What makes a resume stand out? Is it the flashy fonts, the extensive list of educational qualifications, or the fancy formatting elements? The answer is—none of it!
While details and aesthetics are extremely important, the skills section plays a crucial role in getting an interview. For hiring managers, it shows how closely a candidate matches the job requirements.
Did you know? 41% of recruiters look for skills on a resume first! 🔍
But skills aren’t just about technical expertise—many applicants overlook this. To excel in any role, you need both personal and technical aptitudes. This is why candidates who effectively showcase both are more likely to make the cut.
So, in today’s blog, let’s discuss the best personal skills examples for a resume and how you can showcase them to land an interview. Let’s go!🚀
Top 10 Personal Skills You Should List on Your Resume
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Are Personal Skills?
Personal skills are the soft skills you list under the skills section of your resume. These transferable skills demonstrate your ability to perform tasks efficiently and collaborate effectively with others.
📌 Imagine this: You’re a creative writer, and the new project assigned to you requires you to document personal experiences from people’s lives. 📖
In this case, you will set aside your usual research methods (typically considered a technical skill) and rely on your communication skills (a crucial personal skill) to craft the content.
This is just one of many instances that illustrate the value and importance of personal skills.
Summarize this article for me pleaseTop 10 Personal Skills for Your Resume
Here are 10 of the most essential personal skills examples for your resume. The next time you fill out a job application, pick the most relevant ones from this list to increase your chances of securing the job! 🏆
1. Communication skills
Effective communication is key to success in any role, which is why it’s consistently ranked among the top essential skills for any job. Strong communication means you confidently express your thoughts, listen attentively, share accurate information, and engage meaningfully in conversations. It’s about making sure your message is clear and fostering genuine understanding with those around you.
📌 Example: A sales representative presents a new product to potential clients. They create a compelling presentation that clearly outlines the product’s benefits and addresses common customer pain points.
Their confident delivery and ability to answer questions on the spot led to a successful sale, increasing the company’s revenue.
Strong communication skills help you collaborate more efficiently with coworkers, contributing to a positive work environment. Customer service skills also ensure that you’re adept at interacting with external stakeholders such as clients. Examples include active listening, verbal communication, written communication, and public speaking.
✅ Ideal for: Roles in marketing, client management, product management, public relations, teaching, and any position requiring strong verbal and written communication.
2. Teamwork skills
Teamwork is the ability to collaborate with others toward a common goal. Strong teamwork skills show that you can work harmoniously, divide responsibilities fairly, and contribute meaningfully to the group’s success. Common teamwork skills include dependability, conflict resolution, flexibility, and trust. 🤝
📌 Example: Consider a product marketing campaign: One team member researches market trends while another creates engaging social media content. Together, they effectively spread the word about the product.
✅ Ideal for: Positions in project management, event planning, and any collaborative work environment.
3. Problem-solving skills
Problem-solving refers to your ability to identify challenges and develop effective resolutions. If you have sharp problem-solving skills, you can tackle challenges efficiently and work well even under pressure. It’s considered one of the most important personal skills examples for your resume.
📌 Example: A marketing coordinator faced the challenge of promoting a new product launch on a limited budget. Instead of traditional advertising, they organized a social media contest encouraging user-generated content. This innovative approach increased engagement and generated buzz, leading to a 30% increase in pre-orders.
Core components of problem-solving skills include analytical thinking, creativity, research, and critical thinking. 🧠
✅ Ideal for: Jobs in IT, engineering, consulting, project management, and any role requiring analytical thinking.
4. Time management skills
If you excel at handling multiple tasks within deadlines, time management should feature on your resume. Again, this is one of the most basic yet essential skills required for any job. ✅
📌 Example: A project coordinator is responsible for multiple projects with tight deadlines. They create a detailed schedule that outlines key milestones, prioritize tasks based on urgency, and allocate specific time blocks for each project. Using tools like Gantt charts and ClickUp Reminders, they successfully complete all projects on time, demonstrating efficiency and productivity.
