# A List of Professional Skills for Your CV, and How to Make Each One Count Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/list-of-professional-skills-for-cv/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/list-of-professional-skills-for-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 professional skills to put on your CV: a practical list, what employers rank highest, how many to include, and how to prove each one with real examples. ## Key facts - Title: A List of Professional Skills for Your CV, and How to Make Each One Count - Category: Soft Skills at Work - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Communication, Teamwork - Primary keyword: list of professional skills for cv - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/list-of-professional-skills-for-cv/ ## What this page covers - Which professional skills to put on your CV: a practical list, what employers rank highest, how many to include, and how to prove each one with real examples. - Practical guidance for list of professional skills for cv - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation A strong list of professional skills for a CV combines the workplace skills employers screen for, such as communication, teamwork, time management, initiative and professional conduct, with the technical skills the job posting names. Choose the ones that fit the role and that you can prove, then back each with a concrete example. If your skills section is still blank, or filled with phrases you suspect every other applicant has typed too, that unease is worth listening to. Writing the list is the easy part. Making an employer believe it is harder, and it is also where a short work history counts for less than you might fear. ## What's a good list of professional skills for a CV? Start with the skills that show how you work with other people and how you manage yourself, then add the technical skills the role requires. A practical list to choose from: - Communication: writing clear emails and reports, presenting, listening, raising a disagreement calmly. - Teamwork: coordinating tasks in a group, sharing what you know, following through on what you agreed to do. - [Professional conduct](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/examples-of-professionalism-in-the-workplace/): reliability, punctuality, discretion with confidential information, respect toward customers and colleagues alike. - Time management: prioritizing competing tasks, meeting deadlines, balancing a job with your studies. - Decision-making: making sound calls within your authority, using facts rather than hunches, knowing when to ask someone more experienced. - Initiative and influence: starting something without being asked, and persuading others to back an idea. - Working with a manager: reporting progress, taking direction, bringing a proposed fix along with a problem. - Building professional relationships: staying in touch with contacts, connecting people, working well across teams. - Resilience: staying effective through setbacks, criticism or a heavy workload. - Using feedback: asking for it, acting on it, and showing what changed as a result. - Technical skills: the software, tools, languages, methods and certifications the posting asks for. Everything above the last line is a nontechnical workplace skill, and that is usually what "professional skills" means on a CV. These skills carry over to almost any role, which is why they belong on a first CV as much as on a tenth. The technical line changes with every application; the rest of the list changes mainly in which items you put first. The same advice holds whichever document you are writing: in the UK, Ireland and much of Europe a CV is the standard short application document, what Americans call a résumé, while in the US "CV" usually means a longer academic record. ## What skills do employers look for on a CV? A small group of workplace skills tops employers' lists year after year. In NACE's Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update, employers named teamwork, problem-solving and effective communication as the attributes they most want to see on new graduates' résumés. A year earlier, NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey put problem-solving and teamwork first, followed by written communication, initiative and work ethic. The reason is straightforward. When a candidate has a short work history, an employer has little else to judge by, so it screens for the skills that show how that person will work. The bar is also broad: more than half of the employers in the 2026 update named ten or more attributes they look for. And because the same few skills appear on almost every CV, naming them only gets you through the door. The example behind each one decides whether it counts. That example matters more as hiring shifts toward skills. NACE reports that 70% of employers now use [skills-based hiring](/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-based-approach/), up from 65% the year before, which means judging what a candidate can demonstrably do rather than relying mainly on job titles or credentials. NACE's advice to candidates follows directly: connect the skills you gained from your experiences to the specific job you are applying for. For anyone with a short employment record, that is an opening, because a well-evidenced skills section can carry weight a thin work history cannot. ## What's the difference between hard skills and soft skills on a CV? Hard skills are the teachable, technical abilities tied to a field or a tool: a programming language, accounting software, a foreign language, data analysis. Soft skills are the nontechnical skills of working with others and managing yourself: communicating, working in a team, managing your time, recovering from a setback. Hard skills show an employer you can do the tasks. The second kind shows how you will do them alongside everyone else. A CV needs both. Technical skills are often the easier ones to prove, because a certificate or a tool is either on your record or it isn't. Interpersonal and self-management skills need an example before anyone believes them, so they deserve more of your attention when you write. Neither kind is a personality trait you are born with or without: both are learned, and both improve with deliberate practice. ## What skills can I put on my CV if I have no experience? It can feel as if every posting is asking for experience you have not yet had the chance to get. > I've been looking at job postings to see what jobs are out there once I'm finished, and I can see that many of them want a senior-level person, or someone with three years at a company and a lot of experience. But I don't have any experience. So am I even allowed to apply? How am I supposed to get into a job market where people expect me to already be in it? That was one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, describing the job postings he was reading before finishing his studies. His worry deserves a direct answer, because it rests on a narrow idea of where professional skills come from. These skills do not need a full-time job to develop. Group assignments, a thesis or degree project, part-time and hourly work, volunteering, student societies and sports teams all produce real examples of communicating, working in a team, managing your time and taking initiative. A part-time job stocking shelves or working a register is daily practice in reliability and courtesy under pressure. Organizing a society's annual event is practice in planning, coordinating volunteers and keeping to a budget. The task is translation: describe what you did in the language of work, not the language of school. "Completed group project for a marketing course" tells an employer nothing. "Coordinated a four-person team to deliver a market analysis two days ahead of the deadline, then presented the findings" shows teamwork, time management and communication in a single line. If your work history is short, consider a skills-based layout. Instead of listing experience job by job, it groups what you have done under skill headings such as communication, teamwork and technical skills, so study, volunteering and part-time work all count toward each one. ## How do I prove my skills on my CV instead of just listing them? Treat every skill you list as a claim the rest of the CV has to