Best Skills to Put on a Resume: 120+ Examples by Job Type

"Skills" is the resume section people fill in last, in five minutes, from memory — and it's one of the sections recruiters and applicant tracking systems weigh most. Recruiters search their candidate database by skill keywords, and the skills section is where those searches hit. Filling it with the right words is the difference between appearing in a recruiter's search results and not existing.

Here's how to choose skills that get you found, with concrete examples for the most common job types.

The two kinds of skills recruiters look for

Hard skills (what you can do)

Hard skills are specific, teachable, verifiable abilities: software, tools, languages, techniques, certifications. They're the keywords recruiters type into their search bar, which makes them the backbone of your skills section.

Examples: Excel, Python, Figma, QuickBooks, forklift operation, phlebotomy, Google Ads, contract negotiation, French (fluent).

Soft skills (how you work)

Soft skills are transferable working traits: communication, leadership, time management, problem-solving. They matter enormously to hiring decisions — but listing them as bare words barely helps you, because anyone can type "leadership" into a resume. Soft skills persuade when they're demonstrated inside your experience bullets: "Trained and mentored 4 new hires" proves leadership better than the word ever will.

The practical rule: fill your skills section mostly with hard skills, and let your bullet points carry the soft skills as evidence. Our full guide to describing soft skills has worked examples for eight of the most commonly asked-about ones, bullet by bullet.

How to choose which skills to list (the 10-minute method)

1. Open the job posting and highlight every skill, tool, and qualification it mentions.
2. Match honestly. Every highlighted skill you genuinely have goes on your resume — using the posting's exact wording, since that's what gets searched (this matters for the software screening too; see our guide to making your resume ATS-friendly).
3. Add your differentiators — strong skills you have that the posting didn't think to ask for but the role would clearly use.
4. Cut the filler. "Microsoft Word," "email," and "internet research" tell a 2026 recruiter nothing. So does any skill you couldn't discuss for two minutes in an interview.

Aim for 8–12 skills. Fewer looks thin; many more starts to look like keyword stuffing nobody can verify.

Skills examples by job type

Pick from these as a starting point, then tailor to your specific posting.

Administrative / office

Calendar management, Microsoft Excel (pivot tables), data entry (10,000+ KPH), travel coordination, expense reporting, Zoom/Teams administration, meeting minutes, vendor management, CRM updates (Salesforce), document control.

Customer service

CRM software (Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud), live chat support, conflict de-escalation, ticket triage, upselling, CSAT improvement, phone etiquette, bilingual support (Spanish/English), refund and returns processing, knowledge-base writing. Our full guide to writing a customer service resume covers structuring the rest of the page around this list.

Sales

Prospecting, cold outreach, CRM pipeline management (HubSpot, Salesforce), discovery calls, objection handling, quota attainment, contract negotiation, territory planning, demo delivery, LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Our full guide to writing a sales resume covers leading with quota and revenue numbers.

Marketing

SEO, Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, email marketing (Mailchimp, Klaviyo), content writing, A/B testing, marketing automation, social media management, keyword research (Ahrefs, Semrush). Our full guide to writing a marketing resume covers quantifying campaign impact and building a portfolio link.

Software / IT

Programming languages by name (Python, JavaScript, SQL, Java), Git, REST APIs, React, cloud platforms (AWS, Azure), Docker, CI/CD, debugging, unit testing, Linux administration. Our full guide to writing a software developer resume covers structuring project bullets and linking real code, and our data analyst resume guide covers the adjacent analytics-focused path.

Healthcare

Patient assessment, EHR/EMR systems (Epic, Cerner), vital signs monitoring, medication administration, HIPAA compliance, phlebotomy, CPR/BLS certification, patient scheduling, insurance verification, infection control. Our full guide to writing a nurse or healthcare worker resume covers licenses, certifications, and clinical experience formatting.

Finance / accounting

QuickBooks, Excel financial modeling, accounts payable/receivable, month-end close, GAAP, financial reporting, budgeting and forecasting, payroll processing, SAP, tax preparation. Our full guide to writing a finance or accounting resume covers certifications and framing dollar-figure achievements with the right context.

Education / teaching

Lesson planning, classroom management, IEP development, Google Classroom, differentiated instruction, parent communication, curriculum design, student assessment, ESL instruction, behavior intervention. Our full guide to writing a teacher resume covers certifications and quantifying student outcomes.

Retail / hospitality

POS systems (Square, Toast), inventory management, cash handling, merchandising, opening/closing procedures, food safety certification, reservation systems, loss prevention, scheduling, customer recovery. Our full guide to writing a hospitality or restaurant resume covers quantifying volume and guest impact.

If your field is more specialized still — production and theatre roles, for instance — see our theatre tech resume guide for department-specific skills. Other fields with their own full resume guide: project management, HR, graphic design, and government jobs.

Skilled trades / warehouse

Forklift certification, OSHA 10/30, blueprint reading, inventory scanning (RF systems), preventive maintenance, welding (MIG/TIG), equipment troubleshooting, quality inspection, shipping/receiving, CDL Class A.

Where skills go on your resume

Three places, in order of importance:

1. A dedicated skills section — a clean list, usually after experience (or before it, if you're changing careers or writing a resume with no experience). This is what database searches hit.
2. Inside your experience bullets — the same key skills, shown in action with results: "Built weekly sales dashboards in Excel, cutting reporting time by 3 hours."
3. Your summary — your 2–3 headline skills, the ones the job posting cares about most.

A skill that appears in all three places, with evidence attached, is a skill a recruiter believes. All of our resume templates include a dedicated skills section laid out so both software and humans can scan it — and in the resume builder you can add and reorder skills in a couple of clicks while watching the page update live.

Skills to leave off

• Anything obvious for your field ("email" for an office worker, "teamwork" for literally anyone)
• Outdated tech nobody hires for anymore, unless the posting asks
• Skills you can't back up in an interview — one confident question exposes them
• Personality claims dressed as skills ("hard-working," "detail-oriented") — show these in bullets instead
• Hobbies, unless directly job-relevant

Frequently asked questions

How many skills should I put on a resume? 8–12 in the dedicated section. Enough to cover the posting's requirements plus your differentiators, few enough that each one is deliberate.

Should I rate my skill levels with bars or dots? No. Skill bars are subjective (what's 4/5 Excel?), waste space, and text inside graphics is invisible to screening software. If a level matters — languages, especially — state it in words: "Spanish (fluent)."

Do I put soft skills on a resume at all? One or two genuinely distinctive ones in the skills list is fine ("public speaking," "cross-team facilitation"). The rest belong inside experience bullets as demonstrated results.

Should the skills be different for every application? Same pool, different emphasis. Reorder so the posting's top requirements appear first, and swap in any skill the posting names that you'd left off. It takes three minutes and directly affects whether you surface in searches.