In an earlier blog post this month, I mentioned the need for hard facts in describing your career. But how do you provide hard facts about soft skills? Soft skills include relationship building, communications, problem-solving, team building, leadership, and change management, among others. Those soft skills are valuable in any field and at every level of an organization.
How does your resume prove that you have valuable soft skills?
The most important proof occurs when you give examples and details from previous positions and experiences. For example, did you work in a team that crossed functions or geographies? What was the size of the team and what did it accomplish? Did you contribute to customer satisfaction by figuring out a way to measure it or building a website that attracted more customers or solving a customer problem face-to-face?
Your soft skills are evident when you show that you overcame obstacles such as continuing to work through a merger or change in leadership. Any workplace change automatically requires such soft skills as adaptability and flexibility. You might have faced specific obstacles, as when you needed to merge two departments or convince an executive team to move the company in a certain direction or train a sales team to close more sales.
Another way to demonstrate soft skills is to show your ability to innovate with new products, processes, or procedures. Make sure you share the results of your innovation in terms of time savings, reduced costs, increased revenue, or productivity. Innovation is a sign of creative thinking, but companies also want to know that it added value.
As indicated throughout this post, the best way to describe soft skills is by providing specifics. Calling yourself a “team player” is fine—but what did you do and what did you achieve that demonstrates that ability? Saying you have “great communication skills” means a lot more if you gave presentations, wrote reports, or interacted with others to reach a goal.
If you have problems determining and writing about your soft skills, please contact Robin’s Resumes®. You want to make sure your resume gives you justice.