The Best Skills to Put on a Resume Right Now
How to work out which skills are in demand for your target role using the postings themselves, rather than trusting a generic ranked list.
Kazifi Careers Team · Careers & ATS specialists
Articles ranking the best skills for a resume age badly and generalise across fields that have nothing in common. Rather than give you a list to trust, here is the method that produces one for your actual market.
Build your own demand ranking in thirty minutes
This is more reliable than any published ranking, because it measures the roles you are actually applying to.
- Collect ten to fifteen current postings for your target role, in your region and at your level. Recent ones only, since stale adverts describe a stale market.
- Copy the requirements sections into one document.
- Tally every named skill. Tools, systems, certifications, methods, languages. Count how many of the fifteen mention each.
- Sort by frequency. Anything appearing in more than half is a core requirement for that role right now.
- Mark your honest position against each: can do unaided, could with a week, cannot.
The output is a demand ranking specific to you, plus a gap list showing exactly what to learn next. Both are more useful than a generic top ten.
Reading the result
Appears in most postings and you can do it. These lead your skills section, and at least two should be evidenced in your bullets.
Appears in most postings and you cannot. This is your learning priority, and it is worth knowing which single skill opens the most roles.
Appears rarely but you have it. Keep if distinctive, cut if it is just filling space. A rare skill differentiates; an irrelevant one dilutes.
Appears rarely and you lack it. Ignore entirely. This is where people waste months.
What stays valuable across most fields
A few things hold their value broadly enough to be worth naming, though even here the specifics vary by role.
Working with data in some form. Not data science, but the ability to pull a number, check it, and explain what it means. Spreadsheet competence at a real level remains one of the highest-leverage skills in non-technical roles.
A named system in your domain. Whatever the industry-standard platform is, actual fluency in it removes a training cost and is checked for directly.
Writing clearly. Increasingly what remote and distributed work runs on, and consistently underclaimed because people assume it is not a skill.
One language beyond your first, where the employer operates in that market. Stated on a named scale.
Why we do not publish a ranked list here
Rankings of in-demand skills need current job posting data with a stated sample and date to be worth anything, and they go stale within months. We do not have that data, and quoting a number without it would be worse than the method above.
If you want a published ranking as a cross-check, use one that states its sample size, its date range and its geography. A list with none of those is somebody’s opinion formatted as research.
Update triggers
Refresh your skills section when you change target role, when a posting names something twice that you have never listed, and roughly annually regardless. Tool names date faster than anything else on a resume, and an outdated platform quietly signals when you last looked.
Related
For the rules, see the skills section guide. For candidates to choose from, see the master skills list, and for phrasing see how to list skills. By type, see hard skills, soft skills and technical skills.
Our resume keyword scanner automates step three against a single posting, and the resume checker shows which listed skills your bullets never prove.
Fifteen postings beats any ranked list. You can check your skills section once you know what your market asks for.
Common questions
What skills should I put on my resume?
The ones your target postings repeatedly name and that you can genuinely do. That set is specific to your role and market, which is why a generic ranked list is a poor substitute for reading ten adverts.
Which skills are most in demand?
It varies enough by field, seniority and region that any single answer is misleading. The method below produces a demand ranking for your actual market in about thirty minutes.
Do employers still care about technical skills over soft skills?
Technical requirements filter, behavioural qualities decide. You need the named skills to be considered, and the demonstrated behaviours to be chosen.
How often should I update my skills section?
Whenever you change target role, and roughly annually otherwise. Tool names date faster than anything else on a resume.