Good time management skills demonstrate that you are productive, efficient, and capable of multitasking. They also reflect strong organizational skills, such as goal setting, prioritization, scheduling, and delegation.
✅ Ideal for: Positions in administration, project management, and any role that requires multitasking.
5. Adaptability skills
Imagine this: you are creating a product when you realize one of its key elements is too expensive for your budget. You quickly find an alternative within your budget, and the product is launched according to plan. This is called adaptability—your ability to adjust and overcome challenges in evolving situations.
People with exceptional adaptability skills demonstrate flexibility, resilience, and willingness to learn. They are also open to feedback and are good at stress management.
📌 Example: A marketing specialist is working on a campaign when they discover that the original advertising platform is no longer available.
Instead of panicking, they quickly research alternative platforms that fit the budget. They adjust the campaign strategy accordingly, ensuring it launches on schedule and showcasing flexibility and resilience.
✅ Ideal for: Roles in fast-paced, constantly-evolving environments like startups and marketing.
6. Critical thinking skills
Critical thinking is one of today’s most relevant personal skills examples for a resume. It refers to an individual’s ability to objectively analyze information, assess arguments, and make well-reasoned judgments based on facts and logic. This skill is essential in decision-making processes, as it involves weighing different perspectives and identifying the most effective solutions.
📌 Example: A data analyst encounters discrepancies in sales reports. Instead of accepting the data at face value, they analyze the figures, evaluate possible causes for the errors, and synthesize information from multiple sources to identify the root cause.
This careful evaluation leads to corrective actions that improve future reporting accuracy, highlighting strong analytical abilities.
Solid critical thinking empowers people to overcome crises and make the right decisions. Its key components include analysis, evaluation, reasoning, and synthesis. 🧐
✅ Ideal for: Jobs in research, data analysis, consulting, and positions requiring strategic planning.
7. Decision-making skills
Suppose you have an urgent deadline to meet, so you must choose between reallocating resources or requesting an extension. This is where strong decision-making skills come into play. It involves selecting the best course of action to ensure the most favorable outcome for the situation.
📌 Example: A product manager faces an urgent deadline and must decide whether to allocate resources to complete a feature or request an extension. They weigh the pros and cons of each option, considering team capacity and the impact on stakeholders.
After analyzing the risks, they reallocate resources, enabling timely delivery without compromising quality.
Good decision-making skills help in many ways—they minimize risks, maximize efficiency, and increase productivity. Additionally, any individual with this aptitude has a talent for risk assessment, judgment, strategic thinking, and analytical skills.
✅ Ideal for: Leadership roles, management positions, and any job description that involves strategic planning.
8. Interpersonal skills
Interpersonal skills are all about how you interact with others. When you listen to your colleagues’ ideas, respond with empathy, and encourage open conversations, you’re showing strong interpersonal skills. These traits help build better relationships and create a positive, collaborative work environment.
📌 Example: A human resources representative conducts interviews and actively listens to candidates’ responses. They provide empathetic feedback and encourage open dialogue, creating a comfortable atmosphere. Their ability to connect with candidates helps build trust and fosters positive relationships, which is essential for a successful hiring process.
Effective interpersonal skills are crucial in the workplace, enabling you to work with others and resolve problems. Some of their core components include empathy, patience, and active listening.
✅ Ideal for: Roles in sales customer service, human resources, and any position requiring strong relationship-building skills.
9. Leadership skills
Leadership is about guiding and motivating a team toward a common goal. This could be something as immediate as meeting a deadline or as significant as driving long-term business growth. Effective leaders inspire their teams, provide direction, and help ensure everyone stays aligned and focused on the objectives, whether short-term or long-term.
📌 Example: A team lead guides a group through a challenging project. They set a clear vision, motivate team members by recognizing their contributions, and delegate tasks based on individual strengths. By providing mentorship and maintaining open lines of communication, they create a collaborative environment that drives the team toward achieving their goal.
Strong leadership skills enable you to achieve these goals through combined team efforts and create a collaborative, positive work environment. Its components include vision setting, motivation, delegation, mentoring, and other organizational skills.
