What are soft skills and which soft skills should be included in your CV?
Ability to work in a team, goal orientation, diligence, resistance to stress – the so-called soft skills – they are almost as important as education and qualifications. That is why it is worth mentioning them in your CV. How can you make it natural and not look like boasting? Is it enough to just list them, or is it possible to describe them?
What will you learn from the article?
- What skills should you include in your CV?
- Soft skills – definition
- Key soft competences in a CV – examples
- Why are soft skills important?
- How to show soft skills in a CV?
- How to describe soft skills?
- Additional skills and competences in a CV – what attracts recruiters’ attention
- What to do to make soft skills in a CV attractive?
- Soft skills in a CV – summary
What skills should be entered in the CV?
Anyone who creates or starts thinking about creating their CV wonders what skills for the CV to enter. What will convince the recruiter? Which feature or skill will make the recruitment process successful?
Skills for a CV are divided into two groups: hard skills and soft skills. However, it is worth realizing that neither one nor the other can be classified only in the category of “additional skills in CV”. They are very important.
Soft skills – definition
Wondering what soft skills are? Is interpersonal skills in a CV the same as soft skills? Fortunately, the answers to these questions are quite simple.
The soft skills in your CV are about your personality. They define the way you act, carry out the tasks entrusted to you and how you react to different situations.
What’s more – soft skills are sometimes called personal or interpersonal skills. This is precisely due to their function in determining the behavior related to interpersonal contacts. However, it is better not to treat these terms as synonyms. Soft skills – both in CV and in life – also often apply to properties related only to you as a human.
Key soft competences in CV – examples
Contrary to appearances, soft skills are very practical skills in a CV . It is said very often that without soft skills it is difficult to use your hard skills.
If you want to put additional information about yourself on your CV, think about soft skills. Remember that it is worth telling the recruiter something more about yourself. Thanks to this, he will better sense your personality and perhaps be more interested in your CV. However, additional skills cannot overwhelm all the information.
Soft skills that you can include on your CV are for example :
- ability to deal with stress,
- motivating others to work,
- ability to work under time pressure,
- taking care of a good atmosphere in the team,
- communicative,
- empathy,
- patience
- creativity and innovation,
- willingness to learn and self-development,
- high personal culture,
- openness,
- ability to adapt to new conditions,
- commitment to the assigned tasks,
- independence.
Negotiation is also a soft skill that should be included in your CV. This is a good example of how hard skills (substantive knowledge, process knowledge) can be used in negotiation activities thanks to, for example, communication skills. Also, remember to match the soft skills entered in your CV to the position you are applying for. This way you will show the employer that you understand what the job is about and what qualities you need for it.
Why is soft competency important?
It may seem that expertise is the main thing that is expected of a candidate. Soft skills, such as communication skills, however, are equally important in almost every profession. Someone who is a gifted programmer but cannot communicate with clients and colleagues may contribute less to the company’s development than an employee who – in addition to professional knowledge – also has the ability to listen to other people and talk to them in an understandable way.
How to show soft-skills in CV?
A CV must be comprehensive, relevant to the job and transparent. Therefore, show your characteristics and history of employment and education in such a way that all information is a coherent whole. Your CV must be legible and contain the most important information about your key competences and experiences.
Also remember that the sentence “I am creative, motivated and able to work under stress” does not say much about you to an employer for whom actions are much more important than words, especially since almost everyone uses the same statements. When creating a CV, it is worth refining the descriptions of experience and achievements – so that it shows that you will actually cope with your new responsibilities.
How to describe soft-competences?
“I am communicative, punctual and organized” – such a sentence in your CV says little about you. In order not to be groundless, present your strengths in a slightly more specific way.
We advise you to think about who we are and how we function in a work environment. Of course, our assessment will be subjective, but it can be useful if we formulate it truthfully. There is no form of reality bending here. Our confidence and support for a given skill on a soft example is extremely important. Confidence in your soft skills and the ability to visualize them will build our position in the eyes of the future employer.
