The skills section of your resume is one of the most important for ATS keyword matching. Recruiters also scan it immediately to assess whether you have the core competencies for a role. Getting this section right can meaningfully improve your ATS score and first impression.
Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills
Hard skills are specific, measurable, and learnable — programming languages, tools, certifications, technical methodologies. Soft skills are interpersonal and behavioural — communication, leadership, problem-solving. Both belong on your resume, but in different places.
- ✓Hard skills go in your Skills section, bullet points, and summary
- ✓Soft skills belong in your summary and demonstrated through achievement-focused bullets
- ✓Never list "good communication" as a standalone skill — show it through examples instead
- ✓ATS systems weight hard skills much more heavily than soft skills in keyword matching
How to Format Your Skills Section
The skills section should be a scannable list, not a paragraph. Use categories to organise related skills together, which makes the section both human-readable and more likely to be fully parsed by ATS.
Skills ATS Systems Look for Most (by Role)
ATS systems are trained on millions of job descriptions. The skills that matter most are always the ones that appear in the specific job description you are applying to. That said, some skills are universally high-value in 2025.
- ✓All technical roles: SQL, Python, data analysis, cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)
- ✓Software engineering: your primary languages, your primary frameworks, Kubernetes, CI/CD
- ✓Data roles: Python, SQL, Spark, dbt, a BI tool (Tableau/Power BI/Looker), a ML framework
- ✓Marketing: Google Analytics, SEO, paid acquisition platforms, CRM (HubSpot/Salesforce)
- ✓Finance: Excel/VBA, financial modelling, SQL, Bloomberg/Refinitiv, a BI tool
- ✓Product management: SQL, data analysis, JIRA, Figma, A/B testing, product analytics tools
Skills to Avoid Listing
- ✓Microsoft Word, Microsoft Office — assumed baseline for most roles, not worth listing unless specifically requested
- ✓Skills you learned once but cannot use competently today
- ✓Extremely generic soft skills without context: "hardworking", "team player", "fast learner"
- ✓Outdated technologies that are no longer in use or in demand (signals you are not keeping up)
- ✓Skills completely unrelated to the role — they do not add value and dilute keyword density
How Many Skills Should You List?
Most strong resumes list 15-30 skills. Fewer than 10 typically indicates a sparse skills section that will underperform on ATS keyword matching. More than 40 starts to look like keyword stuffing and dilutes the impact of your genuinely strong skills.
Pro Tip
After applying for a role, check which skills from the job description did not appear in your skills section. Add the ones you genuinely have. Over time, this tailoring discipline significantly improves your ATS match scores.