As the business world continues to change and move forward into the modern era, employees need to be able to keep up. While the basic format of the resume has largely remained the same over the years, the best skills to put on it have changed significantly. Below are seven of the most useful skills that will set your resume apart from others during a modern job search.
1. Foreign Language Proficiency
The ability to speak a foreign language will set your resume apart from other candidates. Spanish in particular is useful, especially if you live in certain regions of the country where it is commonly spoken as a primary or secondary language. Even knowing a language that sees less everyday use can be helpful. For one, you never know when you might need to use it. Given the increasingly globalized nature of business, bilingual candidates offer companies avenues of expansion. Also, employers know how much time and effort go into learning a language, and how that speaks to a candidate’s dedication and intelligence.
2. Coding
Coding is a skill that has become useful in almost every occupation and employers love to see it on a resume. This skill is a must for tech jobs. However, coding is also useful for anyone seeking a job in design or a scientific field. Every business needs to have a good website in order to remain competitive in the modern world, and employees who can help maintain that site or add to it will look great to potential employers. The same is true for apps, which most companies want to develop. Coding is a skill that is easily self-taught, so you can take the time to learn it yourself instead of pursuing any formal training.
3. SEO Marketing
In modern companies, all employees usually have some hand in marketing the business. For example, even if you are not a dedicated marketer, you may be called upon to write social media posts or content for the company’s website. SEO skills allow businesses to be discovered more easily via search engines, so companies will give precedence to employees who can spread the word about the business online effectively. SEO skills also make it easier for job seekers to get noticed, because their materials are more likely to show up in a search engine or on a social job site such as LinkedIn.
4. Data and Master Data Management (MDM)
Making sense of data is a desired skill in many fields, as more and more companies collect and use data in order to make the best business decisions. Master data management tools are used by businesses to augment and support their data management and its quality. Profisee looks to the future with their MDM platform by offering powerful features such as data modeling, data integration and metadata management, as well as good scalability and golden record management. Proficiency with Profisee and similar master data management tools will set your resume apart from others.
5. Leadership Skills
Most employers are looking for candidates with leadership skills. This is especially true if you are applying to managerial or executive positions. However, even if you are applying to entry-level positions, leadership skills show employers that you are willing to take initiative and might be a good long-term investment. Leadership skills can be demonstrated on your resume by detailing specific achievements you made with your team in previous positions or accomplishments you made by employing leadership ability.
6. Communication Skills
More and more, employers are wanting potential employees to demonstrate excellent communications skills, even if they are in a position that does not require heavy use of communication. Employees in every field communicate with other employees and customers far more often now, especially thanks to electronic communication. To list communication ability on a resume, you could detail successful client interactions. Fortunately, while it is often difficult to list most soft skills on a resume, writing skills are often apparent in the quality of the resume’s wording. To further demonstrate writing skills, be sure to include a persuasive cover letter with your application.
7. Anything Specific To Your Field
There is no top desired skill to include on a resume, because every field and individual company has different needs. Even if a certain skill wasn’t asked for in the application, it is still likely to impress a hiring manager if that skill is useful to the position or industry as a whole. Do not forget to incorporate keywords from the job description into your resume, or it will be unlikely to make it past the applicant tracking software employed by almost all companies.
Ultimately, job seekers must use their best intuition when deciding which skills they should list on their resume and which ones they should not. What skills should be listed will depend on the nature of the individual position, the needs of the company and common skills that are important for employees working in a specific industry to possess. However, the skills listed above are unique and desirable enough to act as a good start for setting your resume apart.