How to describe your skills on your resume

Employment Preparation

skills“As a major contributor to this blog and career specialist working directly with students and employers to assist in making connections, I have had the unique opportunity to review a lot of resumes. In fact, in the last six months, I have reviewed approximately 300 resumes – all belonging to SPC students.”

Student or not, describing previous employment on a resume can be tricky. When I wrote earlier, I explained that we’re talking about Skills and Accomplishments, not job duties.

Let’s begin in reverse order, Accomplishments. This means any awards, rewards, or promotions that you received. Don’t tell the name of the award, but rather the merit (eg. “Received Exemplary Customer Service Award three months consecutively”, not “Won Purple Pickle award 3x”).

Skills are a little more difficult.

  1. The first step to highlighting your skills are to uncover what they are. Local career services centers can help provide assessments for uncovering your skills. There are also a lot of websites which offer skills assessments, like this one. Once you’ve assessed your skills, assign them to jobs that you’ve previously held, and rank them based on utility concerning your prospective job. This will decide what you will talk about and the order of the bullet points (I recommend only 2-4 bullets total – skills and accomplishments, combined).
  2. The second step is to find strong wording. How you word your skills can give totally different impressions to the potential employer. Consider the following two sentences: “Clean toilets, scrub floors” and “Maintained sanitary conditions for guests”. One of those sounds like more of a skill. To get inspiration for wording, I suggest that you Google “100 great resume words” and click on one of the links. Using a strong verb will lead to a strong bullet.
  3. The third recommendation for your skills bullets are numbers. Where possible, add numbers to back up your point. Earlier I told you that I have reviewed approximately 300 resumes in the previous six months, this makes a much more significant impression than “I review a lot of resumes”. Consider this and use numbers to make a lasting brand.For resume reviews, contact Career Services online or at a campus near you. Happy Job Searching!