The skills section is the most underrated part of a CV: some people write "MS Office, teamwork, communication" and move on, while others list 25 skills and prove none of them. Yet this section is one of the first places both the applicant tracking system (ATS) and a human scan — get it right and it can open the interview door on its own.
Two kinds of skill, two different rules
- Hard skills: measurable and teachable — Excel, SQL, AutoCAD, Google Ads, languages. They belong on the CV as a list — this is what the ATS searches for.
- Soft skills: leadership, communication, problem solving. As a one-word list item they're worthless; prove them inside your experience bullets: you write "led a team of five to..." — you don't write "leadership".
Skill examples by role
- Office / operations: advanced Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP), ERP (SAP/Oracle), reporting, process documentation, supplier management
- Sales / marketing: CRM (Salesforce/HubSpot), Google Ads, Meta ad management, SEO fundamentals, negotiation, the B2B sales cycle
- Software: languages and frameworks (with versions), Git, SQL/NoSQL, CI/CD, testing, cloud (AWS/Azure)
- Finance / accounting: IFRS, e-invoicing and ledger processes, budget vs. actual analysis, accounting software, audit preparation
- Healthcare: patient record systems, clinical documentation, sterilisation protocols, patient communication
- Manufacturing / engineering: lean manufacturing, ISO 9001, SolidWorks/AutoCAD, health & safety regulations, root cause analysis
You'll find ready-made skill lists for your own profession in our role-by-role CV examples — compiled one by one for more than 60 positions.
The ATS tactic: speak the advert's language
Applicant tracking software matches your CV against the keywords in the advert. If the advert says "customer relationship management (CRM)", use that exact phrase; if you write "customer tracking tool", the match may be missed. Adjusting your skills list by 2-3 words per application, to mirror the advert, can meaningfully improve your visibility. More detail in our ATS-friendly CV guide.
Signalling your level: honest and concrete
- ❌ Stars or percentage bars ("Excel 80%") — meaningless and unreadable by an ATS.
- ✅ "Advanced Excel (pivot tables, macros)" — it's clear what you can do.
- ✅ For languages, cite a test or certificate: "English — C1 (IELTS 7.5)".
- ✅ Don't list what you don't know: the skills section becomes your interview question list — "You've listed SQL; could you talk me through this query?"
How many skills should you list?
The sweet spot is 8-12 hard skills. Fewer looks thin; more signals a lack of focus. Put your strongest, most relevant skills first — the first three words of the list are the section's shop window.
Tailor your skills to the advert automatically
Paste the job advert into CVLayer — the AI matches the skills already on your CV to the advert's language and flags missing keywords. It never invents skills; it simply presents yours in the right words.
Tailor my CV →