Skills to Put on a Resume: 40+ Practical Examples
The best skills to put on a resume are the capabilities the employer needs and you can prove. Start with the job description, choose a focused mix of technical and transferable skills, and support the strongest ones with evidence in your experience section.
List six to twelve relevant skills, using the employer's terminology when it truthfully matches your experience. Prioritize tools, methods, languages, credentials, and job-specific capabilities. Demonstrate broad strengths such as communication or leadership in accomplishment bullets.
A skills section is a signpost, not proof by itself. Use it to make important qualifications easy to find, then show where you applied them. If you need a stronger introduction first, review how to write a resume summary.
How to choose skills for your resume
Build the list from evidence, not from a generic collection of popular traits. The U.S. Department of Labor-supported O*NET OnLine provides occupation profiles with skills, tasks, knowledge, and technology used across more than 900 occupations.
1. Mark the skills in the job description
Separate required qualifications from preferred ones. Note software, methods, certifications, languages, equipment, and recurring verbs such as analyze, coordinate, teach, repair, or negotiate.
2. Match each skill to real evidence
For every candidate skill, identify a job, project, class, volunteer role, or credential that supports it. Remove skills you could not explain in an interview or demonstrate on the job.
3. Prioritize by relevance and distinctiveness
Put essential job skills first. Then add capabilities that make your background more useful, such as industry knowledge, a second language, or experience with a tool named in the posting.
A useful resume skill is specific enough to evaluate and important enough to the job that an employer would notice if it were missing.
Resume skills examples by category
Treat these examples as prompts. Choose only the skills that fit the role and your actual experience, then use a more precise name when the field has established terminology.
Communication
- Business writing
- Presentations
- Active listening
- Customer communication
- Negotiation
- Technical documentation
Leadership and collaboration
- Project coordination
- Team training
- Stakeholder management
- Conflict resolution
- Delegation
- Cross-functional collaboration
Analysis and operations
- Data analysis
- Process improvement
- Budget tracking
- Quality assurance
- Inventory management
- Research
Digital and technical
- Microsoft Excel
- Google Workspace
- SQL
- Python
- CRM software
- Content management systems
Additional job-specific examples
| Field | Examples |
|---|---|
| Marketing | SEO, campaign reporting, email automation, copy editing, Google Analytics |
| Software | TypeScript, React, API design, automated testing, Git, accessibility |
| Finance | Financial modeling, forecasting, variance analysis, reconciliation, Excel |
| Healthcare | Patient education, clinical documentation, care coordination, electronic health records |
| Operations | Scheduling, procurement, inventory control, vendor management, process mapping |
How to write a resume skills section
CareerOneStop recommends focusing a dedicated skills section on technical and job-specific skills, while showing soft skills in the summary or other evidence. Use a clear heading and compact phrases rather than ratings that the reader cannot interpret.
Too broad
Communication, leadership, hard worker, computer skills, team player
More useful
SQL · Tableau · Excel (Power Query, pivot tables) · Forecasting · Executive presentations
Group long lists under labels such as Languages, Tools, Methods, or Certifications. Avoid progress bars and star ratings unless a recognized proficiency scale exists.
Prove important skills in your experience
Turn a skill into an accomplishment by naming the action, context, and result. CareerOneStop's resume guidance recommends describing what you did, why you did it, for whom, and what changed as a result.
Built a weekly Excel forecast for 14 retail locations, helping managers identify stock risks three days earlier.
The bullet proves Excel, forecasting, analysis, and stakeholder support without listing four unsupported claims. Use numbers only when they are accurate and add meaningful context.
Skills section mistakes to avoid
- Copying every keyword from the job description.
- Listing personality traits without evidence.
- Using vague labels such as “computer skills.”
- Including outdated or irrelevant software.
- Claiming an advanced level you cannot demonstrate.
- Repeating the same list in the summary and experience sections.
Resume skills checklist
- Every skill is relevant to the target role.
- The most important capabilities appear first.
- Tools and methods use precise, recognizable names.
- Your strongest skills are supported by examples elsewhere.
- The section is short enough to scan quickly.
- Spelling and capitalization are consistent.
Once you have chosen the skills to put on your resume, open the free resume builder and check that the surrounding experience proves your most important claims.