The Best Soft and Hard Skills to Feature on Your Resume

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• Hard Skills:

  According to LinkedIn, hard skills relate to your learned abilities, including any training and education that results in your ability to complete a specific task or work requirement. Examples of this include software training, IT skills, an understanding of the AP/MLA stylebook, or some similar learned skills.

  For our own purposes, Hloom organizes hard skills into the following subset of skills. Please note that this isn't a definitive list and there are multiple ways to organize your skills:

  • Data analysis
  • Computer programming
  • Administrative
  • Finance

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• Soft Skills:

  According to the same study by LinkedIn, soft skills relate to the way we complete or adapt to tasks. They relate to your behavior or method of thinking, rather than any specific training or certificate course that you complete.

  We organize our soft skills into the following subset of skills. As we mentioned before, this is a flexible breakdown of skills:

  • Customer service
  • Management
  • Sales
  • Organization
  • Communication
  • Collaboration

Now, we’ll show you where to place these desired skills on your resume. There are three primary resume formats recruiters love: the chronological, functional and combination formats. We’ll focus on the skill-themed strengths of these three resume formats, but Hloom also has an in-depth guide that breaks down each resume section for you.

• Chronological: The chronological resume format features a skills section that sits between your work history section and education section. Since this format prioritizes professional experience, you’ll only feature six to eight bulleted skills in the formalized section. As we mentioned before, however, you can add additional skills and proficiencies in the work history and summary statements. We’ll dive into how below.
• Functional: The functional resume format is affectionately known as the skills-based resume. Although the layout may change and shift, this resume downplays formal work experience and focuses on a combination of the following skills: job-related skills, transferable skills and adaptive/personal skills. You’ll provide additional context to your skills. We'll provide examples below.
• Combination:The combination is exactly that, a combined resume format that highlights the strengths of the chronological and functional resumes by giving your work history and skills equal weight on the page. Your skills normally sit above your formal work history on this format, but you’ll still list an average of six skills in this section and feature additional skills throughout your resume.

The job candidate summarizes their qualifications while slipping in their skills and explaining how practical those skills are.

• Medical training: This candidate has over 15 years of medical experience with a specialty in pediatric care and has worked in a wide range of work environments, suggesting that they’re highly competent.
• Customer service skills: This candidate mentions how she can establish relationships with her patients to ensure excellent patient care.
• Communication skills: By indicating that speaking with patients can improve patient outcomes, the applicant suggests that she has strong communication skills that enable her to thoroughly explain medical procedures to non-medical professionals.