Stand Out from the Crowd
If you’re interested in making a career move, it’s time to refresh your resume to highlight your unique skill set. While traditional skills like time management, problem-solving and active listening are valuable, they’re also very common, and many applicants will include them on their resumes. To make your resume pop and grab the attention of hiring managers, you may want to consider replacing these with more distinctive skills.
Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills
Let’s start by clarifying the two major categories skills fall under. Hard skills, often called technical skills, are learned abilities. These are typically acquired through education or hands-on experience and are easy to quantify. Examples of hard skills include typing speed, foreign language fluency, software knowledge and anything that is supported by degrees or certifications.
On the other hand, soft skills are more innate and can be difficult to quantify. Soft skills are your personality traits, social competencies and any other traits that show how you work independently and with others. Common examples of soft skills are interpersonal skills, decision-making, conflict resolution and problem-solving.
Unique Soft Skills
In this article, we’ll be focusing on unique soft skills you can highlight on your resume, as you should always list all the hard skills you possess that are relevant to the job description.
Adaptive Thinking
Adaptive thinking is the ability to respond quickly and effectively to changing circumstances. For example, imagine you work in customer service, and you’re given a script to follow for customer interactions. If you were speaking with a customer and they asked you something that your script couldn’t answer, you would need to be able to adapt quickly and provide the customer with an intelligent response.
Cross-Cultural Competence
Cross-cultural competence means you can effectively interact with people of different cultures, whether they are your coworkers, clients, or customers. This skill requires knowledge and appreciation of other cultures, patience and empathy. A related hard skill is proficiency in a foreign language.
Cross-cultural competency requires understanding that beliefs, values and attitudes differ across cultures, and it allows employees to consider other people’s perspectives and avoid making quick judgments. This skill is becoming increasingly valued in our globalized society.
Self-Motivation
Self-motivation is another skill that employers value. It involves an intrinsic drive to meet goals. It's accomplished by looking at failures as opportunities and maintaining a healthy balance between optimism, ration and resilience. Self-motivated people do not give up after a setback. Their desire to achieve and improve drives them forward.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is an important skill that can help you stand out as a strong candidate and a leader. It involves being aware of others’ emotions, as well as your own, and acting accordingly.
A key component of emotional intelligence is self-management, which is the ability to manage your emotions in stressful situations rather than reacting impulsively. Another important aspect of this skill is social awareness. This is the ability to “read a room” or, in other words, recognize others’ emotions. Along with this comes empathy, which involves not just recognizing others’ emotions but understanding and sharing them.
Tips for an Effective “Skills” Section
In addition to selecting unique, less common skills, you can also make the “Skills” section of your resume stand out with a few key tips.
Search for Keywords
A major way to ensure your resume stands out is to tailor it to the specific role you are applying for. Scour the job description and company website for keywords and phrases. If the company’s core values, for example, reveal that they prioritize “initiative” and “accountability,” you could incorporate these into your resume — and maybe even your cover letter, too.
Avoid Long Lists
Be intentional with the skills you choose to emphasize on your resume. As a rule of thumb, try to keep your list under 10 skills. Longer lists may not be read fully by hiring managers and might not give the impression that you excel at any particular skills.
Carefully select 4-10 skills that meet two main criteria: skills you consider to be your strongest and skills that are most relevant to the position, employer and industry.
Ensure Skills are Balanced
When choosing skills for your resume, try to choose skills that show balance and variety. For example, if one of your skills is adaptive thinking, you wouldn’t want to list flexibility and problem-solving since these are all very similar. Instead, you’d want to choose a different skill that showcases a different talent you possess, like time management.
Elevate Your Resume
A unique, balanced list of skills that incorporates some of the employer’s keywords is sure to stand out to hiring managers when compared to a long, repetitive list of frequently mentioned skills. Have examples for skills listed on your resume to talk about in interviews.