Skills for a CV: what to list and how to prove it

Hard skills and soft skills

Hard skills are things you can be taught and tested on: using Sage or Excel, driving a forklift, speaking Polish, writing SQL, taking blood, reading technical drawings. They are specific and usually easy to check. Soft skills are about how you work with people and handle your job: communication, organisation, patience, leadership, problem solving. They matter just as much, but they are much harder for a reader to believe from a single word on a page.

That difference decides how you present them. Hard skills can sit in a list, because the words themselves carry meaning. "Xero" or "CSCS card" tells an employer something definite. Soft skills need a sentence of evidence, because "excellent communication skills" appears on almost every CV and proves nothing on its own.

How to find the skills a job wants

Start with the advert, not with a list of skills you think sound good. Most adverts spell out what the employer needs, often in a section called "requirements", "about you" or "person specification". Copy the advert into a document and highlight every skill, tool, qualification and quality it mentions. Then sort them into two piles: the essentials, which are usually listed first or marked as required, and the nice-to-haves.

1. Highlight every skill and tool the advert names.
2. Mark the ones described as essential or required.
3. Next to each, write where your CV proves it: a job, a course, a project.
4. For any essential skill with no proof, find an example or decide honestly that the job is a stretch.
5. Use the advert's own words where they genuinely describe what you did, so both a person and an applicant tracking system can match them.

If you are applying for lots of similar jobs, read five or six adverts together. The skills that turn up in all of them are the core of the role, and they belong on your master CV.

Where skills go on your CV

Skills belong in three places, and each place does a different job.

The skills section

A short, scannable list of hard skills: software, systems, equipment, languages, licences and technical methods. Group them if you have more than six or seven, for example under "Software", "Languages" and "Licences". Put it after your experience on most CVs, or higher up if your skills are your main selling point, such as for a developer or a career changer with a new qualification.

Your experience bullet points

This is where soft skills get proved. Each bullet point should show a skill in use: what you did, with whom, and what came of it. A reader who sees "Handled escalated complaints for a team of eight and resolved most on the first call" does not need to be told you are good with customers.

The personal statement

One or two of your strongest skills, named in the paragraph at the top, with a hint of the evidence. Keep it to the skills most relevant to this job. Our personal statement guide covers how to write that paragraph.

Proving a skill with evidence

For every skill you claim, ask what a sceptical reader would want to see. Usually it is one of these: a result, a number, a responsibility someone gave you, or a qualification. Then put that evidence next to the claim.

Keep your evidence honest. If a number is an estimate, round it down rather than up and be ready to explain how you got it. Interviewers often pick a skill from your CV and ask for an example, so anything you cannot talk about for a minute should not be there.

IT skills on a CV

Be specific about software and give a sense of level. "Computer literate" and "proficient in Microsoft Office" say very little. Name the programs and what you do with them:

• Excel: formulas, pivot tables, lookups, charts, or macros if you really use them.
• Word and PowerPoint: long documents with styles and tables, mail merge, presentation design.
• Industry systems: Sage, Xero, SAP, Salesforce, EMIS or SystmOne, a warehouse management system, a till or booking system.
• Collaboration tools: Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Google Workspace, Slack.
• Technical skills: SQL, Python, HTML and CSS, Power BI, Tableau, CAD software.

Avoid star ratings and percentage bars for software. They mean nothing to a reader ("four stars out of five in Excel" compared with what?), and many applicant tracking systems cannot read them. Words such as "advanced", "working knowledge" or a short description of what you have built are clearer.

Skills lists for common jobs

Use these as prompts, not as a list to copy. Include only the skills you have, and check them against the advert.

• Customer service and retail: till and cash handling, complaint resolution, product knowledge, stock control, upselling, CRM systems, working to service targets.
• Office and administration: diary management, minute-taking, document formatting, data entry accuracy, invoice processing, Microsoft 365, handling confidential information.
• Care and healthcare support: personal care, moving and handling, medication support, care plan recording, safeguarding awareness, dementia awareness, first aid.
• Warehouse and logistics: picking and packing with handheld scanners, goods in, forklift or reach truck licences, stock rotation, health and safety, shift work.
• Hospitality: food hygiene, allergen awareness, barista skills, bar and cellar work, table service, cash handling, working under pressure at busy times.
• Trades and construction: reading drawings, measuring and setting out, power tools, CSCS card, working at height, safe isolation for electrical work.
• Data and IT: SQL, Excel modelling, Python, dashboard tools, data cleaning, documentation, explaining findings to non-technical colleagues.
• Teaching and childcare: lesson planning, behaviour management, phonics, supporting pupils with SEND, safeguarding, communicating with parents.

Skills when you have little or no experience

Everyone has skills, even without a job history. The question is where they came from. School and college projects build research, writing and presentation skills. Sport and clubs build teamwork and commitment. Volunteering, caring for a relative, babysitting and part-time cash-in-hand work all involve responsibility and dealing with people. Courses, including free online ones, can give you a specific hard skill to list.

The same rule applies: show the skill in use. "Planned and ran a bake sale that raised money for a school trip" proves organisation better than the word "organised". If you are applying for a first job, keep the skills section short and honest, and let your education and activities carry the evidence.

Skills to leave out

• Anything you could not demonstrate if asked tomorrow.
• Skills every candidate is assumed to have for the job, such as "using email" for an office role.
• Vague soft skills listed as single words with no evidence anywhere on the page.
• Outdated software nobody asks for any more, unless the advert names it.
• Skills unrelated to the job that take space from ones that matter. A forklift licence is gold for a warehouse and irrelevant for a marketing role.
• Personality claims such as "perfectionist" or "workaholic", which often read as warnings.

How many skills to list

For the skills section, six to ten is a good range for most people. Fewer than that and it can look thin. More than about twelve and the important ones get lost, and the list starts to look padded. If you genuinely have many technical skills, as developers and engineers often do, group them under short headings so a reader can find what they need in seconds.

Across the whole CV, the advert's essential skills should all appear somewhere, backed by evidence. Once you have a draft, you can paste it with the job advert into our free ATS CV checker to spot any key skill you have missed or phrased differently from the employer.