✅ Ideal for: Management positions, team lead roles, and any job overseeing others.
10. Collaboration skills
Collaboration skills involve working with others across various teams and departments to attain a shared goal. This skill is vital in the corporate world as it ensures an individual is a team player and can smoothly cooperate with other organization members to create the best possible output.
📌 Example: A product developer collaborates with marketing and sales teams to launch a new product. They actively participate in cross-department meetings, share insights from their team, and seek input from others to ensure all perspectives are considered. By fostering teamwork and communication, they contribute to a successful product launch that meets customer needs.
Key aspects of solid collaboration skills include teamwork, strong communication, and meaningful contribution.
✅ Ideal for: Positions in project management, product development, and any job that requires teamwork across departments.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Showcase Personal Skills on Your Resume?
The way you present your skills section can be a critical factor in a hiring manager’s decision to interview you.
Here are a few tips to highlight some of the personal skills examples on your resume and make a lasting impression on potential employers:
Tip #1: Tailor your personal skills to job descriptions
Many job seekers overlook the importance of aligning their skills with the job description. Instead, they often list generic in-demand skills without much thought. This approach can be a mistake, as it misses the opportunity to match relevant skills that could increase your chances of landing an interview.
Personal skills, just like technical ones, must align with the job’s requirements. If they don’t, your resume might not make it past the initial screening. 📝
Rather than listing popular or trendy skills, take the time to analyze the job description and highlight the most relevant ones. For example, if a role emphasizes being a “team player,” adding skills like collaboration, teamwork, and communication can position you as a better fit for the role.
To help you in this process, ClickUp offers a powerful AI tool called ClickUp Brain. This powerful AI assistant can help you develop the personal skills section of your resume and personalize it for a job role. Just enter your prompt, hit send, and see the magic unfold!
Here’s an example:
That’s not all. Once ClickUp Brain has generated the best personal skills for your resume, you can use ClickUp Docs to document how you manage the skills and then fine tune your resume. Here’s an example:
Add/remove skills as per your expertise, insert background intel, or share it with your peers for review—there’s no end to what you can do with your real-time, updatable resume on ClickUp Docs.
Tip #2: Highlight how your skills led to achievements
If you’re at a very early stage in your career, simply listing your personal skills might do the trick. But if you’re an experienced pro looking for a career shift or a bigger opportunity, it’s time to step up your game. Show how you’ve applied those skills and the impact they’ve made. 🎯
Don’t just mention your strong personal skills examples in your resume—highlight achievements you have attained by implementing them. Also, make the impact measurable by adding numbers, percentages, etc.
For instance, instead of saying, “Great at managing time,” add value by demonstrating how your time management skill benefited your team/organization.
📌 For example, you can say, “Led a 20-member project management team to prioritize tasks effectively, delivering [XYZ] projects 10% ahead of deadlines,” or “Efficiently managed time and resources, resulting in the completion of a high-volume project that saved the company 15% in costs.”
As you enhance the skills section of your resume, simplify and streamline your job search with the ClickUp Job Search Template. Customizable and beginner-friendly, this template lets you keep track of your progress and goals so you can easily match a personal skill with an achievement.
Read More: Best Resume Format: Tips + Examples
Tip #3: Use action verbs to craft compelling personal skills statements
One candidate writes “communication skills” on their resume, while another says, “Led high-impact weekly client meetings, resulting in a 20% boost in project approval rates.”
The second one is much harder to ignore.
That’s the difference. Don’t just list your skills—make them shine by using action verbs, data points, and crafting concise, engaging statements that show real impact.
The most effective way to do this is by transforming your skills into compact, compelling statements that highlight both your abilities and results.
📌 For instance, don’t write, “I worked as part of a team to help improve communication between departments”. Instead, say, “Facilitated team communication, boosting collaboration by 20%”—this is shorter, actionable, and demonstrates your ability in a more measurable, concrete way.
Tip #4: Use bullet points to make your resume concise
The more text-heavy your resume is, the less likely it is to be viewed by an HR member—and it makes sense why.
