# Soft Skills to Write in Your CV: Which to Choose and How to Prove Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/soft-skills-to-write-in-cv/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/soft-skills-to-write-in-cv.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building self-awareness at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Which soft skills to write in your CV, where to put them and how many to list, plus how to turn 'team player' into evidence a recruiter believes. ## Key facts - Title: Soft Skills to Write in Your CV: Which to Choose and How to Prove Them - Category: Employability - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Communication, Influence - Primary keyword: soft skills to write in cv - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/soft-skills-to-write-in-cv/ ## What this page covers - Which soft skills to write in your CV, where to put them and how many to list, plus how to turn 'team player' into evidence a recruiter believes. - Practical guidance for soft skills to write in cv - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation The soft skills to write in your CV are the few the job asks for that you can back with a real example: usually teamwork, communication, managing your time, taking initiative and making sound decisions. Write each one as a short achievement under your experience, not as a word in a list, and keep only the ones you could discuss in an interview. If you have looked at an empty skills section and wondered whether "hard-working team player" sounds as thin to a recruiter as it does to you, it does. The fix is practical, and it works even with a short work history. It starts with a step most applicants skip: working out which skills are genuinely yours. ## Should I even put soft skills on my CV? Yes. When employers hire early-career candidates, there is little work history to judge, so they read your CV for signs of how you will work with others and handle your tasks. In NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey, nearly 90% of responding employers said they look for evidence of problem-solving on students' resumes, and nearly 80% look for teamwork. Written communication, initiative and a strong work ethic each mattered to at least 70%. The sample was modest, at 237 employers, so read the figures as a direction rather than exact shares. The direction is clear, though: these skills belong on your CV. The real question is how you show them, because a skill an employer cannot see any evidence of barely counts. ## Which soft skills should I write in my CV? NACE's Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update found that employers again most want evidence of teamwork, problem-solving and effective communication, and more than half named ten or more skills on their wish list. You cannot prove ten skills on two pages, so don't try. Pick the few the specific job emphasizes and that you can back up. For most early-career roles, they come from a short set: - Teamwork: group projects, shared shifts, anything you delivered as part of a group. - Communication: explaining things to customers, presenting, writing reports or updates. - Time management: combining studies with a job, meeting deadlines without reminders. - [Taking initiative](/knowledge/influence/take-the-initiative/): something you started or improved without being asked. - Decision-making: what employers often call problem-solving, shown as a call you made and what came of it. To choose among them, read the job ad for the skills it names or implies, such as client contact, tight deadlines or working across teams. Then check which of those you genuinely have. That second step is harder than it sounds, because people tend to overlook what they do well when it comes easily to them. If you are unsure which of your skills are [real strengths](/knowledge/self-awareness/how-to-identify-your-strengths/), it is worth taking a moment to [map your strongest work skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) before you decide what to claim. ## Is it bad to just write "team player" or "good communicator"? On its own, yes. Every applicant can write those words, so a recruiter's eye slides past them. The Institute of the Motor Industry makes the point in its CV guidance: listing "teamwork," "problem-solving" or "time management" means little unless you turn each one into an achievement. Its example replaces the word "teamwork" with a line about organizing regular team lunches to improve morale and communication. The skill is still there, and now the reader can see it, because it is attached to something you actually did. That is the whole shift: from adjectives about yourself to evidence a reader can picture. ## How do I prove soft skills on my CV? Compress a short story into one bullet. The Situation-Task-Action-Result (STAR) structure works well here: start with an action verb, say what you did and with whom, and end with the outcome. "Collaborated with a team of students to design and build a concrete canoe" shows teamwork without ever using the word. Add a result where you have one, such as a deadline met, a process made faster or a customer's problem solved, and the bullet gets stronger. This also prepares you for the next stage. NACE advises students to put these skills on their resume so they can describe them in more depth in the interview. Every soft skill on your CV invites a "tell me about a time when..." question, so only write the ones you have a story ready for. The STAR stories behind your bullets are the same ones that answer behavioral interview questions, which makes writing the CV good interview preparation. ## Where do soft skills go on a CV? There are three places, and each does a different job: - The profile at the top: one or two skills that matter most for this role, in a sentence about what you bring. - The skills section: a short signpost, not the proof. Keep it to skills the rest of the CV backs up. - The bullets under experience, projects and volunteering: this is where soft skills carry the most weight, because each one is attached to a real situation and a result. Treat the profile and skills section as headlines and the bullets as the story. A skill that appears in a headline but nowhere in the story looks unearned. ## How many soft skills should I list? Fewer than you might think. A tailored handful of well-proven skills reads stronger than a long generic list, and a long list dilutes the skills that matter for the role. Decide for each application: the few skills the job ad emphasizes, each backed by at least one bullet, will do more for you than a string of claims a recruiter