How to list skills on a resume

Where to put the skills section

Place your skills section after your summary and before your work experience if you are early in your career or changing fields. If you have ten or more years of relevant experience, put it after your work experience so your history leads. Either way, keep it on the first page.

A common mistake is burying skills at the bottom of the resume. ATS software reads top to bottom, and so do recruiters. If a required skill does not appear until page two, many systems will score it lower than a resume where the same skill appears near the top.

How to format the skills section

Use a simple two- or three-column layout with categories as subheadings. This is easier to scan than a single long list and it groups related tools together, which helps both ATS parsing and human readers.

Keep each entry short. Use noun phrases, not sentences. Write 'Python' not 'I have experience using Python'. Aim for 10 to 20 skills total. Fewer than 10 can look thin; more than 20 starts to look padded.

• Category label: Technical Skills | Entries: Python, SQL, Tableau, AWS
• Category label: Project Management | Entries: Agile, Scrum, Jira, stakeholder reporting
• Category label: Languages | Entries: English (native), French (professional working proficiency)

Hard skills vs. soft skills: what to include

Hard skills are specific, teachable abilities: programming languages, software platforms, certifications, foreign languages, and technical methods. These are what ATS systems are scanning for and what hiring managers verify in interviews. Prioritise them.

Soft skills such as 'communication' or 'team player' are nearly impossible to verify from a resume alone and most recruiters discount them. If you want to show a soft skill, demonstrate it in a bullet point under a job entry instead. For example, 'Led weekly syncs with a cross-functional team of eight to deliver the project two weeks early' shows communication without claiming it.

Certifications and licences belong in the skills section or in a separate certifications section directly below it. In the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia, regulated roles such as nursing, accounting, and engineering require specific credentials. List the full credential name, the issuing body, and the year obtained or expiry date where relevant.

How to match your skills to a job posting

Open the job posting and read the requirements list twice. Highlight every skill, tool, and qualification mentioned. Then compare that list to your own skills. Any overlap is a candidate for your skills section.

Use the posting's exact wording where you genuinely have that skill. If the posting says 'Google Analytics 4' and you write 'web analytics tools', an ATS may not match them. Exact terms matter.

Prioritise skills that appear more than once in the posting or that appear under 'required' rather than 'preferred'. A skill listed in the job title, the summary, and the requirements list is clearly central to the role.

1. Copy the job posting into a plain text document.
2. Highlight every skill, tool, certification, and method mentioned.
3. Mark each one as required or preferred based on the posting language.
4. Cross-reference with your own skills and note exact matches.
5. Add matching skills to your resume using the posting's exact phrasing.
6. Remove or deprioritise skills from your list that are not mentioned in this posting.

Skills you should never list

Do not list Microsoft Office as a standalone skill unless the job explicitly asks for advanced Excel or PowerPoint. Basic Office proficiency is assumed for most office roles in 2026 and listing it can make your resume look dated.

Do not list skills you cannot discuss confidently in an interview. If a recruiter asks you to walk through your experience with a tool and you cannot, it damages your credibility for the rest of the conversation.

Avoid listing outdated technologies unless the role specifically requires them. Listing a programming language or platform that has been largely replaced signals that your skills may not be current.

• Skip: Microsoft Word, basic email, internet research
• Skip: Soft skills stated as nouns (leadership, teamwork, communication)
• Skip: Tools you used once in a course but cannot demonstrate
• Skip: Technologies deprecated more than five years ago unless the job asks for them

Tailoring skills for every application without starting over

Maintaining a master list of all your skills makes tailoring faster. Keep a document with every skill, tool, certification, and method you have used, grouped by category. For each application, pull from that master list the skills that match the posting.

Break-In Bad's resume enhancement feature reads your existing resume and asks you up to 20 questions about your experience, including the skills and tools you have used. Omar then rewrites your resume with a tailored skills section for each job you apply to, using the exact terms from the posting. Every change is checked against what you confirmed, so nothing is invented. This is useful if you apply to roles across more than one field and need different skill emphases for each.

Even without a tool, the process is the same: one master resume, one tailored version per application, with the skills section adjusted to reflect the posting's language and priorities.