53+ Hard Skills And How To Highlight Them On A Resume

Hard skills are undoubtedly something you’ve heard of if you’ve ever talked to a career counselor or spent a lot of time studying the job search process.
But what are hard skills specifically, and how do they differ from soft skills? What hard skills are most in demand among employers? Here we’ll see examples of top hard skills and how to highlight them on a resume.

What are Hard Skills?

Hard skills are professional aptitudes you need to carry out your job responsibilities, and they pertain to specialized information you can acquire through school, professional development programs, or training. Knowledge tests or professional exams can be used to assess mastery of hard skills.

Hard skills vary depending on the job. As a result, a professional chef’s resume requires a different set of hard skills than a resume for a software engineer. Examples of hard skills for a chef include food preparation, cleanliness and hygiene, flavor blending, menu planning, and staff management. Examples of hard skills for a software engineer include programming languages, software testing, full-stack development, and others.

What Distinguishes Hard Skills From Soft Skills?

Hard skills are the fundamental know-how required for your line of work. Soft skills, on the other hand, are character traits that affect your approach to challenges, creativity, and capacity for collaboration. They are also known as people skills. While you can acquire hard skills through education, training, or coursework, you can build soft skills by examining your own behavior and working with qualified coaches.

When discussing hard skills vs. soft skills, some debate about which is more crucial. But in actuality, a competent employee needs both. Why? Because working with professionals who lack soft skills can be quite challenging.

What Hard Skills Should Be Listed on a Resume?

Hard skills are a crucial component of the skill section on a resume. They may also be mentioned in other sections of the resume, such as the work experience or resume profile.

These job-specific skills must be in line with the demands of the position. For instance, if the job description for a teacher specifies that “Essential duties include lesson planning for K–12 STEM curriculum, performing student evaluation using appropriate assessment techniques, and accurately maintaining all required records,” then the hard skills on a resume for a teacher would be lesson planning, familiarity with K–12 STEM curriculum, student evaluation, and maintaining administrative records.

It is advised to pick about 5-7 hard skills to list on a resume and to counterbalance them with 2-3 soft skills that are pertinent to the position.

What Makes Hard Skills So Important?

Any job requires a certain set of hard skills. They allude to the skills and information required for the job, such as possessing a driver’s license and being aware of traffic laws for truck drivers. Employees won’t be able to carry out their tasks efficiently without those hard skills.

It’s important to periodically review your knowledge and skills because they are necessary for the job. Even if you are an expert in your profession, new innovations may introduce techniques and solutions that help simplify your work, particularly if your position requires computer expertise or other technical skills.

Types of Hard Skills

The kinds of hard skills required to qualify for and succeed in a profession vary by industry. Hard skills are usually listed as necessary in job descriptions by employers. Typical hard skills are:

Common Hard Skills

Knowledge of computer software
Graphic design
Data Analysis
Project Management
Marketing
Copywriting
Computer Programming
Foreign Languages
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The top-trending hard skills in 2022, according to statistics from LinkedIn, are:

Consumer assistance
Sales
Accounting
Business Development
Marketing
Digital advertising
Retail management
Finance
Social Media
Marketing and sales
Financial Analysis
Engineering
Social Media Marketing
Structured Query Language (SQL)

Examples of the Top 10 Hard Skills for a Resume

#1. Technical Skills

Specialized knowledge and expertise in disciplines like IT, engineering, or science are examples of technical skills. The ability to operate specialist software or equipment falls under the category of technical skills.

Examples of technical hard skills include the following:

CAD
Lean Manufacturing
Multivariate Analysis
Linear Regression
Prototyping
Workflow Development
STEM Skills
Web: Javascript, CSS, and HTML
Payment Processing
Automated Billing Systems
CRM Systems
Research
Troubleshooting

Here are some examples taken from resumes:

Our annual revenue increased by over $250,000 as a result of the creation of MS Excel pivot tables to uncover 500+ new high-traffic, low-competition keywords.
Redesigning the Kanban system using the ideas of lean manufacturing. decreased 32% of the cost of inventories.
Effective Mechanical Engineer with over 3 years of combined Design Engineer experience. Can perform static, fatigue, and fracture analyses on the primary landing gear structural elements of the F-35.

#2. Computer Skills

Your ability to operate hardware and software, from the most basic and generic to the most specialist, is what is meant by computer skills.

Computer skills are a must across all industries in the modern employment market. If the job posting calls for specifics or you’re looking for office employment, make sure to list them on your resume.

