For generations, we have devoted the first third of our lives to earning college degrees, and have thanked these degrees for the other two-thirds of our professional lives. In contrast to our parents’ generation, who held one job their entire lives, most of us today hold multiple jobs and careers. Future generations will see this too.
Clearly, the future of work will not be about college degrees; it will be about job skills. Post pandemic, employers now prioritize identifying job-critical skills & have started screening for candidates who can match their skill requirements rather than educational qualifications.
Here are the top resume mistakes to avoid when updating the skills section:
- Combining skills in one section and not dividing skills sections into categories, e.g., core competencies/hard skills, soft skills, tools & technical skills.
- Blindly listing soft skills instead of demonstrating them in your work accomplishments.
- Not customizing & optimizing the skill sections to keyword-match them to the target role.
- Not adding context to the skills that are listed in your work section.
- Not specifying transferrable skills when changing careers or making a transition into a different role.
- Underselling your proficiency and downplaying your abilities by being modest.
- Keyword & skills stuffing and hiding them in white text to catch ATS keywords and pass the BOT.
- Including skills, you’re not comfortable talking about or justifying in an interview.
- Limiting the skill section to those you have experience with and ignoring those you have knowledge in.
- Listing obsolete and/or obvious skills such as FoxPro, Microsoft Office, Outlook, and the Internet.
- Incorporating multiple instances of specific skills as keywords into a resume is tricky, resulting in awkward, over-the-top language.
- Don’t use the skills section as a catch-all and make an extensive list of skills that don’t relate.
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