Skills to put on a resume: what to pick, where to list them, examples by field.

How to choose the right skills for each job

1. Read the job post twice. Highlight every skill, tool and certification it names. Note which ones it repeats or lists under "required".
2. Mark the ones you have. Be honest: could you talk about it for two minutes in an interview?
3. Use their wording. If the post says "Salesforce" and "pipeline management", use those words rather than "CRM" and "sales funnel".
4. Add your strongest extras. One or two skills the post doesn't mention but that make you stand out in the role.

The free job description keyword scanner does steps 1 and 2 for you: it ranks the skills a posting mentions and shows which ones your resume already has.

Where to put skills on your resume

Skills belong in three places, not one:

• A skills section near the top or bottom, with 6 to 12 hard skills, tools and certifications. Group them if you have many.
• Your summary, which names the two or three most important ones for this job.
• Your bullets, where each skill shows up in a result: "Built a Tableau dashboard that cut weekly reporting from 6 hours to 1".

Applicant tracking systems read the whole resume, not just the skills section, and to a recruiter a skill shown in a result is far more convincing than one that only sits in a list. Here's what a compact skills section looks like:

Soft skills: show them, don't list them

Anyone can type "excellent communication skills". A bullet that shows the skill at work is what convinces a reader. Here are common soft skills with a weak and a strong way to show each:

If the job post lists a soft skill as a requirement, it's fine to name it in your summary too. Just make sure a bullet backs it up. The resume action verbs guide has more ways to start these bullets.

Transferable skills for a career change

Changing fields? Your old job taught you skills the new one needs; you just have to name them in the new field's language. A few common ones:

• Training and coaching

  From: Teacher, shift lead, nurse preceptor

  Into: Onboarding, customer success, L&D

• Budgeting

  From: Club treasurer, store manager, event planner

  Into: Operations, project management, finance

• Customer service

  From: Retail, hospitality, call centers

  Into: Account management, sales, support

• Data and reporting

  From: Any job where you tracked numbers in Excel

  Into: Analyst, operations, marketing

• Scheduling and coordination

  From: Restaurants, clinics, logistics

  Into: Project coordination, admin, operations

• Writing

  From: Teaching, research, social media

  Into: Content, communications, documentation

• De-escalation

  From: Healthcare, security, retail

  Into: Customer support, HR, social services

• Process improvement

  From: Any role where you fixed a recurring problem

  Into: Operations, quality, business analysis

Put transferable skills in your summary and in your most recent bullets, written as results. The career change cover letter shows how to explain the move.

Skills to put on a resume, by field

The most common hard skills and tools across our resume examples in each field. Use them as a starting point, then check the job post. Open a role for its full keyword list, sorted into skills, tools and certifications.

How many skills should you list?

Six to twelve in a skills section is a good range for most resumes. Fewer can look thin; many more and the important ones get lost. Technical roles with lots of tools can go higher, grouped into short labeled lines like the example above.

Quality beats quantity: every skill on the list should be one you'd be glad to be asked about.

Common mistakes with resume skills

• Listing skills you can't back up. Interviewers often pick something from your list and ask you to explain it.
• Rating yourself with bars or stars. "Python ★★★★☆" means nothing to a reader, and many applicant tracking systems can't read graphics.
• Generic skills only. "Microsoft Office" and "teamwork" don't separate you from anyone.
• Ignoring the job post's wording. If you call it something different, a keyword search can miss it.
• Putting skills in a sidebar or table. Some parsers skip them. A plain section with commas or short lines is safest.

Run the free ATS check to see how software reads your skills section.