Career Warrior Podcast #292) What Skills Should I List On My Resume?

Episode Transcript

Chris Villanueva

You don’t have to have a skill section but it’s often something that helps you to stand out. I would say or helps make those skills stand out. But another way you can include skills, of course is within your summary and your professional experiences section LinkedIn Presents and welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast. If your goal is to transition to more meaningful work achieve better pay or reach that flow tate at work, this is your podcast.

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By the way, did you know that I own a resume writing service with my brother Matthew. Over the last years, I’ve networked with some of the most amazing individuals that you’ll meet and they help us to lead the industry with top-notch service and really solid resumes that get our clients noticed. Head on over to letseatgrandma.com and see what we can offer you. All right. So let’s set the stage here. What skills should I put my resume?

Let’s say, you’re going into a restaurant and in Austin, they have just these amazing Mexican restaurants with breakfast tacos. It’s one thing you didn’t know about me, so I freaking love breakfast, tacos. They’re like my favorite. So let’s say you walk into this Mexican restaurant. And you’re bold that day, and you say, surprise me, surprise me with the ideal breakfast taco knowing that deep down on the inside, you hope the waiter doesn’t mess it up but you still reassure them that they’re going to do great.

So the person ends up putting beans, cheese, and eggs on your taco. You’re like, okay, solid choices right there but then things start to get weird, they tossed in some shrimp. They toss in some peppers, onions, and green salsa. You decide, okay, I’m going to keep an open mind. This is one type of taco. That’s kind of like this hodgepodge situation, but I’m going to keep an open mind and I’ll probably pay for this later, but I’ll give a nice jog to make up for it. This is a trashy taco, but then the unthinkable happens.

This person tosses in soy sauce, cabbage, and jackfruit. Imagine your reaction to this taco. There are nine, ten different ingredients that don’t go together and this, ladies and gentlemen, is what many of us are doing in our skills sections on a resume? It’s just a hodgepodge – just a hodgepodge of crap that doesn’t blend together whether whatsoever and it doesn’t really match what the person is looking for.

So I’ve gathered some key insights from a couple of people from our management team John and Katie, so special shout out and thanks to both of you for giving me some strategic direction this episode. But I want you all to think of how can I craft a skills section that is targeted and that ends up garnering more interviews. Now, the way I want you to think about doing that is by thinking about out the 3 Rs: recent, relevant, and required.

Let’s start with ‘recent’ because that one’s probably the easiest one. It’s one I think I need to mention here because there’s folks on here who have skills from 1997 that they no longer really have sharpened anymore. But make sure that the resume has recent skills that you’ve been honing over the last several years. Don’t include a skill or better yet don’t include a certification that is expired or that you no longer hold. And this is something that I would recommend anyway, because those types of jobs you’re applying for probably aren’t best suited for you

If it’s highly required and it’s just a really old skill, and this brings me to the second R, which is ‘relevant.’ Are the skills listed in your resume relevant, for the position you’re applying for or at least are they transferable? So let’s say you have project management skills as somebody my team used as and also, you have management skills and even a PMP certification, but do you include it? If the job you’re applying for doesn’t really care about that. Of course not. And yet, this is the mistake that many job seekers are making over and over again. Is they want to show off that? An awesome PMP certification. I know how hard it is to get one of those and show off those project management skills because they think that okay, well, I think anyone could use a project management, project manager even if I’m applying for a position that really has nothing to do with it, that doesn’t really help serve your purpose in your resume.

Don’t include something if it’s not relevant, specifically for the job you’re applying for, I know it’s really tough for a lot of job seekers because we want to include everything we want everyone to see how amazing we are and how versatile we are. I get it but at the end of the day, every single word you put on your resume that is extra or every single word that is not relevant ends up watering down your resume. And when you water down your resume, it doesn’t give that laser sharp focus that garners interviews. So, of course, we want to make sure that they’re relevant for the job were applying for and then we want to double check the required skills listed on the job posting to make sure that our resumes include that as well. Now this is atricky one of course because we don’t want to to lie on aresume.

So I think that’s really important that if a skill says required and we genuinely do not have that skill like in our career or that we haven’t been developing that skill. We should not include that in aresumes. I think that’s important ethically to understand yet at thes ame time, so many of these job postings have a ton of required skills that they want to see and it makes it really hard to jump through that hoop at least mentally. It’s tough to apply to some of these jobs because there’s just a good set of requirements or recommended skills.

Now, I would still recommend looking closely at what the job posting says is a required skill. And if you have that skill under your belt, even if it’s not, you’re not like a tentative 10, you’re not like amazing at it necessarily, as long as you can talk about that skill comfortably in an interview and you have done that skill to some degree, I’d say, include it on your resume, if it is, of course, required. So put another way, are all the skills in your resume should be related to the job you want. So, don’t neglect that job application and look carefully at the types of skills that are required in it and, of course include it.

A bonus question that I often get is, “how do I include skills on my resume?” Well for intents and purposes and for skin value purposes, I highly recommend including a skills section in your resume. I think in this day and age, those sections they pop out a lot and they make alot of sense to include. So include a skill section and your resume and depending on how important skills are for the job you’re applying for. You can actually order that skill section in the right place in your resume. So let’s say that the position that you’re applying for is really focused on hard skills. Let’s say those software developer positions out there and what you need to know programming languages or let’s say you are applying for management positions in which it calls for specific methodologies and methods andthings like that, then I might actually order that skill section and put it right under the summary.

So at the top of your resume, underneath that summary and above your professional experiences, but if skills are not your strong suit and you’re still developing them and you’d rather highlight your professional experiences, I actually would put professional experiences above skills on your resume so you don’t have to have a skill section but it’s often something that helps you to stand out, I would say or helps make those skills stand out.

But another way you can include skills, of course is within your summary and your professional experiences section. So let’s say as an example you want to talk about the skill Salesforce in your resume. One thing you can do is say, if you ended up working with Salesforce to some degree is helped implement Salesforce to organization and reducing the time, it takes to close the deal by 20%, kind of going off the cuff there in that example.

But what it does is it includes the hard skill of Salesforce and includes that name. And at the same time, it also showcases the result that you were able to affect through that skill, really powerful method there and I recommend including results and skills, as much as possible within the professional experience section ofyour resume. All right, so this concludes it for today. What skills should I put on my resume the skills that are recent relevant and required?

Don’t forget the 3 Rs. The next time you’re crafting your resume and looking to make it laser-focused to garner more interviews. This wraps it up for today. Please subscribe to this show. We have some amazing content coming up like our cover letters in 2023. That’s going to be next week followed by “this is what to include in your LinkedIn about section.” If you are interested in both of those topics, please subscribe and make sure notifications are on so you can get that episode when it is released.

So excited to see you next time. Thanks so much for tuning in and take care. The Career Warrior Podcast and before you go remember, if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search, our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to www.letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ to get a free resume critique and $70. There’s off any one of our resume writing packages we talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted.

In your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention, you’ll get a resume cover letter and Linkedin profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again head on over to www.letseatgrandma.com/podcast/. Thanks and I’ll see you next time.