Skills for Your CV and How to Choose and Prove Them

There is no single list of skills for CV applications that suits every role. However, top skills to check against the job advert include:

The right skills to put on a CV should come from the vacancy, not a standard list copied into every application. Top skills vary by role, so the best skills for your CV depend on your level and sector. A finance vacancy may ask for financial reporting and accounting software; a marketing vacancy may ask for campaign analysis and Adobe Creative Suite. In care work, record-keeping, communication, and safe working practices may matter more. Tailor the content so the match is easy to see.

Skills are often grouped into hard and soft categories. Some hard and soft skills are also transferable because you can use them across roles or industries. A useful list combines relevant hard and soft skills with the transferable skills needed to do the work. These soft and hard skills become useful job skills only when they match the role, and you can explain them through a task, project, qualification, work sample, or result. Professional skills still need proof, so keep only the key skills you can support.

Hard skills. These are teachable abilities you use to complete specific tasks.

You learn hard skills through education, training, certification, or work, and they are easier to test or measure than soft skills. Hard skills are job-specific abilities an employer can check, so they carry weight when they belong to the work.

Technical skills are a common type of hard skill. Examples include data analysis, coding, bookkeeping, machinery use, copywriting, foreign languages, technical drawing and project planning. List only the hard skills that help you meet the job requirements.

Soft skills. These are personal abilities and work behaviours that affect how you communicate, decide, organise work and respond to change.

Teamwork and communication are interpersonal skills, sometimes called people skills or 'power skills'. These interpersonal skills help you build relationships and work with others. Other key soft skills include judgement, adaptability, active listening and the ability to solve problems. Because these abilities are harder to measure, a label on its own carries little weight.

Transferable is not a third type of skill. Transferable skills are hard or soft skills you can use in another role or sector. Communication is both soft and transferable. Excel is both hard and transferable. The skills employers value depend on the work, so use the vacancy to decide what belongs on your CV. The hard skills vs soft skills split matters less than the evidence behind either one.

Use six to ten relevant skills as a practical starting point for most CVs. Four may be enough for a narrow vacancy when each skill matches a stated requirement. Do not add weak entries just to reach a number.

Your skills section is only one place to present evidence. Name two or three key skills in the personal statement, then prove those important skills in your work-experience bullets through actions and results.

Start by turning the advert into a working list of skills, tools and responsibilities, then keep only the ones you can support with evidence.

Highlight repeated requirements in the job description and person specification. Then separate named skills and tools from duties that point to an ability. “Excel” and “client communication” are named requirements. “Prepare monthly reports” and “resolve customer complaints” are duties.

Map each duty to the ability it requires. Preparing monthly reports points to Excel, data analysis and written communication. Resolving customer complaints points to active listening, judgement and customer service. List the specific skills, tools and behaviours the employer asks for. These key skills are your first filter. You end up with a working list built from the role rather than a pile of generic keywords.

Compare the working list with your previous experience. The skills to put in the finished CV are the ones you can support. Keep a skill when you can link it to a task, project, result, qualification or work sample. Remove any term you could not explain in an interview.

This check leaves you with the right skills and stops the CV skills section becoming a keyword dump. It also helps you decide which job skills belong in the skills section and which are better shown in your work-experience bullets.

Use the same accurate term that appears in the advert when that term describes your experience. A job posting, even a short job ad, may use one phrase for the skills required and another for the specific tasks. If the advert asks for “data analysis” and you have used Excel or SQL to analyse data, name both the ability and the tools.

Applicant tracking systems store, search and sort applications, and they support the recruitment work around them. They do not all behave in the same way, so treat software as one part of the screening process rather than a reason to repeat terms. The CIPD Resourcing and Talent Planning Report 2024 shows that UK organisations use a mix of recruitment methods. Your evidence still needs to make sense to a person.

Check the gap before you decide whether to apply. Mark each missing requirement as essential or desirable, then compare it with the best skills for that role that you can already prove.

For a desirable item, look for related experience you have already used. If the advert names a reporting tool you have not used, experience producing similar reports in Excel may still be relevant. Name the real work and the tool you used, then let the employer judge the match.

Treat an essential requirement differently. Check what the advert actually requires and whether you can genuinely meet it before applying. A short course, volunteer task or internal project may help you start building evidence for a learnable skill, but it does not replace a required licence, formal qualification, regulated competence or substantial level of experience.

Do not list skills you cannot support, especially when the advert marks them as essential. Job hunting with one or two gaps can still be realistic when the remaining requirements match your evidence.

Use Find, Prove and Place when deciding which key skills belong on your CV. Find the skills and responsibilities in the vacancy. Prove them with evidence from work, study, projects or other experience you can explain. Place that proof in the CV section where it is easiest to understand. The skills to put on a CV are the ones that survive all three checks.

Here is the full method using a fictional Office Coordinator vacancy.

Notice what did not happen: the candidate did not copy three phrases from the advert into a skills list. Each requirement was checked against real evidence first. Only then was it written for the CV.

The evidence stays truthful, but each CV section has a different job. The profile gives the quick match, the skills section names the capability with useful detail, and work experience gives the fuller action and outcome.

The UK’s National Careers Service says employers look for a mix of hard skills and soft skills, including transferable skills such as teamwork, communication and problem-solving. That advice does not give you a fixed list of essential skills. The soft skills you need change by role, so use the vacancy rather than a universal ranking.

Teamwork shows that you can share information, contribute to a group task and take account of what other people are doing. It is a transferable skill used across departments, projects and customer-facing roles.

A bare claim such as “team player” asks the employer to take your word for it. When the vacancy mentions collaboration, cross-functional work, relationship building or joint delivery, name the team, your part and what the joint work produced.

Strong communication skills include writing, speaking, presenting, questioning and active listening. Use them to explain technical information, prepare training materials, handle customer enquiries or build relationships with colleagues and clients.

Demonstrating soft skills means showing the action behind the label. Name the audience, the channel or method, what you explained or resolved, and the decision or result it supported. Active listening deserves evidence too: show how you clarified a need, gathered a brief, or used feedback to improve the work.

Problem-solving skills show that you can identify an issue, examine the cause, choose practical solutions, and check the result. The ability to solve problems matters in just about every role, but the problem itself changes by sector.

A service employee may resolve a recurring complaint, an analyst may find an error in a report, and a technician may diagnose a fault. Strong problem-solving skills become easier to trust when the CV shows the method used and the outcome.

Do not write “good decision-maker” without support. Show the information you considered and what the decision allowed you to do.

Use planning and organisation to arrange work, set priorities, coordinate people and meet deadlines. Show time management skills when several tasks compete for attention or when a delay would hold up someone else’s work.

Project management shows planning at a larger scale through milestones, risks, allocation of work and progress tracking. The same basic skill can also appear in administration, study or retail work when the evidence shows how priorities were handled.

Adaptability shows that you can respond when a process, priority, tool, or working condition changes. Show flexibility when the role asks for different tasks, shifting deadlines or working with several groups.

Show what changed, how you adjusted, and how the work continued. A vague claim such as “comfortable in a fast-paced environment” says little about your actions. This can be a transferable skill across teams, roles and industries.

Analytical skills help you examine information, spot patterns, test assumptions and make informed decisions. Critical thinking helps you question whether the available information is reliable and relevant.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 lists analytical thinking as the most sought-after skill in its global employer survey. Treat that as global evidence, then check whether the ability appears in your own vacancy.

Show leadership skills when you supervise people, lead a project, train colleagues, guide a decision, or take responsibility during a difficult situation. You do not need a management title, but the evidence must be real.

Name the task or group, the direction you set, how you carried the responsibility, and what it enabled. Leave leadership skills out when they do not support the role; a shorter list of relevant skills is stronger than impressive labels you cannot prove.

Use the vacancy to decide which technical, digital, management and communication skills matter for the role, then keep only those you can prove.

Computer skills range from everyday office software to specialist systems. Name the software, state the level of technical proficiency and say what task it supports. “Microsoft Office” is too broad when the role needs advanced Excel modelling, PowerPoint presentations or document control.

The World Economic Forum also places technological literacy among the fastest-growing skills in the global job market. This does not mean every applicant should list AI or digital tools. Add them only when the work needs them, and you can show how you used them.

Data skills cover collecting, cleaning, checking, analysing and explaining information. The tools include Excel, SQL, Power BI, R, Python or industry software. Data literacy is the ability to read and use data; it is not the same as knowing the name of a software package.

Place data analysis in your skills section only when it appears in the job description or supports a major duty.

Project management skills cover planning, budgets, risk management, stakeholder updates, quality checks and delivery tracking. People management covers supervision, delegation, coaching, performance support and rota planning.

Name the method or tool when it matters. Jira, Trello, Monday or Microsoft Project can support a delivery claim, but software names do not replace evidence of delivery.

Name the marketing hard skills you have used: search research, campaign reporting, email platforms, content management systems, paid advertising and Adobe Creative Suite. A marketing manager also needs budgeting, supplier management and team planning. Presentation skills cover slide design, public speaking and explaining findings to senior staff or clients.

Connect every skill to an output. “Canva” or “PowerPoint” alone does not show whether you created a proposal, sales deck, training session or performance report.

The mix of hard and soft skills changes by role and sector. The best skills for a finance CV are not the best skills for a care CV: finance may lean heavily on software, reporting and controls, while care can combine procedures with person-centred communication.

Use these hard skills examples as prompts alongside role-specific soft skills, then keep only the skills that appear in the vacancy and that you can prove. A skill is not highly valued simply because it appears on a generic sector list; it matters when the vacancy asks for it, and you can support the claim.

These are sample skills, not a checklist for every CV. Use them to highlight skills that match the vacancy, then choose the specific skills you can prove.

Transferable skills can be used across different jobs and industries, whether they are hard or soft. Teamwork, communication, planning, problem-solving and time management often transfer because the working behaviour remains useful even when the product or sector changes. Technical abilities can transfer too when the new role uses the same tool or method.

Result: a clear, truthful link between experience and the target role

A retail employee moving into account support might use customer enquiries, complaint handling and relationship building as evidence of client communication. A teacher moving into training may use lesson planning, presentation and feedback as evidence of learning delivery.

For an account-support role, this proof shows client communication and record keeping without pretending that the retail job was already office work.

Once you have chosen a skill, show where you used it, how you used it and what the action produced.

Find, Prove, and Place helps you choose and position a skill. Skill + Situation + Action + Result helps you write the evidence once you reach work experience.

A useful CV line should showcase skills through action rather than labels: start with the situation or task, show the action and method used, then finish with the result, benefit or responsibility created.

Use these specific examples as models for the level of evidence, not as claims to copy. The customer-service example proves communication skills and customer service skills by showing the channels, method, and useful outcome.

Personal statement. Name two or three key skills that define your fit for the target role. Connect them to your profession, experience or main type of contribution. Do not turn the opening into a long list.

Skills section. Place a separate skills section near the top half of page one, usually after the personal statement. Some employers and CV templates call this block core competencies, which means the same thing. Use it to group your most relevant CV skills, including hard and soft skills, under short labels, but keep it brief. A skills-based CV gives the section more space when work history is limited, or you are changing direction. Wherever you place skills on your CV, show where they came from.

Skip the rating graphics. Star ratings, percentage bars and dot scales look tidy, but they tell a recruiter nothing. Four stars against “Excel” does not say whether you can build a pivot table or write a macro, and no two people score themselves the same way. Graphics also break when a CV is converted to another format or read on a phone. State the level in words and attach it to a task instead.

Returning to the fictional Office Coordinator example, a compact skills section can show the method, scale, and useful outcome behind each claim rather than a string of labels.

Work experience. This section provides the evidence. Include skills in achievement or responsibility bullets using the task, action and result. See CVJury's guide to the CV work experience section for help arranging roles, and the CV achievements examples guide for stronger result-led bullets.

Ready to turn your evidence into CV copy? Use CVJury’s online CV builder to draft a profile summary and work-experience bullet points, then check every suggestion against the vacancy and your own experience.

• How to write your CV
• Soft skills for the workplace
• Problem-solving competencies

The skill-selection and CV-writing recommendations are CVJury editorial guidance. Worked visuals and lines labelled “Illustrative” are fictional teaching examples. Bracketed templates must be completed with evidence from your own work.