Step 9: Skills

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You may have skills that don’t necessarily fit in the other sections of your resume. However, you still want to include them. You can create a Skills section in your resume. Skills can range from computer knowledge that you may have to foreign languages that you speak. If you want to stand out from the rest of them, you should consider what other skills you have that you want to include in your resume.  

What type of categories can you put in the Skills section?
Here are some suggestions:  

• Computer Skills: List software, hardware, and coding that you are familiar with.
• Foreign Languages: Indicate your level of proficiency such as elementary, conversational, fluent or native. You should also list whether that is reading, writing or speaking or a combination of all three
• Travel: If you have extensive travel experience, write a brief synopsis of no more than 3 – 5 lines about it.

See the examples at the end of the chapter for reference.

Should you list all your skills?
You should refrain from putting in skills that are not conducive to the job that you are applying for. These skills should tie in with your objective and job description. Be careful on what you include because as much as you want the prospective employers to think that you are interesting and perfect for the job, you also don’t want them to wonder why you are putting unrelated information on your resume. You don’t want the prospective employers to think that you do not understand what the position and company are all about.

Where should you put the Skills section?
Regardless of the type of resume you choose to use, the Skills sections should be listed after the Experience section of your resume.

Here are some examples:

SKILLS
Extensive knowledge of Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Lotus Notes, Website Development
Proficient in Japanese

COMPUTER SKILLS 
Developed procedures for IBM environments
Resolved security and capacity issues using TMON/DB2, TMON/MVS, SDSF, RMF monitor, Cloning Tool, Buffer Pool Analyzer
Maintained Database Management systems