Top 15 Job Skills for Your 2025 Resume
Job skills relate to specific knowledge or expertise that help you perform your job responsibilities. These skills include interpersonal soft skills, transferable resume skills and other workplace skills. Read on to learn how to showcase and develop your job skills.
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What Are Job Skills?
Every time you apply for a new job, ask yourself, “What skills do you bring to the job?” These are your job skills, a delicate combination of soft, hard and technical resume skills that enable you to work in a collaborative environment and do the detail-oriented tasks related to your work.
You can also categorize your job skills under the following subcategories.
- Workplace skills: Workplace skills are the social abilities that help you build effective collaborative relationships and strong communication. These skills involve social soft skills like active listening, vocal and written communication, teamwork, empathy and analytical skills.
- Transferable skills: These are skills you develop in and out of the workplace that can help you complete your daily tasks. You can develop these skills via school, volunteering or socializing with friends. They range from critical thinking and project management to computer and presentation skills.
- Technical skills: Technical skills are hard skills developed through hands-on training and regular practice. These technical skills are usually related to digital math, science, IT or software tasks.
15 Good Job Skills to List
Remember, the job skills you feature on your resume or application materials depend on the job requirement. Here’s a helpful list of job skill examples for most workplaces.
- Analysis: From assessing and distributing data, identifying trends that can influence future decisions or explaining meaningful insights, analytical job skills help inform problem-solving and decision-making.
- Attention to detail: Careful attention to detail can influence how you file or share information, direct responsibilities, make and finalize schedules, or rank and address multiple responsibilities promptly.
- Collaboration: These skills include effective communication, teamwork and contributing towards shared goals within a group or organization.
- Communication: From customer service and marketing to giving team directions and sharing information, communication skills help you navigate internal and external workplace needs.
- Creativity: These job-related skills include thinking, innovative problem-solving, and creating multiple solutions or unique task approaches.
- Critical thinking: Most jobs require you to use logic, critical thinking and independent judgment to evaluate information and make reasonable decisions.
- Decision-making: Good job skills include weighing options, considering positive and negative consequences, and promptly choosing the most effective action.
- Emotional intelligence: Although AI is growing prominent in modern workplaces, we still collaborate with people. These help job skills include self-awareness, empathy and interpersonal skills that help us gauge the vibes.
- Leadership: These helpful skills enable you to inspire colleagues, communicate efficiently, and dictate tasks to colleagues and team members.
- Negotiation: These helpful skills to have for a job include strategic communication, compromise and persuasive sales techniques to reach mutually beneficial agreements. These can range from collaborative issues to legal contracts.
- Problem-solving: These job skills involve several of the previously mentioned skills: analyzing challenges, proposing creative solutions or implementing plans to help overcome job obstacles
- Project management: Project management skills to put on job applications include planning, organizing and overseeing tasks to meet project goals and deadlines.
- Teamwork: Job skills list teamwork because it contributes to effective collaboration, communication and mutual support to reach workplace goals and create a harmonious work environment.
- Technical proficiency: These skills include equipment and tool mastery related to engineering, warehouse, logistics, agriculture or similar hands-on industries.
- Time management: These specialized management skills enable you to prioritize tasks, set deadlines and accurately allocate time and resources to meet productivity goals.
How to List Job Skills on Your Resume
Write a compelling resume summary
Open your resume with a resume summary or objective statement listing your top two job skills or key accomplishments. These professional introductions should pique the hiring manager’s interest, encouraging them to read the rest of your resume.
Resume summary example with job skills:
Skills software engineer with four years of experience in full-stack development and creating scalable software. Project management demonstrated successful problem-solving skills and collaboration to ensure projects meet deadlines and hit the market during optimal financial quarters.
Add your work experience
Your work history section is usually the most detailed part of your resume — add specific job skills and relevant accomplishments to strategically describe yourself as the most qualified candidate. Use action verbs to keep hiring managers interested in your resume.
Work history sample with job-related skills:
Computer Hardware Engineer | Alienware Corporation
Miami, FL | May 2022 – present
- Optimizes the Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) Performance by enhancing frame rates and overall graphics quality, resulting in 15% reported customer satisfaction.
- Engineered an innovative cooling solution for high-performance gaming PCs, mitigating overheating issues and increasing production lifecycle by 20%
- Implemented firmware upgrades to minimize latency in gaming peripherals, significantly improving graphics resonance and reducing input lag by 25%.
Create a skills section
Create a well-organized skills section with six to eight items that align with the job description. Prioritize the skills you identified as resume keywords not mentioned in your resume introduction or previous job descriptions.
Sample job skills section:
- Hardware design
- Embedded systems programming
- CAD/CAM proficiency
- Signal processing
- Thermal management
- Testing and validation
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How to Add Skills to Job Applications
You can boost your hiring potential by carefully adding relevant job skills to your resume, cover letter and practiced interview responses. Look for the strategic phrases, also known as resume keywords, that hiring managers use to train applicant tracking systems (ATS) during the first round of resume reviews. You can find these resume keywords in the job description. Look for repeated or slightly rephrased skills, tasks or special font treatments like all caps, bolded, highlighted and italicized words.
How to add skills to your cover letter
A cover letter can help you emphasize relevant job skills or accomplishments and expand on what you’ve written in your resume. Use the following writing tips to help structure your letter and highlight the best skills to add to job applications.
- Carefully tailor your introduction and body to highlight related skills and experiences relevant to the job.
- Express your genuine enthusiasm for the position, quantify your key strengths and end your letter with a clear invitation to follow up with additional questions.
How to mention job skills during your interview
Congrats, you’ve got an interview! Your interview answers are a great opportunity to highlight what skills you bring to the job.
As you prepare your interview answers, consider what skills to have for a job. Use those resume keywords to prioritize examples of key skills required for the job.
- Prepare specific examples of applying job-related skills to a previous responsibility or achievement.
- Format your sample answers using the STAR (situation, task, action, result) method.
- Memorize bullet points, not complete answers, so you don’t appear too rehearsed and insincere in your interviews.
Common interview questions to feature your job skills:
- “What skills do you bring to the job?” or “What skills can you bring to the job?”
- How do you approach a problem?
- What motivates you at work?
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How to Build Job-Related Skills
Here are four different ways to develop or improve job skills inside or out of the workplace:
- Sign up for online courses or certifications: Register for relevant courses or certifications to gain new knowledge and job skills. Search Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, Masterclass or Udemy for various classes.
- Seek job shadowing or on-the-job training opportunities: Use letters of interest to seek onsite training opportunities and learn from colleagues or experts in various fields or experience levels.
- Network and find mentors: Connect with professionals through social media, networking events or industry-related conferences. Join mentorship groups to learn from experienced industry leaders and gain valuable career advice and guidance.
- Volunteer or freelance: Pick up volunteer shifts or work freelance to build your skills. Real-world projects help develop your project management, time management or technical skills.
Key Takeaways
Job skills are individuals’ specific abilities and knowledge, enabling effective task performance in a professional environment.
- Job skills related to interpersonal, transferable and technical skills related to your previous personal and professional experiences.
- These transferable job skills can help you manage collaborative tasks and career-specific responsibilities.
- Develop your skills through on-the-job training, online courses and continuous learning.
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Last edited by: Ami Icanberry, CPRW, Manager, Content Editing, - November 6, 2024
Gabriela Barcenas
CPRW, Content Writer IIGabriela is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and career adviser. With 10 years of digital media experience and five years of resume writing expertise, her publication history includes fashion, education, travel, social justice, equitable design and career advice.
