Straight answer: group your skills into two or three short lists (technical, tools, and one line of proven soft skills), match the exact wording from the job advert, and back up every big claim with a number somewhere else on the page. A skills section full of "hardworking" and "team player" gets ignored by both the software scanning it and the human who eventually opens the file.
Why most skills sections are a waste of space
I've read hundreds of CVs over the years, first as someone building teams around me, then as a consultant helping small businesses hire well. The pattern never changes. There's a heading that says "Skills" and underneath it, a wall of words that mean nothing: communication, teamwork, hardworking, problem solving, Microsoft Office.
None of that tells me anything. Everyone claims to be a team player. Nobody writes "poor communicator, avoids problems." So when a list is made entirely of things every candidate says about themselves, it stops functioning as information. It's noise, and both applicant tracking systems and human recruiters skim straight past it.
Here's the uncomfortable bit that most resume guides won't say out loud: your skills section barely gets read by a person at all in the first pass. It's there almost entirely for the software. Workday, Taleo, Greenhouse and the other applicant tracking systems that most companies with more than 50 staff now use are scanning for exact keyword matches against the job description. A human recruiter, if your CV even makes it to one, spends about six to eight seconds on the whole page before deciding whether to keep reading. That's not enough time to weigh up whether you're "detail-oriented." They're scanning for job titles, company names, and numbers. The skills section is a filter, not a pitch. Once you accept that, you stop trying to sound impressive in it and start trying to be exact.
The rewrite that got Sarah three interviews in two weeks
A while back I helped a woman I'll call Sarah, who'd been applying for social media and marketing assistant roles for about four months. Forty-odd applications, zero interviews. Her CV was neat, well formatted, no typos. Her skills section read:
- Team player
- Hardworking
- Good with Microsoft Office
- Excellent communication skills
- Social media
That last line, "social media," was doing all the heavy lifting for a job that needed someone who could run paid campaigns, schedule content across three platforms, and read basic analytics. I asked her what she'd used day to day in her last role. Turned out she'd been running the company's Instagram and Facebook, scheduling through Meta Business Suite, building graphics in Canva (the kind of tool skill worth naming specifically, the same way I break down how a brand like Canva built its own marketing strategy around making design accessible to non-designers), and pulling monthly engagement reports for her manager.
We rewrote the section into this:
- Social media management: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn
- Meta Business Suite (content scheduling, ad spend tracking)
- Canva (graphic design for organic and paid posts)
- Google Analytics and native platform insights reporting
- Copywriting for social captions and email newsletters
Same person, same experience, completely different result. Two weeks after sending out the new version, she had three interview requests. Nothing else on her CV changed except the wording of that one section and a couple of the bullet points under her job history to match it. The job hadn't changed. She had. On paper, anyway.
The three-tier structure that works
Instead of one long undifferentiated list, split your skills into groups that a recruiter (or the software) can scan in seconds.
1. Technical or job-specific skills
These are the hard, learnable, provable skills specific to the role: bookkeeping, SQL, project management in Asana, HTML basics, data entry at 65 words per minute, food hygiene certification, GDPR compliance. Pull these directly from the job advert's wording where it's honest to do so. If the advert says "proficient in Excel including pivot tables" and that's true of you, write exactly that phrase, not just "Excel."
2. Tools and software
Name the actual products: Salesforce, HubSpot, Xero, Adobe Photoshop, Slack, Zoom, WordPress. Vague terms like "CRM software" or "design tools" lose you keyword matches. If you used Zendesk for two years, say Zendesk.
3. Proven soft skills, kept short and specific
This is where most people go wrong twice: they either skip it entirely because it feels fluffy, or they fill it with adjectives nobody can verify. The fix is to attach a soft skill to a result. Not "excellent communication skills" but "led weekly client update calls for accounts worth £40,000 a month." Not "team player" but "trained four new starters in their first month." If you want a deeper look at which soft skills move the needle and how to demonstrate them rather than just claim them, I've gone into that in my piece on improving communication skills for your career, because communication is the one soft skill that shows up in nearly every job spec, so it's worth getting right.
Step by step: building the section from scratch
- Pull the job advert apart line by line. Highlight every skill, tool, qualification and requirement mentioned. Most adverts list 10 to 15 of these.
- Match honestly. Circle the ones you have. Don't invent proficiency in something you've touched once.
- Group into three sections using the tiers above: technical, tools, proven soft skills.
