How to List Skills on a Resume (With Examples)

Most skills sections look the same: a long, comma-separated list of everything the candidate has ever touched, with "team player" and "detail-oriented" thrown in for good measure. That list rarely helps. Knowing how to list skills on a resume properly means choosing the right skills for each job, wording them so applicant tracking systems recognize them, and backing them up with proof elsewhere on the page.

This guide walks through what to include, how many skills to list, where the section belongs, and formats you can copy for technical, healthcare, business and early-career resumes.

Why the Skills Section Matters More Than It Used To

Hiring has been shifting toward skills for several years. LinkedIn's March 2025 Economic Graph report, Skills-Based Hiring: Increasing Access to Opportunity, estimates that searching for candidates by skills rather than job titles and degrees expands the global talent pool by roughly 6.1 times. When recruiters search that way, the skills you list are literally how you get found.

The software side reinforces it. Jobscan's research found that 98.4% of Fortune 500 companies used a detectable applicant tracking system in 2024. Recruiters inside Workday, Greenhouse or iCIMS type terms like "Salesforce," "SQL" or "patient intake" into a search bar, and resumes containing those exact terms rise to the top.

Then a person takes over. In TheLadders' eye-tracking study of 30 professional recruiters, reviewers spent about six seconds on an initial resume scan. A tight, well-organized skills block gives that reader a fast answer to the only question they have in those seconds: can this person do the job?

Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills: What Belongs in the List

Hard skills are teachable and measurable: software, tools, languages, methods, licenses and technical procedures. Think Excel pivot tables, Python, QuickBooks, phlebotomy, Google Ads, AutoCAD or conversational Spanish. These are the terms ATS searches match against, and they should make up nearly all of your skills section.

Soft skills such as communication, leadership and problem-solving matter just as much to employers, but listing them as single words proves nothing. Anyone can type "leadership." Instead, show soft skills through results in your experience bullets:

• Instead of "Leadership" → "Led a team of 6 support agents through a CRM migration with zero missed SLAs."
• Instead of "Communication" → "Presented monthly budget variance reports to a 12-person executive team."
• Instead of "Problem-solving" → "Redesigned the returns workflow, cutting average processing time from 5 days to 2."

If a job posting names a soft skill explicitly ("strong stakeholder management"), it's fine to include that exact phrase once in your skills list. Just make sure an experience bullet backs it up. Our guide on how to quantify resume achievements shows how to turn vague traits into numbers a recruiter will remember.

How Many Skills to List on a Resume

For most roles, 8 to 12 targeted skills hits the sweet spot. Fewer than six can leave keyword gaps; more than 15 starts to look like a word cloud and buries the skills that actually match the job. Technical roles with many tools (software engineering, data, IT) can stretch further if the skills are grouped into clear categories.

To decide which skills make the cut:

1. Pull up three to five job postings for the role you want.
2. Highlight every skill, tool and qualification that appears in more than one posting.
3. Cross off anything you can't honestly claim.
4. Order what's left by how often it appears, with the most-requested skills first.

Repeat a lighter version of this for each application. Our step-by-step guide to tailoring your resume to a job description covers the full process, and the resume keywords guide explains how to work those terms into the rest of your resume naturally.

How to Format Your Skills Section for ATS

Good formatting makes skills readable to both software and people. Follow these rules:

• Use a standard heading: "Skills," "Technical Skills," or "Core Competencies." Creative labels like "My Toolkit" can confuse parsers.
• Write skills as plain text. Skill bars, star ratings, pie charts and icons can't be read by ATS software, and a "4 out of 5 stars in Excel" rating tells a recruiter nothing concrete.
• Include the full term and acronym once: "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)," "Electronic Health Records (EHR)."
• Mirror the posting's wording. If it says "Microsoft Power BI," don't write "PBI dashboards."
• Keep the section in the main body of the document, not inside a text box, header or footer that some parsers skip.
• Group related skills into labeled lines when you have more than eight or so.

Where to put the skills section

Place it near the top, right under your summary, when skills are your strongest selling point: career changers, technical professionals and recent graduates. Place it after your work experience when your job history is the stronger story and the skills mainly support it. Either way, keep it short enough that a recruiter can scan it in a couple of seconds.

Proficiency levels: use words, not graphics

Proficiency labels are most useful for languages and specialized tools. Stick to plain words a reader can interpret: "Spanish (Fluent)," "Tableau (Advanced)," "French (Conversational)." Avoid self-scored percentages like "Photoshop 90%" because they invite the question "what's the other 10%?"

Resume Skills Section Examples by Role

These examples show the grouped format in action. Swap in the skills from your own target postings.

Notice that credentials appear only briefly here. If you hold several, give them their own section using the format in our guide on how to list certifications on a resume.

Don't forget AI and emerging tools

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects that 39% of workers' core skills will change by 2030, with AI and big data among the fastest-growing skill areas. If you genuinely use tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot or an industry-specific AI platform in your work, list them by name, ideally alongside a bullet that shows what you accomplished with them.

Common Skills Section Mistakes to Avoid

• Listing outdated basics. "Microsoft Word" and "email" are assumed for most office roles. Use the space for skills that differentiate you.
• One list for every job. A generic skills section misses the specific terms each posting uses. Reorder and adjust it every time.
• Keyword stuffing. Repeating a term ten times or hiding white text doesn't fool modern recruiters. It just makes the resume read badly once a human opens it.
• Skills with no proof. If "Salesforce" appears in your skills list, a recruiter should see it used somewhere in your experience too.
• Graphics over text. Visual skill meters look modern in a design tool but often parse as blank space or gibberish.

FAQ: How to List Skills on a Resume

How many skills should I put on my resume?

Aim for 8 to 12 skills that match the job posting. Technical roles can list more if they are grouped into categories such as Languages, Tools and Platforms. Quality and relevance matter more than volume.

Should I put soft skills on my resume?

Mostly show them rather than list them. Demonstrate leadership, communication and problem-solving through measurable results in your experience bullets. If a posting names a specific soft skill, you can include that exact phrase once in your skills section.

Where should the skills section go on a resume?

Put it near the top, below your summary, if your skills are your strongest qualification, as with career changers, technical candidates and new graduates. Otherwise, place it after your work experience.

Should I rate my skill levels on a resume?

Avoid graphic ratings like stars, bars or percentages, which ATS software can't read and recruiters find vague. Plain-word proficiency labels such as Fluent, Advanced or Conversational work well for languages and specialized tools.

Do I need to change my skills section for every job?

Yes, at least lightly. Reorder skills so the most-requested ones come first and swap in exact terms from each posting. It takes a few minutes and noticeably improves how well your resume matches ATS searches.

The Bottom Line

A strong skills section is short, specific and tailored: mostly hard skills, worded the way the job posting words them, grouped for easy scanning, and backed by real results in your experience. Soft skills earn their place through achievements, not adjectives.

Give your skills a layout ATS software can actually read — explore our ATS-optimized resume templates, or save with a multi-template resume bundle if you're applying across several roles.