So how do you describe these additional skills in your CV? Examples can be seen here at every turn. The labor market is changing and now it is not enough to say that you can do something. It is worth showing in what situations this trait or skill manifested itself and how you used it. Discuss the acquired skills with an example:
- Time management
The fact that you are good at organizing your work is not only due to the fact that you have performed your duties remotely in the past. Such competences are crucial in many positions. If in the past, e.g. during your studies, you worked as a sales representative, mention such obligations as: arranging meetings with clients, building relationships, achieving sales goals at a given level, etc.
- Communicative
This is a great skill on a CV ! Skillful communication with colleagues, clients, business partners, etc. is of great importance in virtually every industry. The results of your work may indicate that you are communicative. So if you have achieved your sales goals, for example working in a call center, write about it.
- Ability to work in a team
The ability to cooperate is one of the key soft skills of an employee. To prove that you have mastered it, write in your CV about the team projects you have carried out so far. These can be not only purely professional projects, but also volunteering, organizing a cultural or scientific event, etc. Additional description of the competences works on the recruiter’s imagination.
- Goal Orientation
Your career path so far shows that you are focused on your goals. If what you wrote in your work summary largely coincides with your employment history, your employer may conclude that you are motivated and know what you are aiming for.
- Composure and resistance to stress
Did you give presentations to a large audience, were you responsible for the implementation of important projects, or maybe you participated in business negotiations? All of this requires mastery and control over your emotions.
- Creativity
Your portfolio can say that you are creative. It is a good idea to include a link to the gallery of works you have done in your CV. Your interests may also indicate creativity. If, for example, you write short stories or compose music in your spare time, mention it in your résumé.
- Innovation
Have you developed a document archiving system that has improved your office work? Did you come up with a modern and unconventional advertising campaign that was widely echoed in the industry? It’s worth writing about it in your CV.
- Need for development
Your openness to learning and willingness to develop can be seen in additional activity. Show off your participation in training, courses or other forms of professional development. It is worth supplementing the qualifications to become a better and better specialist.
- Adaptive skills
The choices made and the challenges taken may prove that you find yourself in new situations and previously unknown environment without much difficulty. Participation in an international exchange, moving to another city, changing profession or industry, gaining additional qualifications – these are just examples that can illustrate your ability to adapt to new conditions.
Additional skills and competences in the CV – what attracts the attention of recruiters?
When creating your CV and developing examples of competences and skills on your CV, you have the opportunity to present yourself as the ideal candidate. Therefore, it is important that the description of soft skills in the CV is:
- related to work experience and achievements,
- adapted to the requirements of the employer and the nature of the work, truthful, concise, consistent with the content of the cover letter, one of a kind.
How to make soft-skills in your CV attractive?
The mere inclusion of soft skills in your CV proves your maturity as an employee. Many of the example soft skills are not so obvious and if you can talk about them, this is a point for you. However, it is important that the skills included in the CV are correct. A potential employer or recruiter will certainly verify whether you are suitable for the chosen profession.
The essence of the assessment may be the observation of the candidate’s behavior during a direct conversation with the employer, e.g. how he reacts in a stressful situation, how he builds interpersonal relationships or how he organizes his workplace.
Also, ensure that your CV includes only information that is relevant to the prospective employer.
The knowledge and practical skills gained during the training can be illustrated in the CV in the section on courses and training. We can also provide these data as part of special professional predispositions. Such information will increase our attractiveness in the eyes of the employer.
Soft skills CV-summary
Before you create your CV, analyze the job requirements and then refer to each of them. Include other competences useful in the profession, even if the employer does not refer to them directly. However, make sure that the amount of information is not overwhelming for the recipient.
How can I personalize my CV?
Remember that there is no such thing as core competencies in a CV. Everything matters here if you can show that you really have certain qualities within you and you can use them! Try to match them with the profile of the position you want to get. Remember – more is not always better.
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