Skills for resume: what to put on yours, with examples by job

A skill is something you can do and repeat at another employer: reconcile accounts payable, run a register during the lunch rush, start an IV, write SQL queries, close a sale. On a resume, skills answer the hiring manager's first question: can this person do the job from day one?

CareerOneStop, the career site sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, explains that employers describe jobs in terms of knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs), and that skills come in two types: technical skills, which are job-specific (cooking, flying a plane, teaching) and appear in job listings to describe tasks, and soft skills, which apply to many jobs (communication, punctuality, teamwork). It adds that employers often prioritize skills, which is why identifying and highlighting them on your resume matters.

Recruiters read fast. According to CareerOneStop's resume advice, a person typically scans a resume for 15 to 20 seconds, so your qualifications need to be easy to find and written with terms that match the job posting.

Software reads first. Most U.S. employers receive applications through an applicant tracking system (ATS), and the same source notes that an ATS can be set to filter out resumes that lack essential criteria, such as a software skill, a credential or years of management experience. Your skills section is where those criteria are easiest to find, for the software and for the person who reads your resume next.

Hard skills are technical: you learn them in school, in training or on the job, and someone can test them. Soft skills describe how you work and deal with people. Employers want both: the first show you can do the work, the second that you can do it with a team, with customers and on deadline.

Write each one in two to four words, the way it appears in job postings. Some examples by field:

• Accounting and finance: accounts payable, accounts receivable, bank reconciliation, payroll, budgeting, QuickBooks, month-end close.
• Sales and marketing: lead generation, cold calling, account management, Salesforce, HubSpot, SEO, Google Ads, email marketing.
• Project management: scheduling, budget tracking, Agile, Scrum, Jira, vendor management, risk assessment.
• Healthcare: patient assessment, vital signs, medication administration, EHR documentation (Epic, Cerner), phlebotomy, HIPAA compliance.
• Customer service and retail: POS systems, cash handling, order processing, returns and exchanges, inventory, visual merchandising.
• Warehouse and manufacturing: forklift operation, pick and pack, RF scanners, inventory control, quality inspection, preventive maintenance.
• Data and IT: Excel (pivot tables, XLOOKUP), SQL, Python, Tableau, Power BI, help desk support, Microsoft 365 administration.
• Food service and hospitality: food safety, table service, bartending, opening and closing procedures, reservation systems.

The soft skills employers ask for are well known: communication, teamwork, problem-solving, adaptability, time management, attention to detail, leadership, customer focus. Pick two to four that the posting mentions and that you can back up in an interview.

A soft skill on its own says little. It convinces when a specific situation proves it:

The second version shows leadership, organization and problem-solving without naming them. Put this kind of sentence in your experience bullets and in your resume summary, and keep the skills list for what can be named in a few words.

• Office software: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Google Workspace. Be specific: “Excel (pivot tables, XLOOKUP)” says more than “Excel.”
• Software of your trade: Epic in a hospital, QuickBooks in a small business, Salesforce in sales, AutoCAD in drafting, Adobe Creative Cloud in design.
• Generative AI: if you use it at work, say for what (drafting, summarizing, analyzing data).
• Languages: with a level a recruiter can read, such as “Spanish (professional working proficiency)” or “Spanish (fluent).” Being bilingual is a real plus for customer-facing jobs in many U.S. cities.
• Certifications and licenses: RN license, CPR/BLS, ServSafe, forklift certification, CompTIA A+, PMP, a commercial driver's license (CDL). List the ones the job asks for, with the issuing body.

Five to ten in the skills section. Fewer than five looks thin; more than ten buries the ones that matter. The best skills for a resume are the ones the job posting asks for and you can prove. To pick them:

1. Highlight the posting: every tool, method, credential and requirement it names. Those are the skills the employer screens for.
2. Go through your background: tasks, projects, the software you use every day, recent training.
3. Keep only what you can actually do: a recruiter will ask about it in the interview.
4. Compare with other postings for the same job title, to spot the skills that come up every time.
5. Order them by importance for this job, not by the order you learned them.

• In a dedicated section with a standard heading: “Skills,” “Technical Skills” or “Core Competencies.” It usually comes after experience and education, or near the top for a career changer.
• In your experience bullets: each bullet shows a skill in action, with a number when you have one.
• In your summary: two or three skills the job asks for, right under your name and job title.
• In your cover letter: the one skill that matters most for the job, with an example that isn't on the resume. The cover letter generator starts from the posting.

Watch out for sidebars. CareerOneStop's formatting advice recommends a simple, single-column layout, because ATS software scans resumes left to right. When you apply through a company's careers portal, a one-column template is the safest choice.

• One skill per line or per item, two to four words: “Project management,” “Advanced Excel,” “TIG welding.”
• Levels in words: beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert. Bars and stars look nice, but an ATS reads the word more reliably.
• Grouped when the list is long: technical skills, software, languages, certifications.
• Backed up: a credential, a project or a number in your experience for your most important skills.

Twelve resume skills examples you can adapt. Keep the structure, swap in the tools and credentials from your own posting.

Without work experience, your skills come from school, projects, volunteering, clubs, babysitting, summer jobs. Hiring managers know an entry-level applicant doesn't have everything: they compare you to other beginners. Name the software you learned, a language, a group project delivered on time, the register you ran at a weekend job.

Changing careers? List the skills you already use that the new job also asks for: customer service, scheduling, a common software. Those are your transferable skills, and they go first. CareerOneStop's free Skills Matcher and mySkills myFuture tools can help you find careers that use the skills you already have.

See our examples of a resume with no work experience and a high school student resume.

• Buzzwords with no proof: “hard worker,” “self-starter,” “detail-oriented.” Every resume has them, so they don't set you apart.
• The obvious: email and web browsing are not skills worth listing for most jobs.
• Inflated levels: “fluent Spanish” or “expert Excel” that don't survive two questions in an interview.
• One resume for every application: adjust the skills section to each posting, in five minutes, with its words.
• Copying the posting word for word: only list what you can do. The recruiter will check during the hiring process.

Upload your resume to the Kandiq resume checker and add the job posting: the report shows which terms from the posting your resume covers and which ones are missing. It also checks that you list at least five skills and that they are spelled out in words, not only as bars. The score comes from fixed rules, not from AI, and every piece of advice is shown in full before you pay anything.

In the Kandiq resume builder, the “Your skills” step is complete at five named skills, each with a level from Novice to Expert, and software has its own “Software and tools” section (titled “Technical Skills” on the resume) next to languages and certifications. With a job posting attached, the editor lists the terms from the posting: add them only if they describe what you can actually do. The “Suggest skills” button reads your experience and the posting and suggests up to twelve hard skills, worded the way postings in your field write them, for 1 AI credit (you get 5 when you sign up). It never suggests soft skills like “Adaptability” or “Team spirit”: those are better proven in your experience.