Use these 15+ resume strengths to showcase your qualities

The goal of a resume is to give a hiring manager an accurate picture of your skills, experience, and dedication to your job. It can also show what type of employee you will be when you are hired by the company. One way to showcase all of your qualities is to include certain strengths in your resume. In this blog, we will discover some of the top strengths you should add and why businesses love to see them on a resume.

Here’s what we’ll look at:

• Tips for adding resume strengths to your resume

• Top resume strengths that can showcase your qualities

Tips for adding resume strengths to your resume

Unlike hard skills that are important to your industry, resume strengths aren’t as easy to add to a resume. Instead of simply listing them as bullet points, you will need to demonstrate them in other ways. No need to include every strength you have. Instead, try to focus on the specific strengths that are listed within a job listing. Adding the items mentioned in the job listing can make your resume stronger and more effective.

While you shouldn’t list resume strengths directly, highlighting them within your career summary is possible. For example, you can show you have leadership skills by highlighting the projects or teams you managed. Similar to the career summary, you can highlight more of your resume strengths in your work experience section. This section helps you provide specific details about your resume strengths and how you used them to benefit the companies you’ve worked for.

17 Resume strengths that can showcase your qualities

Understanding your strengths and how they can benefit a potential employer is an important part of the job application process. If you are struggling to decide which strengths to put on a resume, here are some to consider:

1. Adaptability

Being adaptable means you can adjust yourself to different situations quickly, so that a company’s needs are taken care of. To show you are adaptable on your resume, add instances where you’ve taken on new responsibilities within a company. You can also demonstrate how you set goals and ask for feedback from your peers and managers.

2. Analytical Skills

Analytical skills are valuable to a company because they mean you can develop solutions and ideas for complex situations. For this strength, you should include examples of when you’ve needed to analyze and solve problems. You may have needed to collect and interpret data, present your findings, or had a breakthrough in a specific role, which are all great ways to show your analytical skills.

3. Attention to Detail

If you have strong attention to detail, that means you can focus on all areas of a project, showing you are thorough and accurate with your work. When displaying this strength on your resume, be specific about the experiences that were improved by your attention to detail. Talk about projects you’ve worked on and how you made them better.

4. Communication Skills

Someone who has great communication skills can convey their thoughts and ideas in a way that others can easily understand and implement. This is another area where you will want to give specific workplace examples. Include ways you have created a positive outcome, such as boosting employee morale, being a mentor to another employee, or volunteering as part of the onboarding team.

5. Creativity

When you are creative, you can think about projects in a new light or a different way, which makes you more flexible as an employee. Listing projects that required you to showcase your creativity is a great way to include this skill on your resume. You can also include information about how the project improved the business thanks to your creativity. For example, if customer service improved by a certain percentage after you completed your project, then include that on your resume.

6. Critical Thinking 

Critical thinkers not only recognize problems but can work out solutions and prioritization schedules for those problems. To include critical thinking skills on your resume, include information about challenging situations you’ve overcome and how you were able to research the issues and develop a solution to the problem. You should also include the results so you can show how the company improved thanks to your help.

7. Customer Service

Having great customer service skills means you are a great listener and can work well with others in tough situations. Customer service skills are a little more concrete than some of the other skills because you can showcase your skills thanks to the positions you’ve held. For example, if you are in a customer-facing role, you can easily show that you have experience working one-on-one with customers. You should include examples of how you provide customer service with a focus on timeliness and customer satisfaction.

8. Decision Making

Businesses love decision-makers because they know what steps to take to navigate tricky situations that come up daily. On your resume, show that you take risks and opportunities into consideration and make decisions based on careful research and planning. Communication is also a big part of the decision-making process, so these are two skills to pair together.

9. Interpersonal Skills 

One of the benefits about someone with great interpersonal skills is that they can improve teamwork and morale within the company. They are the skills you use to interact with others, so showcasing your ability to communicate with all levels of an organization is invaluable. You should demonstrate ways you’ve cooperated with other departments in the past, interacted with your leadership team, and worked closely with your peers on various projects. Adding any volunteer work is also a great way to add interpersonal skills to your resume.

10. Leadership

Being able to guide other team members and communicate instructions clearly and concisely is always beneficial to businesses. On your resume, you should show how you’ve taken on leadership roles and projects in your past jobs and what the results were. Demonstrate that you can communicate with others, and that you are flexible,  creative, and organized. Talking about specific projects you’ve worked on can help you showcase this strength.

11. Marketing Skills

The goal of marketers is to bring value to an organization by coming up with programs that effectively promote a business’s services and products. Even if you aren’t on the marketing team, you can still show how you’ve come up with ideas to improve the company’s bottom line and get the message out about the products and services that a company sells.

12. Multitasking

Knowing how to effectively move your attention from one task to another can help a business run more efficiently and keep productivity high. With this skill, you will need to describe how you use it daily by detailing the various projects you handle while maintaining quality and efficiency. You can show you are a master at multitasking by demonstrating an ability to work on multiple projects while improving customer satisfaction, reducing costs, and increasing productivity. 

13. Organizational Skills

Companies love employees with organizational skills because they can help ensure deadlines are met and the right tasks are prioritized. Talking about the projects you’ve worked on and how you’ve been able to keep your tasks and the project as a whole on schedule is extremely valuable. It also helps you to demonstrate that you understand how important productivity and structure are in the workplace and that you are dedicated to thinking strategically to keep things on schedule.

14. Positive Attitude

People with positive attitudes help to improve the work environment, which can keep both customers and employees happy. You can display this by framing work challenges in a positive way, with words like surmounted, overcame, or attained.  Along with displaying this skill on your resume, make sure you are showing your positive attitude at all times throughout the application, interview, and onboarding process. 

15. Problem Solving

All businesses face problems from time to time, and the problem solvers are those who get things back on track quickly. Some of the ways you can show that you have this strength on your resume is by showing your ability to research and analyze problems and come up with creative ways to tackle them. This is also a strength that pairs well with communication.

16. Resourcefulness

Being resourceful means you have the skills needed to react quickly to a problem and find solutions others might not have thought of. When deciding how to include this skill on your resume, think about the challenges you’ve faced in previous roles. Talking about those problems and how you approached handling them can help showcase your resourcefulness.

17. Time Management

Time management involves being able to plan projects and tasks in a way that has you completing them efficiently and more productively. This is another strength that you can show by discussing the specific projects you’ve worked on and what it took for you to complete them. Being organized, completing projects within a specific timeframe, and communicating project needs, scope, and requirements with others are all beneficial when it comes to demonstrating your time management skills.

Ready to build a great resume of your own? Be sure to stop by our page and check out our Resume Builder tool to get started.

Key takeaways

1. The goal with your resume strengths should be to highlight them throughout your resume by demonstrating how you have used them.

2. When writing your resume, think about the specific strengths mentioned in the job listing.

3. You are likely to have many marketable resume strengths you can add, but you should choose the ones that most benefit you in the job you are applying for.