While you may have a “Skills” section in your resume, you may not have a “Professional Skills” section. What is the difference? Why is it important to have a “Professional Skills” section?
People have lots of skills. Some people can play instruments. Some people can juggle. Some people can stand on their head. Some people can curl their tongue into a clover shape. While these skills make great party tricks and are fun hobbies and enjoyments, they are not useful in a professional setting. You may think that people would not place playing instruments or juggling in the “Skills” section of their resume, but it does actually happen. People may add some of these skills in order to show some personality or change up their resume. Unfortunately, that personality can also make you look unprofessional and even incompetent. So if you want to make your resume unique, there are better ways to do it.
Get Rid of Personal Skills and Hobbies: As fun as they are, your personal skills are not applicable to a professional setting. Even though they should not be listed on your resume, if you are specifically asked for some of those fun skills during an interview, then you can feel free to speak about them.
List Your Professional Skills: List your professional skills from most applicable to the job to least applicable. If you can’t figure out which skills will be most applicable to the job, start with your strongest skills first, then move down the list.
Title The Section: Instead of titling the section “Skills,” title it “Professional Skills” or “Areas of Expertise”. You could even consider pulling qualifications right from the job description and incorporating those skills (if they are applicable to your skillset) into your list on your resume.
Keep the “personal” out of your resume. Employers want to read about your professional expertise and the value you offer, not about your hobbies and personal interests.
Looking for a job is not always fun, and you need a good resume to help you along in the process. Here’s an important question to consider—does your resume give the impression that you are overqualified for the job you want? Or, are you truly overqualified to get the job that your heart desires?
Having too many qualifications for a job can be detrimental to a job seeker looking for either a different type of position, or one considered “lower”. Deciding how to write your resume properly to get the job you want is a necessity. However, there is one other thing to consider when re-writing your resume, be sure to include the important things. Deleting things from your resume can be very detrimental to your job search, even if you feel it will over-qualify you.
Something else to keep in mind about changing your resume around for the one single job that you want is that the company may have other openings. This is an important point to consider—quite often, a resume will be passed around within a company if the job you want is not available. When you suddenly present a resume that is accurate and different from the original, your prospective employer will be put off. So, the problem that presents itself is how to write the resume, still show that you have a lot of qualifications—but scare possible employers away. You are determined to get a job that you really want, but you are overqualified for it. There may be a number of reasons for your decision to “lower yourself”, and this is something to consider when talking to prospective employers. Once your resume has made it into an employer’s hands, and they seem interested, some will be confused. Why would you want a job that is beneath you? Have some valid reasons to back yourself up. Tell them what made you come to this decision. You don’t need to say, “well, I can’t get anything else”, but you could say something like, “Yes, I know I might be a little overqualified, but this type of position has always interested me and I think having these extra skills could really impact the position and what it could do for ABC Co.” etc. Changing industries and jobs may be more difficult to do due to your being over qualified. On the other hand, your willingness to learn something new may make all the difference in the world when the prospective employer considers you for the job. It does not matter if you are overqualified for a job or not—it is still possible to get it.Communicating properly—both verbally and through demonstrating an eagerness to learn and change—will make a huge impression.
