a skill only counts if you can prove it
A hiring manager reads each skill on your resume as a claim. A bullet with a number under one of your jobs proves that claim. A skill with no bullet behind it stays a claim.
Use hard skills and soft skills:
- Hard skills: tools, licenses, systems and tasks you can name. RF scanner, POS, Epic, forklift, Excel, cash handling.
- Soft skills: how you work with people and problems. Example: calming an angry customer at returns.
Hard skills go in the skills section. Soft skills go in a bullet with a number, because a word like "teamwork" in a list proves nothing.
Employers still look for soft skills. In NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey of employers who hire new college grads, nearly 90% said they look for problem-solving on a resume. Nearly 80% look for teamwork. That survey is about new grads. For an hourly job the fix is the same: show the skill in a bullet with a count or a time.
weak skills list vs strong skills list
Luis Ortega is a warehouse shift lead in Columbus, OH. He wants a new warehouse job, and the job post says this:
Must be able to operate RF scanners and pallet jacks. Forklift certification preferred. Experience with cycle counts a plus.
Here is the skills section on his old resume and on the resume he sent for this job post.
| weak skills list | strong skills list |
|---|---|
| Hardworking | RF scanner |
| Team player | Pallet jack |
| Detail-oriented | Forklift certified |
| Fast learner | Cycle counts (2,400 bin locations) |
| Good communication | Scheduling in When I Work |
| Microsoft Office | Spanish (fluent) |
The weak list could belong to anyone. The strong list names tools, licenses and tasks that a hiring manager can check. RF scanner, pallet jack, forklift and cycle counts come straight from the job post. On Luis's example resume at the top of this page, the lime words are the words from that job post. Each one also shows up in a bullet in his work history. Here is his cycle count skill, as a weak line and as a strong line:
- Weak: "Detail-oriented team player."
- Strong: "Ran weekly cycle counts on 2,400 bin locations; inventory accuracy went from 95% to 99.1% in 5 months."
Those numbers come from Luis's labeled example resume. Use your own numbers. No exact number? Use "about" or a floor you can defend, like "about 30 a day" or "200+ shifts".
have a resume? tailor it to a job in under a minute.
start nowskills to put on a resume, by job
Find your job below. Pick the skills you have used, then write 1 bullet that proves each one. Each bullet here is an example, so put in your real numbers.
retail
Skills to name: POS, cash handling, visual merchandising, inventory counts, returns.
Example bullet: "Closed the cash drawer on 150+ shifts with zero shortages."
food service
Skills to name: food safety certificate, line prep, drive-thru, opening and closing, POS.
Example bullet: "Kept drive-thru order time under 3 minutes at lunch rush."
warehouse
Skills to name: RF scanner, pallet jack, forklift, pick and pack, cycle counts, shipping and receiving.
Example bullet: "Picked about 110 orders a shift on the RF scanner at 99.3% accuracy."
operations
Skills to name: scheduling, inventory systems, Excel, vendor orders, safety audits.
Example bullet: "Built the weekly schedule for 20 people; cut overtime by 15 hours a month."
admin
Skills to name: Google Workspace, Excel, QuickBooks, calendars, data entry, invoicing.
Example bullet: "Entered about 250 invoices a week in QuickBooks with no late payments."
customer support
Skills to name: Zendesk, live chat, phone support, refunds, de-escalation.
Example bullet: "Answered about 55 tickets a day in Zendesk; kept first replies under 2 hours."
healthcare support
Skills to name: vitals, Epic or another health records system, scheduling, CPR/BLS, patient intake.
Example bullet: "Checked in about 35 patients a day in Epic; cut lobby wait by 10 minutes."
trades
Skills to name: power tools, blueprint reading, OSHA 10, electrician or plumber license, estimates.
Example bullet: "Read blueprints for 25 framing jobs with zero rework calls from inspectors."
Not sure what your job uses? Search your job title on O*NET OnLine, a free site from the U.S. Department of Labor. Each job page lists its tasks, skills and software. Take the words that match what you did.
soft skills for a resume: put them in a bullet
Anyone can type "leadership" in a skills section. Put each soft skill in a bullet with a number instead. The bullets in this table are examples, so use your real numbers.
| soft skill | do not write | write this instead |
|---|---|---|
| problem-solving | "Strong problem-solver" | "Found a mislabeled bin that caused 30 wrong picks a week; fixed the labels." |
| teamwork | "Team player" | "Covered 2 departments on short-staffed weekends so the store opened on time." |
| communication | "Great communicator" | "Wrote the closing checklist that the other 2 shifts now use." |
| leadership | "Natural leader" | "Trained 9 new hires; they hit the pick rate in week 2 instead of week 4." |
| calm under pressure | "Works well under pressure" | "Talked down angry customers at returns; 0 escalations to the manager in 6 months." |
| reliability | "Dependable" | "Zero missed shifts in 2 years; first one called to cover when someone was out sick." |
pick skills from the job post
Do not guess which skills to put on a resume. The job post tells you. Use Luis's warehouse job post from above as the example.
- Copy the job post into a doc.
- Highlight every tool, license and task it names. In Luis's job post: RF scanner, pallet jack, forklift, cycle counts.
- Circle each one you have used.
- Put those words in your skills section, in the same words the job post uses.
- Under the job where you used each skill, move the bullet that proves it to the top.
- Keep 6 to 10 skills: the ones the job post names first, then your other strongest hard skills.
Use the job post's exact words. If it says "pallet jack", write "pallet jack": the hiring manager scans for those words and can skip right past "manual lifting equipment". On a first resume, 4 to 6 skills is fine.
The full method is in how to tailor your resume to a job post.
where to put skills on the page
- Put a skills section with 6 to 10 skills on one or two lines, separated by dots or commas.
- List skills in the order the job post names them.
- Little work history? Put the skills section under your summary. If your job bullets already have numbers, it can go at the bottom.
- Add the level when it helps: "Spanish (fluent)", "Excel (pivot tables)", "OSHA 10".
- Do not use skill bars or star ratings. The hiring manager cannot tell what 4 stars in Excel means.
Look at the skills line at the bottom of Luis's example resume. RF scanner, pallet jack, forklift and cycle counts each show up again in a bullet with a number. Do the same check on your own resume: for each skill, find the bullet that proves it.
You can do these steps by hand for each job post. Or use jobsmaxxing, which tailors a resume you already have to one job. It does not write a resume from zero. Upload your resume once, and every job and bullet goes into your Experience Bank. Paste any job link (LinkedIn job links work) or the job post text. You get a one-page resume rewritten for that job from your real experience, in under a minute. It does not invent titles, dates or numbers. It costs $9.99 for the first 7 days, then $29/month, with no free tier.