How to showcase soft skills on a technical resume
Olivia Attwood
Certified Professional Resume Writer ● Career Coach ● Executive Resume Writer ● MBA, BEng, CPRW, CPCC
When you are writing a technical resume, it is natural to feel the urge to emphasize only the relevant tech skills essential for the job. Many job seekers end up doing this and get rejected from job applications. Although technical skills such as software proficiency, programming languages, and other hard skills are important for technical roles, these are not the only skills that employers look out for when shortlisting candidates to interview.
Learning how to bring out your soft skills on your technical resume without overpowering the hard skills is a valuable lesson for your job search. Let’s look at what our resume writers have to share on the topic:
Integrate them into the summary statement
One of the best places on your resume to bring out soft skills is the resume summary statement. Since you are writing a technical resume, aim to highlight more technical skills and professional accomplishments when creating your summary. But also reserve some space to discuss your soft skills and their impact on your contributions.
Use the work experience section to elaborate
The work experience section of your resume is prime real estate for showing off your soft skills. This is where you will be discussing your best professional achievements. Including soft skills in the context of these achievements will help you grab the attention of hiring managers. Be sure to mention the specific soft skills that you used and how they helped you achieve outstanding results.
Get the use of action verbs
Action verbs help make your resume an interesting read. When writing your technical resume, you will be starting each bullet point with an action verb. Did you know that you can use these action verbs to indicate soft skills on your resume? Certain words such as “led,” “mentored,” and “solved,” help you highlight soft skills while describing your involvement with the task being described.
Include them in project descriptions
Many job seekers create a dedicated projects section for their resume to discuss personal and professional projects. This section gives you another opportunity to highlight your soft skills. You can describe your technical projects in the context of your soft skills to add more keywords to your resume. Emphasizing your problem-solving skills, creativity, and adaptability will help you achieve this.
Add to the skills section
Obviously, your skills section needs to have a good amount of soft skills. Design your resume’s skills section in a way that displays both technical skills and soft skills. Use the job description as a guide when deciding the right soft skills to display on your resume. Some job seekers even divide their skills section into distinct hard skills and soft skills categories for more clarity.