Going through each application to find the ideal candidate would take a lifetime, especially if the resumes are lengthy. This is precisely why seasoned experts advocate that job applicants create resumes that are easy to skim.
While it’s not possible to trim everything, bullet points can make your skills section concise and to the point.
📌 For example, instead of writing your skills in a paragraph, use bullet points to list them under your resume skills section. It should look something like this:
- Improved team efficiency, achieving a 25% increase in output
- Enhanced customer satisfaction, increasing retention rates by 30%
- Streamlined project workflows, reducing completion time by 15%
💡 Pro Tip: You can implement the same technique to enlist your core competencies in your resume.
Summarize this article for me pleasePersonal Skills vs. Technical Skills
A quality resume consists of hard and soft skills, AKA technical and personal skills. Let’s discuss their differences to understand them better:
| Aspects | Personal Skills | Technical Skills |
| Definition | Refers to an individual’s personal traits and attributes | Refers to an individual’s technical and educational proficiencies |
| Measurability | Mostly difficult to measure objectively | Easily measurable through tests and assessments |
| Transferability | Easily transferable—can be implemented across different roles | Non-transferable—can only be implemented for specific roles |
| Learning method | Generally developed through experience and practice | Acquired through formal education/training |
| Examples | Soft skills examples include communication, creativity, empathy, etc. | Hard skills examples include data analysis, graphic design, accounting, etc. |
The importance of balancing personal and technical skills on a resume
Now that you have a fair idea of both personal and technical skills, let’s find out why it is essential to balance both on a resume:
- Comprehensively addresses job requirements: Enlisting both personal and technical skills on a resume enables you to showcase your entire range of capabilities, comprehensively addressing every aspect of the job description
- Demonstrates versatility: Creating a technical resume to apply for a technical role is important, but not enough. Employers judge your competency for any role—irrespective of how technical it is—based on your ability to demonstrate hard and soft skills. This is why you should mention both on your resume
- Enhances employability: Having excellent technical know-how. However, employers may reject your application on the very first go if you don’t possess strong personal skills like communication, teamwork, and time management. So, striking a balance between both these types of skills is important as it improves your chances of getting the job
As such, there are many other reasons why balancing personal and technical skills is crucial. However, doing this without a robust tool can be difficult. 🛠️
This is where ClickUp comes in. An all-in-one work management suite, ClickUp makes integrating and tracking personal and technical skills a breeze. ✨
Suppose you have to manage a project. Here are the top ClickUp features that can come in handy:
- Use ClickUp Docs to create skill matrices or knowledge bases that outline the project management skills needed for the project
- Create fields for personal and technical skills relevant to tasks or team members with ClickUp Custom Fields
- Use ClickUp Tasks to assign tasks to team members based on their specific skills, ensuring the right person is working on the right task
- Monitor the time spent on tasks to evaluate efficiency and skill application with ClickUp Time Tracking
- Use ClickUp Dashboards to visualize the utilization of all project management skills, performance metrics, and progress toward goals
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow Do Employers Assess Personal Skills?
Let’s say you have created a (seemingly) perfect resume—with personal and technical skills appropriately tailored to the job description. But can that alone secure you the position? Possibly not.
While examples of personal skills on your resume can get you that interview call, hiring managers also cross-check your overall aptitude and suitability for the role. Here’s how:
- Group discussions: They may ask you to discuss a topic with other group members. This enables them to gauge your interpersonal, communication, and collaboration skills, particularly in team settings
- Behavioral interviews: You may be asked specific situational questions by your hiring manager. This helps them assess how you handled past experiences by implementing essential skills like critical thinking and problem-solving
- Personality assessments: For technical roles, employers often gauge the personal skills of a candidate with the help of tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This allows them to evaluate key personality traits for the role systematically
Tips to prepare for interviews (with examples of personal skills!)
Let us now examine some tips for both early career folks and experienced professionals on effectively preparing for an interview. Additionally, we’ve highlighted the key personal skills you should aim to showcase during your interview:
For early career job seekers
- Demonstrate curiosity: Learn about the company’s culture, values, etc.
