Chapter 12 | How to choose and present key skills

After the profile, it is useful to include a clean list of key skills or keywords, which help with recruiter scanning, keyword alignment, immediate relevance, and recognition.

How many?

Usually around 12 to 15 is enough.

Choose skills that genuinely reflect:

• your target roles

• your real strengths

• the market language in adverts

• the areas you want to be found for

Examples:

Stakeholder Engagement

Budget Management

Team Leadership

Process Improvement

Operational Planning

Compliance

Project Delivery

Customer Experience

Data Analysis

Relationship Management

Change Management

Performance Improvement

Avoid weak, vague, personality-based items such as:

hard-working

friendly

motivated

good communicator

reliable

Those should be shown through evidence, not listed as “skills”.

Presentation

This section can be presented horizontally or in columns, but it should remain:

• easy to read

• balanced on the page

• clean and uncluttered