back up. Phrases like "team player," "hard-working" or "excellent communication skills" carry almost no information on their own, because nearly every applicant writes them. They start to mean something only when a concrete example follows. A reliable example has three parts: what you did, the situation, and the result. Lead with an action verb, name the context, and add a number wherever an honest one exists, such as the size of a team, the number of customers or the time saved. Compare: - "Excellent time management skills." - "Worked 15 hours a week in a pharmacy throughout my final year while completing my degree and thesis on schedule." The second line never uses the words "time management," yet no one reading it doubts the skill. Two skills employers rank highly, written communication and initiative, can be shown by the CV itself. A document that is clear, brief and free of errors is evidence of the first. An example of something you started without being asked, such as a process you improved or a club you revived, is evidence of the second. Finally, expect to be asked about anything you list. Every skill on the page is effectively a promise that you can tell the story behind it [in an interview](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/job-skills-for-interview/), so choose examples you can talk through in detail. ## How many skills should I put on my CV? There is no fixed number. What matters is that every skill is relevant to the role and supported somewhere on the page. A short list the rest of the CV backs up is stronger than a long one it does not, because unsupported claims dilute the ones you can prove. Space is a practical limit too: a CV is conventionally kept to two pages at most, so the skills section should be a compact block, not a page of keywords. Keeping the list short means knowing which skills are genuinely your strongest, not just which ones you can do. Look at where your results were best, which [tasks left you with energy](/knowledge/setting-goals/personal-strengths/) rather than draining it, and what classmates or supervisors came to you for. If you are still unsure which of your workplace skills stand out, [a quick read on your strengths](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) gives you something firmer than guesswork to choose from, and anything that comes out weaker is a skill you can still build, not a verdict. ## Should I change my skills section for every job I apply for? Yes, at least its order and emphasis. The job posting is the most reliable guide to which skills belong on a particular CV, because it tells you what this employer needs. Match your skills section to the skills the posting names, in its own wording where that is honest, so the fit is visible at a glance. Many employers also screen applications with software that matches keywords from the posting, which is one more reason a single list reused for every application tends to fall short. In practice, keep a master list of every skill you can prove, with the example that proves it, and draw from it for each application. A customer-facing role and a research assistant position call for different lead skills, even when the person applying is the same. ## Where do I put skills on my CV? In three places, each doing a different job: - A short key-skills section near the top, listing the skills most relevant to this role. Technical skills fit especially well here, since they are easy to check. - The bullet points under each experience, where the evidence goes. - The opening profile, where one or two of your strongest workplace skills tell the reader what to look for in the rest of the page. Every skill that appears in the key-skills section or the profile should reappear as evidence further down. If one cannot, rewrite a bullet to show it or take the skill out. ## What skills should I not put on my CV? Leave out anything you cannot support with an example or discuss confidently in an interview. Cut skills the job will never use unless they say something useful about you, and drop the generic adjectives every applicant reaches for. Basics an employer takes for granted, such as being able to send an email, rarely earn the space; name the specific tools you use instead. And skip personality labels like "outgoing" or "perfectionist": a trait says nothing about what you actually do, while a skill shown in action does. ## The skills that make your list believable Read those answers side by side and the same thread runs through all of them. Choosing the right skills, describing them so a stranger believes you, and having real examples to describe are not formatting problems. Each depends on something you do. **Building Self-Awareness** decides what goes on the list in the first place. It is the habit of separating what you are genuinely good at from what you can merely do, judged by how you work, how the work feels and what it produces. Feedback fills in the blind spots: a tutor, shift manager or teammate who tells you specifically what they relied on you for will often name a strength you would never have thought to write down. **Communication** is a skill to list and the skill your CV demonstrates on every line. Stating the main point first, keeping it brief and being clear and direct are exactly what turn "excellent communication skills" into a bullet worth reading. The evidence comes in concrete forms: a presentation you gave, minutes you kept for a meeting, an angry customer you calmed, a disagreement you raised without making it personal. **Teamwork** is where most early-career evidence lives, from group assignments to shift work. What makes it credible on a CV is your own contribution: the role you filled where the team needed you, the knowledge you shared, the commitment you delivered on, the disagreement you helped settle. Name that, keep your own result visible inside the team's, and "team player" becomes something an employer can picture. None of the three is fixed; each sharpens with practice and honest feedback. If that feedback is hard to come by, the free **Job Skills Test** offers [a structured second opinion](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) on where you stand in each, so the examples you gather over the coming months go where they will strengthen your CV most. It also looks wider than these three, across **twelve work skills** in all, which helps when the role you want leans on others such as time management or decision-making. ## Where your strongest CV lines come from Look back at the list near the top and you may recognize habits you have never thought of as skills: being the one who pulls a group's scattered notes into a single document the night before a deadline, or the one a shift manager asks to show the new hire around. That is where these skills start, and they keep developing once you practice them deliberately. Getting better at them changes what you do at work, not who you are. Their weight also grows after the CV has done its job. The skills that earn you an interview are the same ones colleagues and managers notice every day once you start, which makes it worth learning early which of yours to build next. With that picture in hand, you can write the list around your real strengths. ## See which skills should lead your CV From here, the next step is a small one: find out where your own skills stand. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills. In 7 minutes it shows how you score across all twelve skills it measures and which ones will make the biggest difference for you right now. Use the results as the starting point for your skills list, and as a guide to what to practice in the job that list helps you land. ## 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 professional skills to put on your CV: a practical list, what employers rank highest, how many to include, and how to prove each one with real examples. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Communication, Teamwork. ### 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/soft-skills-at-work.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/list-of-professional-skills-for-cv/ Preferred summary: "Which professional skills to put on your CV: a practical list, what employers rank highest, how many to include, and how to prove each one with real examples." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.