Listed below are some fundamental computing abilities:

Ms. Office
- Word
- Excel
- OutlookPowerpoint
- OneNote
- Access
Google Drive
Spreadsheets
Email
Presentations/Slideshows
Database Management
Quickbooks
Web
Typing
Graphics
Business systems
WPM

Here are some examples of common programming skills:

Java
PHP
MySQL
SQL
C#
JavaScript
C++
Python
iOS/Swift
Ruby on Rails

You can get them to work on your resume in the following ways:

A Raspberry Pi and Amazon Echo were used to create an app that allows voice control of lights, a garage door, and a home’s thermostat.
Added conditional formatting to a budgeting spreadsheet using Excel formulas.
Using Oracle Netsuite, automated reports can reduce reporting expenditures by 25%.

#3. Analytics skills

The ability to collect data, analyze it, interpret its meaning, and communicate it are all skills of analytical skills.

No matter what position you’re applying for, the recruiter will give you extra credit if you can demonstrate that you’re skilled in data analysis.

Some analytical skills to list on a resume include:

Research
Forecasting
Data analysis
Data presentation
Resource administration
Engineering data
Database Administration
Data measurements and interpretations
Reporting
Diagnostics
Creativity
Theorizing

#4. Marketing Skills

Along with the general knowledge of sales, advertising, and consumer research, marketing skills also need a wide range of highly technical digital skills to succeed in today’s internet marketing.

Candidates in the media, advertising, social media, e-commerce, and product management industries regard marketing hard skills the most.

Several instances include:

SEO/SEM Tools: Majestic, Ahrefs, SEMRush
PPC
Paid social media advertising and social media marketing
Writing
A/B testing and CRO
Automated email marketing
Ontraport, HubSpot, Aritic PinPoint, and Infusionsoft
Funnel administration
Design UX
Data visualization
Google Search Console and Google Analytics
Facebook Paid Ads, AdWords

The list may continue on forever. But which marketing skills are still most important today?

The following are the top marketing skills for your resume:

Data analysis
Content writing and development
SEO/SEM
Social media
technological skills

Not sure how to best demonstrate your marketing knowledge on your resume? Use these examples of hard marketing skills on resumes as inspiration:

Highlights of marketing skills:

Introduced a team-wide incentive-based A/B testing competition that increased landing page conversions by 114% in just 4 months.
Adept at using Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Kissmetrics.
20+ SEO programs were developed for large, complicated media websites.

#5. Presentation skills

Say what? Presentation abilities aren’t soft skills, right?

Not quite. Certain soft, transferable skills, such as self-awareness, adaptability, or stress management, are undoubtedly necessary for successful presentation delivery. But—

You’ll need at least a handful of these hard skills to help you with your presentation or report:

Visual communication
Slideshows
Research
Data analysis
Reporting
Persuasion
Graphic design

And here’s how to demonstrate on a resume that you’re a skilled presenter:

Produced 150+ business reports and newsletters, with the messaging being facilitated by data visualization.
Helped the CEO create slideshows using Movavi, Prezi, and Powerpoint.

#6. Management Skills

Again, you might believe that effective management and leadership depend largely on interpersonal skills. Again…

That is just partially true.

You also need some job-specific skills, including the following, to be a competent manager:

Business expertise
Budgeting
Project administration
Hiring
Finance
Office management skills
Logistics
new commercial development
Negotiating
Planning

The following is how to demonstrate your management experience on an executive resume:

To reduce project delivery time by 35%, Google Docs, Slack, and Trello were implemented across the team.
Redesigned budgeting techniques to produce a 20% greater project completion rate.

#8. Project Management Skills

In other words, project management skills ensure that tasks are completed.

Actually, more than that: completed on schedule and within budget. Any job where you need to coordinate procedures or other people’s work will benefit from your project management expertise.

General managerial knowledge, as well as expertise with specific frameworks and tools, are all skills of project management. PM hard skills examples include the following:

Project planning
Strategic planning
Project lifecycle management
Agile programming
The Scrum framework
Financial simulation
Kanban
Forecasting
Performance evaluation
Budgeting

These examples will demonstrate how to highlight your experience as a project manager on a resume:

Agile software expert who used Jira and Taiga to increase team velocity by 35%.
Budgeting: A company-wide automation effort resulted in an $800,000 in savings.

#9. Writing skills

If your employment needs any type of writing, having a strong understanding of writing skills will help you advance professionally (think typing up quarterly reports, onboarding documents, presentations for clients, sales pitches, etc.).

