Three tips for showcasing soft skills on your resume

By defining your skills on your resume, you’re letting employers and recruiters know why you’re going to succeed in the job they’re trying to fill. While it’s important to list your hard skills — technical proficiencies you likely learned in school or in a prior position you held — it’s just as essential to showcase your soft skills — personal traits that indicate how you interact with others. Here are three tips for effectively presenting soft skills on your resume.

1. Only include relevant soft skills. Carefully look over the job posting and see which of the sought-after soft skills are ones you can lay claim to. You should also infer which additional soft skills are valued by the company or are relevant to the role by studying the job description, looking at the company website and researching the specifics of the position.

2. Set apart your soft skills. If you have an ample number of both hard and soft skills, present them in separate sections, which you might label respectively as “technical skills” and “additional skills.” This way, busy employers will see them when doing an initial scan of your resume.

3. Demonstrate your soft skills in action. Make sure to also weave your soft skills into the descriptions of your previous jobs. It’s easy to say you have a skill: illustrating that you have it is far more persuasive.

Once you’ve fine-tuned your resume, you can start thinking about the interview. Be prepared to elaborate on the skills you listed in your resume and think of supplementary ones you might mention.