- Showcase your communication skills: Prepare solid answers for basic questions like “Tell me about yourself” and “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
- Highlight your teamwork abilities: Talk about any internship/apprenticeship you worked on with a team
For experienced professionals:
- Establish strong communication skills: Share instances where you effectively conveyed complex information to different stakeholders, ensuring everyone was aligned on project goals
- Highlight your critical thinking skills: Use examples to demonstrate how you navigated a challenging situation at work
- Show your leadership skills: Discuss instances where you successfully led a team to attain a business goal
- Demonstrate adaptability: Describe a situation where you successfully adjusted to a significant change in project scope
- Showcase your collaboration skills: Give examples of how you worked with cross-functional teams to execute a project
Keywords matter: Get noticed by ATS and employers! 👀
Integrate keywords related to personal skills throughout your resume. This is especially important for applicant tracking systems (ATS). Research common terms used in your industry and ensure they appear in your skills section and experience descriptions. 💼
Summarize this article for me pleaseImproving Your Personal Skills
Here’s how to go about adding new skills to your resume to stand out to a hiring manager:
Set clear goals
Identify the personal skills you want to develop and set measurable goals to keep track of your progress. Use tools like the SMART criteria to ensure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Challenge yourself
The best way to learn something is to do it practically. So, if you have a personal skill in mind that you want to cultivate within yourself, engage in roles and opportunities based around it. For instance, if you want to hone your communication skills, spend more time in customer-facing situations.
Practice active listening skills
Communication is one of the most important transferable skills, and one of its main aspects is listening. Practice active listening as much as possible. Focus on genuinely hearing what others have to say instead of coming up with a reply just for the sake of it.
💡 Pro Tip: During conversations, try to paraphrase what the other person has said before responding. This shows that you are engaged and helps reinforce your active listening practice. 🤝`
Join professional development communities
Participate in workshops, groups, and professional meetups. You can also engage in online platforms or professional grooming communities to learn personal skills from seasoned industry experts.
Leverage ClickUp for enhanced collaboration and skill-building sessions
If you want to foster collaboration and conduct skill-building sessions in your team, here are a few ClickUp features you can utilize:
ClickUp Whiteboards
ClickUp Whiteboards can enable your team to visualize skill ideas and collaborate in real time. They are perfect for brainstorming sessions and mapping out strategies.
As a team member, you can use this feature to organize ideas visually, outline key skills, and create interactive exercises focusing on communication, leadership, and teamwork.
ClickUp Docs
ClickUp Docs empowers teams to collaborate on shared documents in real time, making it an ideal platform for skill-building sessions. During these sessions, teams can co-create comprehensive documents that outline personal development strategies, ensuring everyone is aligned on their learning objectives.
Additionally, you can share relevant articles, insights, and resources that enhance specific skills like problem-solving, adaptability, and communication. This collaborative approach not only fosters a culture of continuous learning but also enables people to effectively support each other’s growth.
ClickUp Chat
ClickUp Chat facilitates instant communication among team members, making it easy to share ideas and insights related to skill development. Whether discussing strategies for improving collaboration, providing feedback on personal growth initiatives, or brainstorming ways to enhance specific competencies, team members can maintain an ongoing dialogue and even create tasks right from Chat.
This continuous interaction fosters a supportive environment where individuals can refine their skill sets and receive and act upon feedback throughout their development process.
Summarize this article for me pleaseCreate the Best Personal Skills Resume with ClickUp!
Showcasing your personal skills examples on your resume can be the X factor in landing an interview. It’s not just about what you know technically; your personal skills can set you apart and show a prospective employer why you’re the perfect fit. 🌟
That’s because personal skills—unlike technical abilities—extend beyond the job’s core function. They reflect what it’s like to work with you as a team member and whether you’ll adapt well to the company’s culture.
So, start building a resume that does justice to your candidature. Leverage ClickUp’s advanced tools and features to showcase your best personal skills on your resume, and build the career of your dreams.
Sign up for ClickUp today!
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