Look at these instances:

Grammar, punctuation, spelling, and vocabulary for basic writing
Note-taking
Writing letters
Composing an email
Reports, press releases, and content management for business
Data visualization
Plotting, worldbuilding, and conversation in creative writing
Scholarly writing
Storytelling
Copywriting
SEO
Editing
Journalism
Composing proposals
Creating presentations

The ultimate writing task is to demonstrate your writing skills on a resume. Here’s how to go about it:

Produced up to four articles of at least a thousand words per week for content.
Authored a 90-page user manual for a webinar program that runs in the cloud.
wrote three effective grant proposals that were funded with $160,000.

#9. Language skills

Another item on our list is somewhat evident. However, that does not lessen its significance.

Any job in a firm that works with international clients or stakeholders will give you an advantage over the competition if you speak more than one language.

Create a section for languages first. Include a list of all the foreign languages you are proficient in along with each one.

However, you can also highlight your multilingualism in other skills.

Offered consumers attentive customer support in English, Spanish, and French.

#10. Design skills

Modern employers will compete with one another to hire you if you are a great illustrator. No, not just if graphic design is your specialty. In all job settings, having the capacity to produce professional-quality visual products is quite advantageous.

Here are some illustrations of graphic design skills.

Photoshop
Illustrator
InDesign
Design for UX/UI
UX analysis
Data visualization
Colour theory
Acrobat
HTML/CSS
Free Hand
Adobe Draw
Sketching
Typography
Print layout
Layout

Here are some examples from various resume sections:

Produced print materials, advertisements, marketing collateral, viewbooks, and logos of the highest caliber.
Created a logo for Nabor Gro, a Connecticut retailer of food and alcohol.

How To Include Hard Skills on a Resume

Now that you are aware of the hard skills to emphasize on your resume, it is crucial to understand how to persuade employers that you are the ideal candidate for the position.

To properly highlight hard skills on your resume, follow these three steps:

#1. Identify the skills that employers in your sector are seeking.

The hard skills that companies are most interested in seeing on a resume are those.

How then can you learn what people want to see? Read the job description and conduct research on the role first. The majority of jobs require hard skills, thus hiring managers will always list the skills they’re looking for in the “Requirements” part of the ad.

Here is an actual example of a job posting for a web developer position that details all the hard skills they are looking for candidates to possess:

#2. Include a section for your skills at the start of your resume.

For the majority of job searchers, using a typical resume structure that emphasizes the candidate’s work experience is the best choice. The skills section should be added at the top of your resume if you are seeking a profession where certain hard technical skills are more important than anything else, such as a position in software engineering.

Tip: Hard skills are ideal for displaying skill levels on your resume using a skills bar or other comparable elements.

By doing this, you make sure hiring managers can access the most crucial information they need—your technical skills—quickly and simply. This straightforward tweak could mean the difference between getting an interview for a position where having certain hard talent or not can make all the difference.

#3. In your experience section, emphasize hard skills.

While many employers would accept a resume that just lists your hard skills, this isn’t the only way to highlight your strengths. The best way to demonstrate your knowledge in a certain field is to give concrete examples of how your hard skills have aided you in achieving particular goals.

To do this, include bullet points in the work experience part of your resume that show how you used your hard skills to help your prior employer achieve important objectives.

Here’s an illustration of how one applicant successfully used the experience area to highlight their aptitude for hard programming:

Utilizing ASP.NET, C#.NET, and MS SQL to develop and improve systems, which expedited procedures and reduced expenses by $170k

Conclusion

Every job, from battling fires to running a marketing department, requires a certain skill set that frequently combines hard and soft skills. Knowing what hard skills are required and acquiring them will increase your skills of being recruited or promoted in your sector of choice, whether you are exploring new work or applying for your first job.

Some hard skills, like the ability to use a computer effectively, analyze data, or comprehend at least the fundamentals of using social media, will frequently be helpful in a variety of occupations and careers. Many trades require the specialized hard skills needed for employment in the fields of construction, architecture, plumbing, and electricity, as well as engineering.

You’ll need a combination of hard and soft skills, both of which you can continuously improve, to land a job and succeed at work.

53+ Hard Skills And How To Highlight Them On A Resume

Table of Contents Hide

What are Hard Skills?

What Distinguishes Hard Skills From Soft Skills?

What Hard Skills Should Be Listed on a Resume?

What Makes Hard Skills So Important?