a new role. 

Summary: Motivated and discerning brand manager with seven years of leadership experience using data to drive actionable, empathetic insights that lead to higher consumer awareness and engagement.

3. Previous experience 

When you build a chronological resume, each of your previous roles is a space to talk about your experience using action words that can also call attention to your transferable and technical skills. With each bullet point that discusses what you did (and, ideally, the results you achieved), you can reference your wider skill set, augmenting what you share in a skills section. 

Below, you’ll see transferable skills in bold. As you catalog your previous responsibilities, choose words that will help potential employers get a clearer sense of your overall skills. 

Pharmacy technician, XYZ Pharmacy (May 2019—present) 

• Managed new and refill prescriptions for over 300 patients, regularly reviewing and organizing medical histories.  

• Processed patient insurance, resolving conflicts as needed and ensuring quality customer service experience. 

• Proactively cleaned the pharmacy, contributing to the department’s overall order and organization. 

3 tips for creating a strong skills section of your resume

Knowing your skills, tailoring your skills section to each job, and focusing on the most important skills can strengthen your resume's dedicated skills section. 

1. Know what you’re working with. 

You may not always list every skill you have on your resume—in fact, doing so may create a more unfocused document— but you should know the skills you offer. In that case, it can help to list everything in one place. Reflect on your technical, workplace, interpersonal, and transferable skills, creating a large “master list” you can work from as you tailor your resume. 

2. Tailor your skills for each job. 

Your resume should be a focused document that details your ability to do a job. With that in mind, review each job description and align your skills with the necessary skills a company wants top candidates to have. For example, if a job description mentions “attention to detail,” find a way to spotlight that skill as you discuss your personal experience. 

3. Cut less relevant skills. 

A resume is a finite amount of space. A good rule of thumb is to keep your resume to one page if you have less than ten years of experience and expand it once you have acquired ten years or more. It’s important to be discerning in the skills you need to feature to include the best ones for each application. As you tailor your resume for each job, cut skills that either aren’t as critical or unrelated to the work you’ll be doing. 

Read more: How Far Back Should Your Resume Go?

Example skills section in a resume

Whether you format your skills using bullet points or categories, your skills section should either appear near the top of your resume or near the bottom. Although you can customize your resume as needed, it may help to keep it close to your education section and use those sections to supplement your professional experience. Look at the example below for guidance.

Learn more about resumes on Coursera.

Writing a compelling resume skills section can help you demonstrate to potential employers why your unique set of skills will benefit you in the job you’re applying for. Interested in bolstering your resume? Gain fresh insight with the State University of New York’s project-centered course How to Write a Resume. You can also strengthen your resume with a Professional Certificate from Google, IBM, or Meta, which is designed to help you develop job-ready skills in areas like UX design, data science, project management, marketing analytics, and sales. 

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