Well, if your resume doesn’t have a “Skills” section, you’re seriously missing out on an opportunity to showcase, you know, your skills. In fact, this is the most straightforward way for you to show to a hiring manager what you can accomplish in the position on day one.
7 comments:
This had some really good tips. I never thought to look into what other professionals had as skills in the job I wanted. Looking under the job description for ideas is, I think, an obvious given, but I always forget to look into people who I want to become because they have the job I want. Also, the "skills and projects" and "skills and interests" ideas for subsections is really interesting. I feel like it could get really messy-looking fast if you're not careful though. I would be leery adding those in. But over all really good
I really like this article because it is not just a fast-pass to a good resume. It makes it clear that you need to develop and, you know, actually have skills to market. The basic message of this article is to seek what employers care about as to not bore them with skills they aren't looking for, risking the chance that they might reject you solely because your resume isn't concise and honed to their needs.
It is interesting to see this article because during my Career & Professional Development class in high school, my teacher stressed the importance of a skills section. Often students at our age (freshmen) do not have quite a long list of skills, but it is good know that we should be looking out for skills that we can learn and add to our resume. I also enjoyed how this article really broke down the structure of a resume. Making and editing a resume can be a daunting task, but this article would certainly answer some questions someone might have.
The first thing that caught my eye was that by some stroke of ignorance, people don't usually have skills sections of their resume. In my opinion, it's the most important part: what can you DO? It's a section that is the most reflective of who you are and what you can do. Yes, your past experience is important. However, the skills you take away from those jobs are even more so. Like the author said, it's a great way to show your employer what's you're bringing to the table. It's your base file, your basic hardware. Perhaps coming from a theatrical background, this section is standard practice, but people are so much more than the jobs they've held. Digging more into the article, I really like how they break down the specific skills. Putting it like that, I feel like the Skills section of the resume can be applicable to many more fields.
Everybody has a different opinion about resumes, I’ve read at least 20 different articles about resume writing in the last month alone and there’s no one answer. Every potential employer, recruiter, hiring manager is looking for something different and sometimes that job posting you’ve examined endlessly to try and decode it isn’t as transparent as you think. The average employer looks at your resume for 5-10 seconds before making the decision to put it in the yes, no, or maybe pile. Is a list a skills going to change their mind…no probably not. In professional practice we tested this theory and 9 out of 10 times people didn’t get past the experience section of the resume. At first after that I was deadest on finding a way to remove the skills section of my resume, but every time I do I feel like something is missing. I’m now on a mission to find a way to keep the information presented in that section, while removing the section itself. Well to be honest, I’ve been trying to find a clever way to remove all the section headers from my resume entirely, but that’s a separate issue. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, what I do know is there’s no hard and fast rule about what you do and don’t need, but you need to find a way to discreetly set yourself apart and land in the Yes pile.
I've never seen a resume without a skills section. This may be due to the university we go to where everyone already has good resumes. However, I remember one issue that I've run into when looking at and working on my own skills sections. The issue that was brought up to me a couple years ago was that often times people say they're skilled in an area where really they only have basic or general knowledge. I often see this when it comes to consoles. When someone has a console listed on their resume so often they make it sound like they are proficient when really they know basic operation. It's really just something to be looking out for.
I have taken many courses on how to build and improve my resume. The information in this article held a lot of similarities to the seminars that I attended. You have to look up the job description and see what you have done that can correspond with what the job is looking for. It is still so interesting to me that the most important part of of the resume happens to be the special skills section. I would imagine that the person reviewing your application would look more towards where on your resume you put your recent experience and training. I suppose I will have to build up my special skills.
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