Related: Top Resume Skills
Learn more about what hard skills and soft skills to put on a resume so it stands out from the others.
When crafting a resume, professionals often dedicate one section to describing their skills. The skills you choose to highlight when applying for a job help employers understand your exceptional abilities and the traits that define your work ethic. If you're preparing to write a resume, you might benefit from learning about different types of skills employers value.
In this article, we explain why it's important to share your skills on your resume and provide 120 examples of skills that might describe your unique qualifications.
Why is it important to list skills on your resume?
Listing skills on your resume is important because it enables employers to understand if you're the best candidate for a job. Foremost, employers want to know if you have the baseline skills you need to perform core duties. Beyond these essential skills, your other talents and capabilities differentiate you from other candidates. You might have skills that offer an organization the opportunity to include a new or beneficial perspective.
From applicants' points of view, listing skills on a resume is part of defining their professional identity. Some skills and credentials are not subjective, such as knowing a coding language or having a certain degree. However, many of the skills you choose to share represent how you want employers to perceive you or how you want to benefit them. For instance, you may work in a primarily technical field, such as computer engineering, but if you want your next job to serve as a transition toward managerial roles, you might include skills relating to leadership and communication on your resume.
120 skills to list on your resume
Professional skills generally fall into one of two categories: hard skills or soft skills. Here are explanations of those skills and some subcategories of each, illustrated with 120 examples:
Soft skills
Soft skills are those that characterize how professionals conduct themselves and how they perform their work. They enable individuals to collaborate successfully and contribute to positive workplaces. Types of soft skills include:
Communication skills
Communication skills describe how you share and receive information, offer your opinions and express yourself in writing or in speech. Communication is the foundation of team-based work that translates to organizational success. It also limits errors, costs and dangers that accompany misunderstanding or a lack of communication. Examples of these skills are: 1. Active listening 2. Storytelling 3. Written communication 4. Editing 5. Teaching 6. Negotiating 7. Open-mindedness 8. Inquiring 9. Body language 10. Customer service 11. Presenting 12. Summarizing 13. Nonverbal communication 14. Documenting 15. Reporting
Interpersonal skills
Interpersonal skills enable you to support a respectful and positive work environment. They characterize your ability to interpret emotional cues from team members and clients and react productively. Employers can depend on employees with strong interpersonal talents to build strong relationships with coworkers, representatives from other businesses and customers. Some interpersonal skills include: 1. Patience 2. Positivity 3. Conflict management 4. Coaching 5. Mediating 6. Motivating 7. Compassion 8. Caring 9. Networking 10. Inspiring 11. Flexibility 12. Collaboration 13. Sourcing feedback 14. Reliability 15. Empathy
Critical thinking skills
Critical thinking skills empower you to assess situations and data efficiently, creatively and accurately. Employees with exceptional critical thinking skills often find new solutions to complex problems and help organizations innovate. To portray your critical thinking abilities, you might list: 1. Observing 2. Problem-solving 3. Inferring 4. Simplifying 5. Conceptual thinking 6. Evaluating 7. Streamlining 8. Creative thinking 9. Brainstorming 10. Cost-benefit analyzing 11. Deductive reasoning 12. Inductive reasoning 13. Assessing 14. Evidence collecting 15. Troubleshooting
Leadership skills
Leadership skills shape how professionals set examples, maintain their integrity and help their colleagues succeed. They enable individuals to influence their entire team, boosting collective productivity and employee satisfaction. Businesses need people with leadership skills to make key decisions and form insightful strategies that accomplish goals. Leadership skills include: 1. Mentoring 2. Envisioning 3. Goal-setting 4. Employee development 5. Performance reviewing 6. Managing 7. Planning 8. Delegating 9. Directing 10. Supervising 11. Training 12. Earning trust 13. Influencing 14. Adapting 15. Crisis managing
Hard skills
Hard skills are those that professionals can formally learn and then demonstrate their mastery of by performing concrete tasks. Employers can measure candidates' hard skills by observing your work, reviewing credentials, asking technical questions and giving tests. It's therefore important to represent your skill level accurately when referencing any hard skill on your resume. Hard skills include:
Technical skills
Technical skills describe the ability to apply expertise to tasks that require a formal understanding. These skills are usually the combined product of education and training, where professionals study specific methods of accomplishing something and then become proficient through practice. Common technical skills are: 1. Accounting 2. Word processing 3. Spreadsheet building 4. Coding 5. Programming 6. Operating equipment 7. Engineering 8. Experimenting 9. Testing 10. Constructing 11. Restoring 12. Product developing 13. Quality controlling 14. Blueprint drafting 15. Repairing
Language skills
Language skills are the practices professionals use when communicating with another language community. They could involve speaking a specialized, local or technical form of English (a dialect), or they might entail communicating in other languages. Beyond understanding and speaking, language skills require a level of comprehension that enables someone to follow a language community's practices.
While language skills are communication-based and therefore similar to many soft skills, because they can be correct or incorrect to members of a language community, they are also a form of hard skills. Examples of language skills are: 1. Translating 2. Speaking 3. Writing 4. Conversing 5. Reinterpreting 6. Public speaking 7. Following etiquette 8. Explaining 9. Respecting 10. Signaling 11. Proofreading 12. Introducing 13. Representing 14. Rephrasing 15. Code-switching
Design skills
Design skills involve creativity, but they also often require formal training. Design skills entail knowledge of specialized tools, concepts and processes. Companies rely on professionals with design skills to create products and experiences that consumers appreciate and want to continue purchasing. You might highlight design skills such as: 1. Graphic designing 2. Illustrating 3. Sketching 4. Architecture 5. User experience development 6. User interface development 7. Typography 8. Layout development 9. Web designing 10. Interior designing 11. Data visualizing 12. Hierarchical arranging 13. Aligning 14. Photo and video editing 15. Wireframing
Analytical skills
Analytical skills empower professionals to organize complex sets of information, interpret them and draw meaningful conclusions. They help identify patterns and trends so that companies can better understand past events and predict future ones. Analytical skills you might mention could include: 1. Researching 2. Interpreting 3. Information processing 4. Organizing 5. Processing 6. Graphing 7. Computing 8. Calculating 9. Modeling 10. Extrapolating 11. Predicting 12. Forecasting 13. Investigating 14. Surveying 15. Statistical analysis
Nonverbal communication is one of many tools that can help you make a good impression in interviews and in your professional life. However, candidate assessments should be based on skills and qualifications, and workplaces should strive to be inclusive and understanding of individual differences in communication styles.