How to write the skills section of your CV

A short, grouped list of specific skills, backed up by evidence in your experience bullets. No rating bars, no percentages, no filler.

A skills section is a quick index of what you can do. Recruiters scan it to confirm you have the essentials, and applicant tracking systems use it to match terms from the job ad. It works best when it is short, specific and consistent with the rest of your CV.

What belongs in a skills section

Include skills that are:

• Specific: “PostgreSQL”, “IFRS 16 lease accounting”, “phlebotomy”, “Figma”, “contract negotiation”. Not “computers” or “teamwork”.
• Relevant: named in the job ad, or standard for the role.
• Real: you could answer a technical question about each one in an interview.

Leave out:

• Assumed skills for the role: email, word processing, “Microsoft Office” for an office job (keep specific advanced use, such as “Excel: Power Query, pivot tables, VBA”, if it matters).
• Personality traits presented as skills: “hard-working”, “team player”, “fast learner”. Show these through results in your experience bullets instead. See clichés and buzzwords.
• Outdated tools nobody will ask about, unless the job specifically uses them.

Group skills so they can be scanned

A flat list of 25 items is hard to read. Group into three to five labelled lines:

Before: Python, teamwork, SQL, Tableau, communication, Excel, problem solving, statistics, Power BI, R, leadership, A/B testing, Git, presenting

After: Four labelled lines, with the soft skills moved out into bullets:

• Analysis: SQL, Python (pandas), R, A/B testing, regression
• Visualisation: Tableau, Power BI, Excel
• Tools: Git, dbt, Airflow
• Languages: English (native), Spanish (B2)

The soft skills in the “before” are gone. They are not deleted from the CV’s story; they move into bullets where they can be proved (“Presented monthly churn analysis to the leadership team”).

Useful group labels by field:

No rating bars, stars or percentages

Many templates show skills as bars, stars, dots or percentages (“Python 80%”). Avoid them:

• They do not mean anything. 80% of what? Compared with whom? The reader cannot verify or interpret the number.
• They undersell you. “Excel 60%” invites the question of what the missing 40% is.
• ATS cannot read them. A bar is a graphic. The parser may see the word “Python” but not the level, or may miss both if the bar is an image.
• They take space that could hold actual evidence.

If level matters, use words that mean something:

• For software and tools: years of use or context (“Python, 5 years, production data pipelines”).
• For languages: the CEFR scale (A1 to C2). See certifications and languages.
• For professional frameworks: the framework’s own levels where they exist.

Or simply split into two honest tiers:

• Advanced: SQL, Python, Tableau
• Working knowledge: R, dbt, Airflow

Every key skill should have evidence somewhere

A skill listed once in a skills section is a claim. The same skill appearing in an experience or project bullet is evidence. For each of your top five skills, check that at least one bullet shows you using it with a result.

Before: Skills: Stakeholder management

After: (in Experience) Ran fortnightly reviews with finance, legal and three regional directors to agree a single budget model; signed off two weeks ahead of the deadline.

If you cannot write a bullet like that for a skill, either it is not one of your strongest, or you need to look harder at what you have done.

Matching the job ad

Applicant tracking systems and recruiters both look for the job ad’s terms. Read the ad, list the skills it mentions, and for each one you genuinely have:

1. Use the ad’s wording (if it says “financial modelling”, do not only write “built forecasts”).
2. Include it in the skills section.
3. Show it in at least one bullet.

Write out abbreviations at least once if the ad does (“Search engine optimisation (SEO)”), because you cannot know which form a recruiter will search for. Never list a skill you do not have to pass a filter; it will come out in the interview. See job ad keywords.

How long should it be

Usually 8 to 20 items across three to five groups. Fewer if your field is narrow, more for technical roles with many tools. If it runs longer than your most recent role’s bullets, trim it.

Where to put it

• Experienced applicants: after experience, or in a side column.
• Technical roles: often near the top, below the summary, because recruiters check tools first.
• Career changers: near the top, grouped around the new role. See career change CVs.

In a two-column layout such as the Sidebar template, the skills list sits in the narrow column. Two-column layouts generally parse well when the columns are real text, but if you are applying through a portal known to struggle, a single-column template such as Clarity is the safer choice. See ATS formatting pitfalls.

Next: job ad keywords and the projects section.