# Work Skills on Your CV: Which to Include and How to Prove Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/work-skills-cv/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/work-skills-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 work skills to put on your CV, how to prove each one with real examples, how many to list, and what to include when your work experience is still thin. ## Key facts - Title: Work Skills on Your CV: Which to Include and How to Prove Them - Category: Soft Skills at Work - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Communication, Influence - Primary keyword: work skills cv - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/work-skills-cv/ ## What this page covers - Which work skills to put on your CV, how to prove each one with real examples, how many to list, and what to include when your work experience is still thin. - Practical guidance for work skills cv - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation The work skills to put on a CV are the ones the job asks for and you can prove: the technical skills the role names, plus skills such as communication, teamwork and managing your time, each backed by a concrete example from study, part-time work or volunteering. Without the example, a skill is only a claim. That can sound like bad news if your experience so far is a weekend job, a few group projects and a summer of volunteering. It is better news than it sounds. Most of what makes a skills list convincing comes down to how you choose and describe what you have already done, and the answers below take those decisions one at a time. ## What work skills should I put on my CV? Two kinds belong there. The first is the technical skills the specific job names: software, tools, languages, lab or design methods, certifications. The second is the skills that show how you work with other people and manage yourself, which nearly every role draws on. For an early CV, the strongest candidates in that second group are: - Communication: explaining things clearly in writing and in person, listening properly, raising a problem without making it personal. - Teamwork: doing your part in shared work, passing on what you know, delivering what you promised the group. - Time management: prioritizing competing tasks and meeting deadlines, especially while [juggling study and a job](/knowledge/time-management/time-management-strategies-for-students/). - [Professional behavior](/knowledge/professional-behaviors/professional-behavior-examples/): reliability, punctuality, courtesy with customers and colleagues, discretion with confidential information. - Working with a manager: reporting progress, acting on direction, bringing a suggested fix along with a problem. - Decision-making: making sound calls within what you are allowed to decide, and knowing when to check with someone more experienced. - Influence: [taking the initiative](/knowledge/influence/show-initiative-at-work/), and persuading people to back an idea. Graduate recruiters routinely look for teamwork and organization, meaning you can prioritize, work efficiently and manage your time well, because nearly every role involves working with other people and juggling several tasks at once. Treat the list as a menu, not a checklist. A skill earns its place on your CV when it passes two tests: the job asks for it, and you can name a specific time you used it. If it passes only one, leave it off for now. ## What's the difference between hard skills and soft skills on a CV? Hard skills are specific, teachable abilities an employer can check: a spreadsheet program, a second language, a coding language, a lab technique. Soft skills show how you work with others and manage yourself: how you communicate, cooperate in a team, handle your time and deal with a setback. The difference that matters on a CV is verification. A hard skill can be listed in a few words, because an employer can test it [in an interview](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/job-skills-for-interview/) or see it on a certificate. The other kind cannot be verified from a list, and most applicants claim it anyway, so writing "good communicator" adds nothing. These skills have to be shown in action, inside your experience entries, which is why they deserve most of your writing effort. They are also learned, not inborn: whatever your level today, it rises with practice. ## How do I prove work skills on my CV? By attaching each one to something you did. According to the University of Cape Town's careers service, employers want to see evidence rather than assertions, and a common weakness in students' CVs is claiming skills without a single example of using them. The reason is simple: a recruiter cannot check a claim, but can weigh an example. The same guidance gives a pattern for each line: start with an action word, say what you did and where, and include a measurable result wherever one exists. Compare: - Strong teamwork and communication skills. - Divided a five-person research project into weekly tasks, tracked everyone's progress in a shared document and presented our findings to the class; the project received the highest grade in the course. The second line never uses the word "teamwork," and it doesn't need to. Two quick checks keep your lines honest. First, if a line could appear unchanged on a stranger's CV, it isn't evidence yet. Second, every line is a story you may be asked to tell in an interview, so choose examples you can walk through in detail. ## What skills can I put on my CV if I have no work experience? If job postings leave you feeling shut out before you have even started, that reaction makes sense. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work described the same bind: > 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? His question has a practical answer, and it starts with where work skills actually come from. They do not require a full-time job in your field. Coursework, group projects, part-time and casual jobs, volunteering, student clubs, sports, hobbies and extra courses all build them, and the skill you use running a club event or working a register is the same skill an employer needs. A weekend retail job is practice in being reliable and keeping your patience with a difficult customer. Tutoring a younger student is practice in explaining something until it lands. Captaining a sports team means organizing people who don't have to do what you say. The work is translation: describe what you did in the language of the job, not the name of the activity. "Member of the debate club" says little; "Researched and argued both sides of a motion under time pressure in weekly competitions" says a great deal. If you can't yet see which skills your own shifts and projects have built, it helps to [map the skills you have](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) before you write a line, so you know which experiences to mine for examples. ## Should I change my skills for every job I apply for? Yes, and it is less work than it