When you’re creating a CV, the skills section is arguably the most important part.
It’s a key tool in your arsenal for demonstrating competency in a quick and easy-to-understand format – perfect for hiring managers or recruiters that are screening multiple applications. The skills section should outline any ‘hard skills’ and ‘soft skills’ you have that are relevant to the role you’re applying for.
But what are the best skills to put on a CV? It can be difficult to know which you should highlight and which you should omit.
Below we outline the top skills to put on a CV, especially those that are useful across various industries or job roles.
What are the Best Skills to Put on a CV?
When you first start writing a CV, take the time to do two things.
Firstly, establish your own skill set down to the very minor details.
Secondly, read through the job description for the role you’re applying for.
When you’re armed with all of this information, you’ll be in a fantastic place to create a bespoke, relevant CV that grabs the reader’s attention and provides an incredibly persuasive argument about why you’re the best person for the job.
Think about this: If you send the same CV out to five different employers across five different industries, you’re not going to be presenting yourself in the best light as it won’t be specifically tailored to them. Your CV is a flexible document and while it’s fine to have an initial template to start with, the finished product should jump out to the hiring manager due to how relevant it is.
To make this process easier, we’re laying out the best skills to put on a CV that are universal. Obviously different roles require different specific skill sets, which is up to you to lay out. What you’ll find below is some of the top things employers are looking for that are relatively desirable regardless of where you’re working.
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7 Best Skills to Put on a CV
Here are the seven best skills to put on a CV based on how universally useful they are across multiple industries or sectors:
- Communication skills
- Problem-solving skills
- Time management skills
- Leadership skills
- Active listening skills
- Interpersonal skills
With these in mind, let’s break down exactly what these skills entail, why they’re useful and how to highlight them effectively:
1. Communication skills
Communication skills are necessary in every single job in the world, unless you work on your own and never speak to anyone. We use communication skills every day in the workplace, even if you don’t realise it.
When you write an email; speak with someone on the phone, provide feedback to a colleague or report on your progress to management, you’re utilising communication skills. The difference between good communication skills and bad communication skills is how effective you are at doing these things.
If you often find that you’re getting into long email threads requiring clarification, you might need to improve your written communication skills. If you regularly give feedback within a wider team that is received well and leads to success, you have excellent verbal communication skills and excel at constructive criticism.
When you want to demonstrate your communication skills, consider highlighting strengths such as public speaking, job interviewing, written communication or the ability to project manage.
2. Problem-solving skills
Problems present themselves in every workplace – it’s how you deal with them that employers want to understand. If you’re able to identify and provide solutions to these problems, you’ll quickly become a more valuable potential employee.
Problem-solving skills directly impact your ability to determine the source of a problem, come up with potential fixes and then execute the solution. This may require technical skills or simply thinking outside the box – it all depends on the problem.
While problem-solving may feel difficult to quantify, you typically want to show examples of attention-to-detail, collaboration, common sense or research.
3. Time management skills
Time management skills represent both your punctuality and your ability to organise your time effectively – both of which are highly desirable with employers. Making effective use of the time you have available is particularly useful across a multitude of industries and roles as this directly impacts your productivity, goal setting and large-scale organisation.
This is particularly true in a professional, team-based setting where you’ll often be working to various deadlines or juggling multiple tasks at once and have a team reliant on these milestones being met.
A key part of building out your time management skills is understanding how you like to work, how your team works and the different ways your company operates. Once you understand this, you’ll be in a better position to allocate your own time and make effective use of your working hours.
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4. Leadership skills
Many people think that leadership skills are just for managers but fundamentally, great leadership skills directly help everyone’s ability to make decisions, delegate tasks, communicate effectively and act as a positive force within a wider team.
You can still be a good leader and steer teams to success without working in management, in fact, employers find this extremely desirable. In general, good leadership skills include empathy, communication and the ability to make strong, intuitive decisions.
When it comes to working in management, obviously it’s better to have a mix of soft and hard skills – particularly those related to leadership. A good manager should have a deep understanding of what skills their industry requires and then the ability to delegate the right team members with the right skills.
5. Active listening skills
Active listening is an often misunderstood but incredibly useful skill to have in the professional world – especially those who are just starting out in their career. While this skill has some overlap with both communication and interpersonal skills, it’s definitely something specific you can work at and demonstrate on a daily basis.
When you utilise active listening, you’re using your ability to focus on what’s being said, processing it and then responding with thoughtful follow-up questions. You’ll use verbal and non-verbal communication skills such as maintaining eye contact, taking notes and asking relevant questions.
This is an important skill to have as it ensures colleagues, customers and managers feel you’re engaging with them and truly interested in what they’re saying.
6. Interpersonal skills
When you interact with colleagues, customers or management, you’ll utilise your interpersonal skills. Having good interpersonal skills allows you to navigate times of conflict, effectively provide feedback in collaborative projects and provide performance reports to stakeholders.
While interpersonal skills are extremely useful in any professional setting, they’re basically vital in customer service.
If you’re looking to demonstrate interpersonal skills on a CV you’ll want to highlight your ability to lead discussions, drive meetings with the wider team or even show how well you work with others.