- Cap each list at 6 to 8 items. Beyond that, it reads as padding and the eye stops taking it in. Quality of match beats quantity every time.
- Use the exact wording from the advert wherever it's true, because that's what the ATS keyword match is scanning for, word for word in many systems, not just the concept.
- Cross-check against your experience bullets. If you claim "project management" in the skills section, at least one bullet further down needs to show a project you managed, with an outcome attached.
- Place it high on the page, usually straight after your summary and before your work history, especially if you're changing industries or have gaps that make chronological history less flattering upfront.
Formatting matters more than people think
A skills list that runs as one long paragraph gets skipped. Use short bullet points, ideally in two columns if your resume software allows it, so the whole section is visible without scrolling. If you're building this in Microsoft Word, the formatting choices you make here can either help or actively fight against you when the file gets uploaded into an ATS, which is exactly why I put together a full walkthrough on formatting a resume in Microsoft Word that gets it read rather than mangled on upload. Tables, text boxes and columns built with Word's design tools often scramble when parsed by tracking software, so keep the layout simple even if it looks slightly less flashy.
Different jobs need different lists
A skills section for a teacher applying to a school is not the same shape as one for an administrative assistant applying to a remote company, and treating every CV the same is where a lot of good candidates lose the plot. A hiring panel for a teaching role wants to see classroom management, curriculum planning, differentiated instruction and specific exam boards you've worked with, alongside any pastoral or extracurricular responsibility you've held. I've written a full breakdown of what a teacher's resume should include to impress a hiring panel if that's your world.
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Compare that with someone applying for one of the growing number of administrative assistant jobs from home, where the skills that matter are calendar management across time zones, specific tools like Calendly or Google Workspace, typing speed, and proof you can work unsupervised and hit deadlines without someone standing over your shoulder. Same word, "skills," completely different content underneath it.
The number game: how many skills is too many
I get asked this constantly. There's no magic number, but here's a rough guide from what gets past screening: 8 to 12 total items across your combined skills sections is the sweet spot for most roles. Under 6 and you look thin or like you're hiding something. Over 15 and it reads as a keyword dump, which experienced recruiters spot instantly and it can work against you because it signals you've padded the section rather than curated it.
Barbara Corcoran, who built The Corcoran Group into a firm worth $66 million before selling it, has talked plenty about hiring on instinct within the first few minutes of meeting someone, and I've pulled out some of those business lessons from Barbara Corcoran before. Her point translates directly to CVs: people decide fast, and they decide on specifics, not adjectives. A recruiter forms an opinion of you in the time it takes to read one short list. Make that list earn its place.
What to leave out entirely
- Generic personality traits with no proof attached: "hardworking," "passionate," "motivated"
- Outdated software nobody's job advert has asked for in a decade, like "typing" or "fax machine"
- Skills you can't back up if asked about them in an interview, because you will get asked
- "References available on request," which takes up space and tells nobody anything
- A skills list identical to the one you used for a completely different role or industry
A quick honesty check before you hit send
Read your skills section back and ask yourself one question for each line: could a stranger check whether this is true within thirty seconds? "Proficient in HubSpot" can be checked, and probably will be, in the first week of the job. "Great attitude" can't be checked at all, which is exactly why it's worth so little on the page. Every item you keep should survive that test.
Frequently asked questions
Should I list soft skills on my resume at all?
Yes, but only when you can attach them to a result. Instead of listing "leadership" on its own, write the outcome it produced, such as "managed a team of six through a store relocation with zero missed shifts." A soft skill with no proof next to it reads as filler and gets skimmed past by recruiters and by applicant tracking software alike.
How many skills should I put on a resume?
Aim for 8 to 12 total across your grouped lists. Fewer than that can look thin, more than 15 usually reads as a keyword dump rather than a genuine reflection of what you can do, and experienced recruiters notice the difference immediately.
Do skills sections get read by a real person?
Often not in the first pass. Most mid-size and larger companies run CVs through applicant tracking software first, which scans for exact keyword matches against the job advert. Your skills section needs to satisfy that software before a human ever opens the file, which is why exact wording matters more than clever phrasing.
Where should the skills section go on the page?
Straight after your summary and before your work history, particularly if you're switching industries, returning after a gap, or applying for a role where the job advert lists very specific tools or certifications you want scanned early. For a steady, linear career in the same field, it can sit after your most recent role instead.
Primary sources
Related reading: How to Format a Resume Using the Harvard Resume Style (Step by Step) and What Makes a Resume Look Good to a Hiring Manager.
