How to choose professional skills for a resume

According to joint research HeadHunter and Talantix, every fifth candidate is rejected due to the lack of necessary professional skills. Therefore, it is worth declaring confident possession of the required hard skills at the stage of compiling a resume.

What are professional skills

When selecting candidates, most HR specialists are guided by two criteria: relevant work experience and professional skills. These blocks are central to any resume, and if they are filled out incorrectly, the chances of employment are significantly reduced.

Professional skills are practical skills that are needed to perform a specific job function in a particular workplace. For example, here are some hard skills that an SEO specialist should have:

• carrying out SEO‑optimization;
• compiling a semantic core;
• technical audit of sites;
• possession of Yandex Wordstat;
• site analysis in Yandex Metrica;
• setting up SEO in WordPress;
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• creating sites on Tilda;
• analysis of target audience;
• conducting A/B testing;
• usability improvement.

How to choose professional skills for a resume

According to a study by Talantix and Skillaz, 30% of Russian companies automate recruitment processes. One of the most popular tools among HR managers is ATS, an electronic candidate management system.

The service automatically screens resumes - primary analysis and selection of suitable profiles - and skips to the next stage of selection only those documents that contain the keywords specified by the recruiter words. Most of them are hard skills.

If your resume does not have the necessary skills, the questionnaire will not even fall into the hands of the hiring manager. Therefore, take the completion of the professional skills section seriously.

With the help of a job

When writing a resume, it is very important to carefully read the terms of the vacancy. For example, take this declaration for python developers:

Here, the block “Key skills” is separately rendered, and all the skills indicated in it must be included in the resume. In addition, a few more items from the announcement can be included in the document. To do this, let's analyze the "Requirements" section - there are also a number of tools that will look appropriate in the Python developer questionnaire.

Summary list of professional skills:

• Python programming;
• knowledge of Django Framework;
• database management in PostgreSQL;
• knowledge of CSS;
• version control in Git;
• message processing in RabbitMQ;
• DRF ownership;
• knowledge of HTML;
• JS programming;
• reading someone else's code;
• knowledge of English.

By incorporating these skills into your resume, you don't have to worry about the recruiter or ATS system getting past the document.

With an automatic skill generator

Unfortunately, not all vacancies are so detailed. Some employers outline their requirements in general terms. For example, as in this ad:

Here the requirements are blurred, mainly the necessary personal qualities are indicated. Therefore, it will definitely not work to make a list of professional skills for a resume using such a vacancy.

In such a situation, on any site on job search you can refer to the questionnaires of applicants applying for the position you are interested in. True, blindly trusting the choice of strangers is also not worth it: it may turn out to be fundamentally wrong. The list of acquired skills will need to be carefully analyzed and rechecked.

To avoid mistakes, you can pick up skills using an automatic skill generator from MyResume. This is a free tool available to all site users.

The “smart robot” non-stop analyzes vacancies posted on popular job search websites and generates a list of skills most demanded by employers for each profession.

Let's see how to work with the service. First, open the “Skill Generator” tab located on the top of the main page of the site:

We enter in the search line any profession that interests us, for example, “copywriter”, and click on the “Select” button:

We get the following result:

The generator gave the top ten most relevant competencies in professions. If this is not enough, click on the "More skills" button and get a list of additional skills:

Perhaps not all the options that appear will suit you, but you will definitely be able to choose 10–12 positions. Moreover, the “More skills” button appeared again at the bottom, which means that the generator has a few more points in stock.

How to Fill in the Skills Section on Your Resume

When working with a block that includes hard skills, you must adhere to the following recommendations:

• Try to use the words of the employer. A well-written ad always contains key requirements for candidates. To show the recruiter that you are exactly what they are looking for, include as many of the skills from the job as possible on your resume. Also, try to use the same spelling of the terms: if the ad says "internet marketing", you do not need to write "internet marketing" or "internet marketing".
• Be brief. Do not paint skills in all details. It is better to describe each item in a few words. Mark the level of mastery of two or three main skills. Use words like "advanced" or "confident". "Initial", "basic", "starter" will play against you.
• Make the section clear. To do this, list skills using a bulleted list. Try to keep each item within the line.

Another obvious rule that many people ignore is that you can’t include hard skills that you don’t know in practice in the professional skills section. Even if the recruiter likes the resume, a technical interview awaits you, where the fraud will still be revealed. Then you will not only not get a job, but also get a bad reputation.

What is the result

Well-chosen professional skills for a resume - the right step to successful employment. Try to include in your document as many skills that the employer needs as possible, and your competitiveness will increase significantly.

Don't forget to pay attention to the design of the hard skills section. The clearer the block is, the faster the recruiter will understand that you have all the necessary professional skills.