has to take on trust. If a skill isn't relevant to this particular job, leave it out of this version of your CV. It may belong in the next one. ## What if I don't have any work experience to show soft skills? You almost certainly have more evidence than you think. Student jobs, group projects, volunteering, club or society roles, part-time service work and internships all involve working with others, managing time and handling problems. A shift in a busy café is customer communication under pressure. A thesis group that hit its deadline is teamwork and time management. The hard part is rarely a lack of skills. It is knowing which experiences count, and how to describe them in workplace terms. > I can solve a school assignment, do my research, structure a paper. But how do I turn 'searching literature for an exam' into something a workplace can use? Nobody on the degree tells us which jobs we can actually hold, or how academic skills become a work resource. That was one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, and her question deserves an answer. The answer is to describe what you did in terms of what it would do for an employer. Structuring a long paper becomes planning and delivering a complex piece of work on a deadline. Searching and weighing literature becomes gathering information and judging it before making a recommendation. Presenting a group project becomes explaining your work clearly to people who did not do it. The experience is the same; the wording points it toward the job. ## Do applicant tracking systems pick up soft skills? Not in a way that matters much. Automated applicant tracking systems mainly match the [hard-skill keywords](/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/hard-soft-skills-definition/) and qualifications in a job ad. Soft skills are judged by the people who read your CV after it passes that screen. So don't stuff your CV with soft-skill keywords. Write them as readable, specific sentences for a person, and where the job ad's own wording honestly fits what you did, use it, so the match is obvious to both the system and the reader. ## Should soft skills go in the cover letter instead? Both, because each does different work. The CV shows your soft skills in compressed bullets. The cover letter gives you room for a sentence or two of story around one of them, and why that experience matters for this particular role. Pick the skill the job ad leans on most and tell its story briefly there, rather than repeating your CV bullet word for word. Look back across these answers and the same thread runs through every one of them. Choosing the right skills, writing them as evidence, placing them where they count and tailoring them to the job all depend on knowing what you are genuinely good at, saying it clearly, and framing it around what the employer needs. ## The skills behind a CV that convinces None of the answers above turned on layout or templates. They kept returning to a few abilities that matter long after the application is sent. **Building Self-Awareness** is where a credible CV begins. Before you can write a skill convincingly, you need to know which ones are your natural strengths: what you do well rather than merely competently, judged by how you work, how it makes you feel and what results it gets. Feedback from a supervisor or a teammate often reveals strengths you take for granted. That honest shortlist is what you match against the job ad, and it keeps you from claiming a skill you could not back up in an interview. **Communication** is what turns a list of claims into something a busy reader takes in at a glance. The principles that make any workplace message work apply to every CV bullet: state the main point first, be clear and direct, be brief. A line that leads with the action and ends with the result does exactly that. And since written communication is one of the skills employers look for, a CV that reads cleanly quietly proves the claim before you make it. **Influence**. Every application is a small pitch, and a good pitch starts with understanding what is in it for the other side, which is the needs the job ad describes. Strong pitches use concrete examples rather than adjectives, and they are not unduly one-sided: an honest claim you can support beats an inflated one that falls apart at the first follow-up question. Evidence of taking initiative, such as something you volunteered for or set in motion yourself, is also some of the most persuasive material you can put on the page. If drafting your bullets showed you a skill you could not find much evidence for, treat that as a starting point rather than a verdict. These are behaviors you learn, and gaps close with practice in the jobs and projects ahead of you. To see which skill to build first, you can [check your work-skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/): it scores these three together with **nine others that matter in almost any job**, so you know where to put your effort before the next application. ## Your experience already holds the evidence You may already recognize some of this in how you have worked so far. If you have ever been the one who kept a group project on schedule, or calmed down an unhappy customer at the end of a long shift, you have the raw material for a strong CV bullet, whether or not you ever called it a soft skill. Where the evidence is thinner, the gap is one of practice, not of who you are, and you can work on it without changing your personality. These skills also count for more once you are hired, when they stop being lines on a page and become how colleagues and managers judge your work. Knowing where you stand now makes both the CV and the job that follows easier. ## See where you stand The only thing left is to find out which skills you can claim with confidence and which to build next. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: it shows how you score across all twelve and which ones will make the biggest difference to your applications. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, results shown instantly.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Which soft skills to write in your CV, where to put them and how many to list, plus how to turn 'team player' into evidence a recruiter believes. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Communication, Influence. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/soft-skills-to-write-in-cv/ Preferred summary: "Which soft skills to write in your CV, where to put them and how many to list, plus how to turn 'team player' into evidence a recruiter believes." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.