There are many skills you can put on your resume, but there are two specific skills that are very important to employers and will help upgrade your resume:
Customer Service
Strong Work Ethic
These skills are important in almost any field of work, and here is why:
Customer Service: Companies have customers. That is how they make money. They get paid by a customer, a client, another company, etc. to perform their purpose as a company, making customer satisfaction a very important facet of their business. If their customers are not happy, then the company will lose business and money. How do they keep those customers happy? By providing the customer with the product or service and providing it through employees that exhibit excellent customer service. If you have learned how to be an excellent executor of customer service, and you express this on your resume, you will be at the top of the list for jobs, because employers will know that you will help keep their customers happy and help them make money.
Strong Work Ethic: Micro-managing is one of the most inefficient forms of management. It keeps supervisors from getting more things done and it keeps employees from feeling that they enjoy their work. If you have to be micro-managed in order to get your work done, you are wasting time and losing revenue for the company. However, if you are able to work well on your own without supervision and can produce good work independently, then you are working more efficiently and in turn, helping the company save and earn money.
If you have both of these skills, and show where you have used these skills throughout your career, you need to make sure that you feature them prominently in your resume. If you don’t have these skills, then learn them. Work on them and learn how to utilize customer service and a strong work ethic in any situation so that you can upgrade your resume and land a great job.
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.
Getting a job is hard. It is even harder when you have just graduated and have little or no work experience. In this case your education and your skills will say more to your potential employers than your small amount of work experience.
The skills you gain at a job are very useful in other jobs and therefore are good to put on your resume, but what about the skills you have gained while at school? Well, there are many that are just as useful in the work field and you should let your potential employers know that you have those skills. Here are some examples of skills that will help improve your resume:
Computer Skills: Knowing how to use a computer is pretty much a necessity nowadays. Luckily, you can learn those computer skills at most schools and therefore you can put those skills on your resume. It will make your employer’s life easier if they don’t have to teach you the basics of computers when they hire you.
Teamwork and Leadership Skills: Whether you were on a sports team, student council, choir, band, or involved in theater, you probably gained some very good skills in working with other people and being a leader. This is important because you will be working with all sorts of new people and eventually leading people and the fact that you know how to work with and lead people is important to your potential employers.
Various Field Specific Skills: Depending on what you are applying for you may have some skills that are more specific to that job. That will be up to you to decide which skills are applicable and helpful in landing the job.
Now you have an idea of what skills you have and which ones you can bring to the table even with little or no work experience.
People are diverse. People are multi-talented. Every person has a unique set of skills that makes them unique and interesting.Now, while all those skills are interesting or useful in the right time and place, you need to determine when it is appropriate to list certain skills on your resume and when it is not.
For the most part, you do not want to put down skills that you have gained from hobbies. If your employer asks about your hobbies during an interview, feel free to briefly discuss your interests, but do not put “riding a unicycle” on your resume. Most employers do not want to hear about your personal interests, they want to hear about the skills you have that will add value to their company. Unless your hobbies directly relate to the position you’re applying for, leave them off of your resume.
Before you start writing your resume, write down your skills and decide which ones will be useful in almost any job. Computer technology and team building skills are always good to put down on a resume. Aside from those, you will want to put down skills that are tailored to meet the needs of the company and position you are applying for. If you are applying to be a Research Assistant, and you have had experience with a library system, that would be a good skill to put on your resume because it is directly applicable to the situation.
There are many skills that can be used in a variety of situations. You need to figure out which of your skills are best suited to the jobs you’re applying for. This will keep your resume from looking unprofessional or cluttered and will help your potential employers see the value and expertise you will offer when hired.
There are many skills you can put on your resume, but there are two specific skills that are very important to employers and will help upgrade your resume:
