Skills to put on a resume, and how to find the ones you can prove

Put the skills on your resume that the job asks for and that a line of your experience proves. List tools, languages, methods, and certifications in a skills section, six to twelve in total. Show soft skills such as negotiation or leadership inside your bullets, with a result, instead of listing them.

Most lists of “skills to put on a resume” give you fifty words and leave you to guess which are true for you. A recruiter can’t check a word. They can check a result. So the best skills for your resume are the ones a line of your experience already proves.

This guide covers which skills to list, where they go, and how to find the ones hiding in your own bullets.

Hard skills and soft skills

Hard skills are things you can test or show: a tool, a language, a method, a certification. Excel, SQL, Python, financial modelling, Figma, Salesforce, procurement, bookkeeping, project scheduling, Spanish.

Soft skills are how you work with people and problems: negotiation, stakeholder management, leadership, prioritization, communication.

Both matter. They go in different places. Hard skills can sit in a skills section, because a reader can trust a tool name. Soft skills belong inside your bullets, because “strong communicator” in a list proves nothing, while “Presented the budget plan to the board and got it approved” proves a lot.

Skills to put on a resume, with proof

Here are skills employers ask for across many roles, with what proof of each looks like on a resume. Use them as prompts, not a list to copy.

Skill	What proof looks like in a bullet
Negotiation	“Renegotiated terms with six suppliers, cutting annual spend 18%”
Budget ownership	“Managed a $1.2M operations budget and finished the year 4% under”
Stakeholder management	“Aligned finance, sales, and two suppliers on a new ordering process”
Data analysis	“Built a SQL report that showed which products drove 70% of returns”
Project management	“Led a 10-week warehouse move across three teams with no lost orders”
Customer service	“Handled 60 support tickets a day with a 95% satisfaction score”
Leadership	“Hired and trained four coordinators; two were promoted within a year”
Process improvement	“Cut invoice approval time from nine days to three by removing two sign-offs”
Communication	“Wrote the weekly update read by 200 staff across five sites”
Problem solving	“Found the cause of repeated stock errors and fixed the scanner setup”

The numbers above are examples. Use yours. If you don’t have a number, describe the scale (how many people, sites, customers) or the before and after.

A ten-minute exercise to find your skills

Every accomplishment implies a handful of skills. Read one of your bullets out loud:

Switched suppliers and cut costs by 18%.

It’s a good line, but a recruiter skimming for “negotiation” or “vendor management” won’t find either word, and neither will the search tools that rank you against a job posting. The skills are in there. They aren’t named.

Take your three strongest bullets and, for each one, ask:

1. What did I have to be good at to pull this off? List verbs, not adjectives. “Negotiated,” not “strong communicator.”
2. Who did I have to convince? That’s your stakeholder list, and often your leadership evidence.
3. What would have gone wrong if I’d done it badly? That’s the judgment the work required.

For the supplier bullet, the answers might be: negotiated new terms, owned a budget large enough that 18% mattered, managed finance and the old supplier, and managed the risk of a switch that could break delivery. None of those words are in the original line. All of them are things an operations or procurement hiring manager looks for.

Write the answers next to each bullet. You’ll end up with a list of skills you have real proof for, which is very different from a list of words you hope are true.

Where to put skills on a resume

• In your bullets. This is where soft skills belong, and where hard skills get their proof. Rewrite the bullet so the skill shows in the first few words: “Renegotiated terms with six suppliers and consolidated to two, cutting annual spend 18%.”
• In a skills section. Tools, languages, methods, and certifications. Group them if the list is long (for example, “Data: SQL, Excel, Looker”).
• In your summary, if you have one. One or two skills that matter most for this role, attached to a result.

How many skills to list

Six to twelve in a skills section is plenty for most people. Past that, the important ones get lost. Choose the ones the job description asks for that you can prove, and drop the rest for this version. Everyone can use email and word processors, so leave out skills that are expected in the role.

Skills to leave off

• Skills you couldn’t talk about for two minutes in an interview.
• Vague traits: “hard-working,” “detail-oriented,” “team player.” Show them in bullets instead.
• Outdated tools nobody asks for anymore, unless the job description names them.
• Rating bars and percentages (“Excel 80%”). Nobody knows what they mean.

Use your skills to choose jobs, too

The skills you find are also a better search filter than your past job titles. A purchasing coordinator with that supplier bullet is a credible candidate for operations roles that never show up in a search for “purchasing.” Search for the skills you can prove, not only the titles you’ve held.

When you apply, put the matching skills where the reader sees them first. Our guide to tailoring your resume to a job description walks through that step by step.

Common questions

What are hard skills and soft skills on a resume?

Hard skills are things you can test or show, such as Excel, SQL, or bookkeeping. Soft skills are how you work with people and problems, such as negotiation or stakeholder management. Hard skills fit in a skills section; soft skills need proof in your bullets.

How many skills should I list on my resume?

Six to twelve in a skills section is enough for most people. Choose the ones the job description asks for that you can prove, and drop skills every applicant has, such as email.

Should I rate my skills with bars or percentages?

No. Ratings like “Excel 80%” don’t tell a reader what you can do. A bullet that shows a result with the skill does.

How Appyl does this

Appyl finds the skills your resume, LinkedIn, and GitHub prove, and uses them to match you to jobs. Before you apply, it shows how many of the posting’s main requirements your resume covers.

You can do all of the above by hand. It’s worth doing once even if you never use a tool for it, because you’ll describe your own work better in every interview after.

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