How to Make Your Skills Look Exciting on Your Resume

A resume is the very first introduction of a candidate to a recruiter which plays an important role in landing a job offer. To get a job, one must primarily to know how to impress a recruiter through it.

Why do you think you need to add skills to your resume?

In order to relate your skillset to the specific job role. This is how the recruiter will know you’re fit for the role.

Well, how to write skills in a resume convincingly enough to make it exciting and interesting to read?

Let’s see how.

1. Relevancy

Over the course of your professional life, you may be applying to different job roles and positions, each having its own set of descriptions. Each time you do that, your skills need to be updated and tailor-made as per the current job description.

The skills you write into your resume need to be aligned with what the company has described. You need to do it properly to stay relevant. If your skills fail to demonstrate what you’re bringing to the table, it tends to portray your personality as unfocused.

2. Strongest Skills First

You may have skills you have acquired over the years of your work experience. Ranging from your expertise in them, you need to put the strongest ones first. All skills mentioned need to have a context.

Meaning, if you’ve added ‘Customer Engagement’ as your skill, the recruiter is going to skim through your work experience to see where you have used that skill. Also, compare your strongest skills to the ones needed for the current job you’re applying to and accordingly make changes to it.

3. Segregate The Skills

If you’re writing down 10-15 skills one after another, it’s not going to have enough impact. You need to divide the skills and responsibilities into buckets. This will help you in identifying if these skills are worth mentioning or not.

Segregating the skills into skill buckets will help you convey your abilities very clearly, not only to the recruiter but also to the immediate seniors he/she will pass your resume to.

4. Show Your Skills

Back to each of your skills with relevant examples. As mentioned above, since the skills will have to be in context, support it with specific examples. Just mentioning high-end skills isn’t enough, you need to explain it in your work experience.

You need to show from where you’re claiming to have gained that skill, i.e. its application. In the six seconds of the recruiter scanning your resume, you don’t want him wondering what potential you have.

Sure, MS Office is an important skill too but don’t waste space by adding it since it’s a mandatory prerequisite nowadays. It isn’t adding to your potential anyway. Make sure your narrative is strong and compelling and make sure your skills convey your potential. It’s all in your hands!