75% of CEOs say that a skilled, educated and adaptable workforce should be a priority for business. As the number of applicants per corporate job opening rises, it’s important that your resume is effective at articulating your accomplishments and what you can bring to the table. This means creating an accomplishment based resume instead of a responsibility based resume, and creating a document that is completely unique to you.
Every person will have a different resume based on a different skillset, however there are five skills you should highlight on your resume regardless of your industry. Note that your resume should reflect each skill by highlighting what you’ve achieved instead of simply stating that you hold a certain skill. For example, don’t say that you’re “results oriented”. Instead, show your results!
Adaptability
Research suggests that CEOs now rank adaptability and collaboration on a par with traditional skills such as problem-solving and risk management. Due to the rise of startups and small businesses, employees are often required to wear many hats, work with cross functional teams, and adapt to the role as situations arise. As a job seekers, these are crucial skills that you want to highlight. Instead of writing “adaptable” on your resume, show employers how you have adapted to various situations.
For example, you could say something along the lines of:
“Hired as an administrative assistant, and served as an editorial assistant while managing social media postings, website content, and liaising with contributors to organize submissions.”
This highlights your ability to go above and beyond your role, and shows that you adapted based on company needs.
Collaboration
According to a recent study done by The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), collaboration is highly correlated with market performance, and high performing organizations are five and a half times more likely to encourage and reward teams for collaboration.
A great way to highlight collaboration on your resume is to discuss group projects you worked on, if you worked with any other departments or teams, and how many people you worked with. The more you can quantify and illustrate your collaboration at work, the better!
Want to learn even more about how collaboration can benefit you? Check out the podcast Stop, Collaborate, and Listen by Baily Hancock!
Leadership
It’s no surprise that leadership is a key skill to highlight if you can, because leadership impacts almost every sector of business. A great leader can motivate employees and increase productivity, while bad leadership can taint morale and have a huge negative impact. Leadership makes such a big difference that 49% of CEOs are changing their talent strategy to focus on the leadership pipeline so that they can help attract, retain and engage the staff needed to remain relevant and competitive.
If you do have leadership capabilities, it’s crucial to highlight them. Discuss any opportunities you’ve had for leadership, both large and small, and make sure to discuss the results of your leadership. Showing that your leadership was effective and had good results is what will make an impact when you’re applying to jobs.
Problem Solving
When a company is hiring, they are looking for a solution to a problem they have. Whether the problem is that they recently lost an employee, or they want to improve a sector of business, everything always comes down to problem solving. If you can show a potential employer how you will be a solution to their problem, that’s how you will land the job.
For an easy way to put together your thoughts and gather information about what problems you’ve solved and how you solved them, create SOAR stories (Situation, Obstacle, Action and Result) for yourself. You can then use this information to highlight your problem solving skills on your resume, or even during an interview.
Tech Savvy
Reports show that there were 2.80 billion global social media users in 2017, and 71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others. This suggests that social media is more important than ever in business. If you have the technical skills and abilities to run, analyze, or improve social media reach, highlight it on your resume.
Additionally, it’s crucial to highlight any software knowledge you have. Anything from Adobe platforms to QuickBooks, to Google applications can come in handy when you’re applying for a job. If you have the tech skills, make sure to list them on your resume. Often recruiters or hiring managers will do a keyword search for specific software or applications to see what tech skills a candidate holds. If you don’t have the software listed, you won’t come up on the keyword search which could put you out of the running.
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Your resume should articulate what you’ve accomplished and what you can bring to a new role, and that will look different for everyone, however there are five skills you should highlight on your resume regardless of your industry: Adaptability, collaboration, leadership problem solving, and tech savvy.