sounds. The University of Manchester's careers service advises using the job description, person specification or job advertisement to decide which skills your CV evidences, and building that evidence into the entries where you used them. Each application is read against the role's own stated requirements, so a single list sent everywhere will fit some postings and miss others. A practical way to do it: read the posting and mark every skill it mentions. Sort them into three piles: skills you can evidence strongly, skills you can evidence a little, and skills you can't evidence yet. Lead with the first pile, use the posting's own wording where it honestly describes what you did, and keep a running file of your best examples so that tailoring takes minutes rather than an evening. ## How many skills should I put on my CV? Fewer than you might think, and there is no magic number. A long list makes a CV weaker, not stronger: too many skills make you look like a jack of all trades and master of none, and every irrelevant one dilutes the ones that matter for this job. Cutting is as important as adding. Keep the skills the role asks for that you can prove. If no example comes to mind for a skill, leave it out for now. That is not a verdict on you. It is a skill to build over the next few months, and one you can add once you have the example to back it. ## Should I have a separate skills section on my CV? Either approach works, and you can combine them. Loughborough University's careers network shows example CVs that use a dedicated skills section alongside others that build skills into the experience entries. Each has a strength. A short bulleted section is quick to scan, which suits technical skills an employer can check at a glance. Skills written into your experience entries carry their own evidence, which suits the skills of working with people and managing yourself. The rule that matters more than the layout: nothing in a skills section should be an orphan. Every item there needs at least one line elsewhere on the page that shows it in use. If you can't write that line, the item doesn't belong in the section yet. ## Is a skills-based CV a good idea if I don't have much experience? It can be. A skills-based CV groups your evidence under skill headings, such as communication, teamwork or technical skills, and puts a brief work history after them. That suits people whose experience is limited or unrelated to the role, including students and career changers, because it leads with what you can do rather than a short list of jobs. Its weakness is the same trap as any skills list: a heading with nothing concrete beneath it reads as an assertion. Under each heading, give two or three specific examples drawn from wherever you used the skill. Treat the format as one legitimate option, not a requirement. If you already have an internship or a job that fits the role, a conventional layout that starts with your most recent experience lets that experience speak for itself. ## The skills behind a CV that employers believe Look back across those answers and the same pattern keeps returning. The layout questions were the easy part. The harder ones were about knowing what you can honestly claim, saying it so a busy stranger takes it in, and aiming it at what this particular employer needs. **Building Self-Awareness** decides what goes on the page in the first place. The useful question isn't "what can I do?" but "what am I genuinely good at?", and three checks answer it: how you work when you use the skill, how it makes you feel, and what it produces. A skill that holds up on all three is a strength worth leading with. Feedback fills in what you can't see yourself: a shift supervisor or project partner asked what they relied on you for will often name a strength you'd never have written down. **Communication** is both an item on the list and the quality of the list. A CV is business writing for a reader with little time, so the basics apply line by line: put the main point first, be clear and direct, keep it brief, and proofread. Lead each bullet with what you achieved and cut any word that isn't carrying evidence. A page with typos quietly contradicts "excellent communication skills," while a clean, sharp page proves the claim without having to make it. **Influence** is what turns the page from a record into a pitch. Preparing means asking what's in it for the employer, what this role needs done, and choosing your evidence to match. Pitching means keeping it simple, making your strongest point early, and using examples instead of adjectives. The evidence that persuades most is a well-earned reputation in miniature: results delivered consistently, something you became known for, initiative nobody asked for. Inflate any of it and the credibility of the whole page goes with it. Of the three, self-awareness tends to unlock the other two, and it is the hardest to do on your own. The free **Job Skills Test** gives it structure, showing [how each skill measures up](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) across **these three and nine more**, so the weaker ones become a practice list for the months before your next application rather than a reason to hold back. ## Evidence you're already collecting Some of this may sound like things you already do without calling them skills. If a supervisor has ever handed you the keys to lock up, or a project group has quietly left the final draft to you, someone has already judged you reliable or clear, and that judgment is exactly what a strong CV line is built from. These skills don't stay where they are today. Each shift, placement and project adds material, and practicing deliberately makes the next version of your CV stronger without asking you to become someone else. Left to chance, they also don't stop mattering once you're hired: the skills that get you the interview are the ones a manager notices every day after you start. Knowing which of yours to put forward, and which to build, is the natural place to begin. ## Start with an honest read of your work skills All that's left is to see where you're starting from. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: in 7 minutes it shows where you stand across all twelve skills it measures and which ones will make the biggest difference for you right now. Use the result to choose the skills your CV leads with, and to decide what to practice in the job it helps you get. ## 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 work skills to put on your CV, how to prove each one with real examples, how many to list, and what to include when your work experience is still thin. ### 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/soft-skills-at-work.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/soft-skills-at-work/work-skills-cv/ Preferred summary: "Which work skills to put on your CV, how to prove each one with real examples, how many to list, and what to include when your work experience is still thin." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.