Skills to Put on Your Resume: Hard Skills, Soft Skills and Examples (2026)

Hard Skills vs Soft Skills: What's the Difference?

Before building your skills section, it helps to understand the two types of skills recruiters look for.

Hard skills are specific, teachable abilities you have learned through education, training, or experience. They are measurable and verifiable — things like coding in Python, managing a budget in Excel, or holding a PMP certification. Hard skills are usually the non-negotiables in a job description.

Soft skills are interpersonal and behavioural traits that affect how you work with others and handle challenges. Things like communication, adaptability, and leadership. They are harder to measure but equally valued — especially for management, client-facing, and team-based roles.

Most strong resumes include a balance of both. A software engineer still needs communication skills. A marketing manager still needs data analysis. The question is which to lead with, and how to frame them.

Where to Put Skills on Your Resume

There are two main approaches:

Dedicated skills section — a standalone block near the top of the resume, listing your key competencies. This works well for technical roles where the recruiter needs to quickly confirm you have the required tools and technologies.

Skills woven into bullet points — rather than listing "project management" as a standalone skill, you write "Led cross-functional team of 8 to deliver product launch 3 weeks ahead of schedule." This is more persuasive because it gives context and evidence.

The best resumes do both: a concise skills list for ATS scanning, plus evidence of those skills in the experience section. For more on structuring the full layout, see the guide to ATS-friendly resume format and the best resume format overall.

Hard Skills: Examples by Category

Technology and Software

Marketing and Content

Finance and Accounting

Operations and Supply Chain

Healthcare and Life Sciences

Legal and Compliance

Languages

Proficiency levels matter. Indicate Basic, Conversational, Professional Working Proficiency, or Native/Bilingual.

Soft Skills: Examples

Soft skills should appear on your resume — but ideally backed up by evidence in your bullet points, not just listed in isolation.

Industry-Specific Skills Sections: What to Include

The skills that matter most depend heavily on your field. Here are examples of what a strong skills section might look like for different roles.

If you are switching fields, the challenge is knowing which skills from your previous career transfer — and how to frame them. The guide on career change resumes covers this specifically.

How Many Skills Should You List?

There is no magic number, but a few principles apply:

Aim for 8 to 15 skills in a dedicated skills section. Fewer than 8 can look thin; more than 20 starts to look like keyword stuffing.

Prioritise relevance over length. If a skill is not mentioned anywhere in the job description and is not a core competency for the role, cut it.

Group by category if you have a wide skill set — for example, separate Technical Skills, Tools and Platforms, and Languages. This is cleaner to scan.

Avoid rating your own skills (e.g. "Excel — 8/10"). These ratings are meaningless to recruiters and waste space.

How to Choose Which Skills to Include

The most effective approach is to tailor your skills section to each job description rather than keeping a generic list. Here is the process:

1. Read the job description carefully and highlight every skill, tool, or competency mentioned.
2. Cross-reference that list against your own experience — which ones do you genuinely have?
3. List those skills using the same terminology the job description uses. If they write "Google Analytics 4" instead of "GA4", use their phrasing.
4. Check whether any skills you have are missing from the description but clearly relevant to the role — include those too.

This is exactly what resum8's Skill Match Score does automatically. When you paste in a job description, resum8 analyses your CV against the role requirements and shows you which skills are present, which are missing, and highlights any relevant skills you may have forgotten to include. It takes the guesswork out of tailoring. This connects directly to broader ATS keyword strategy — skills are one of the most heavily weighted keyword categories in any applicant tracking system.

Skills That Are Almost Never Worth Listing

Some things are so expected or so vague that they add nothing:

"Microsoft Word" — Unless the job specifically requires it (e.g. legal or administrative roles), this is implied.

"Good communicator" — Every resume says this. Prove it in your bullet points instead.

"Team player" — A cliché. Show collaboration through your accomplishments.

"Hard worker" or "motivated" — These tell the recruiter nothing.

"Fast learner" — Same problem — it is an assertion without evidence.

Outdated software — If no one uses it any more, it does not signal value.

Skills you cannot demonstrate — Anything you would be uncomfortable being tested on in an interview should not be listed.

Removing these frees up space for the specific, demonstrable skills that actually differentiate you. For guidance on how to use action verbs for your resume to bring skills to life in your bullet points, that guide covers the full approach.

Skills Section vs ATS: What Recruiters' Systems Look For

Most large employers use applicant tracking systems to filter CVs before a human reads them. ATS software scans your resume for keywords — including the specific skills, tools, and qualifications mentioned in the job description.

This means two things for your skills section:

First, the words need to match. If the job description says "Power BI" and your resume says "Microsoft BI tools," the ATS may not connect the two. Use the exact terminology from the listing.

Second, skills in your experience bullet points count too. The ATS scans the whole document, not just the skills section. So if you mention SQL three times across your experience history, that reinforces the signal.

For a full breakdown of how to structure your resume around ATS requirements, see the guides on ATS keywords and ATS-friendly resume format.

Quick Checklist: Skills Section Done Right

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best skills to put on a resume?

The best skills are the ones most relevant to the specific role you are applying for. Start with what the job description requires, add any closely related tools or competencies you have, and remove anything generic or unlikely to be tested. A skills section that mirrors the language of the job posting will perform better with both ATS systems and human readers.

Should I list soft skills on my resume?

Yes — but back them up. Listing "leadership" in a skills section is weak on its own. The stronger approach is to demonstrate leadership through your bullet points (e.g. "Managed a team of 12 across 3 time zones") and also include it as a skill to help with ATS matching. The two work together.

How many skills should be on a resume?

Between 8 and 15 skills is the standard range for a dedicated skills section. Too few looks sparse; too many looks unfocused or like keyword stuffing. Focus on relevance rather than completeness — a shorter list of exactly the right skills outperforms a long list of loosely relevant ones.

What is the difference between hard skills and soft skills on a resume?

Hard skills are specific, measurable abilities — tools, programming languages, certifications, software platforms. Soft skills are interpersonal traits like communication, adaptability, and leadership. Both matter; the balance depends on the role. Technical roles weight hard skills more heavily; management and client-facing roles place higher value on soft skills.

Should I include skills I am still learning?

Only if you are genuinely proficient enough to be tested on them in an interview. Saying you know Python when you have completed only one introductory course is a risk if the employer tests you. You can note something as "currently learning" if it is genuinely relevant to the role, but avoid claiming expertise you do not yet have.

How do I know which skills I am missing from my resume?

Paste the job description into resum8. The Skill Match Score feature compares your CV against the role requirements and flags exactly which skills are present and which are missing — including any skills you have but forgot to mention. It removes the guesswork from tailoring your skills section to each application.