5 Things to Consider For Your Resume's Skills Section as an IT Professional

The Skills section of a resume is particularly important for IT professionals, such as software developers, as much of their work is skills-based. Here are five things you should consider when filling out the skills section on your resume.

How Recent Are The Skills?

Over the course of a career in IT, you'll learn many skills. This is partly because of the length of your career and different jobs you've had, but it's also because the IT industry has many technologies and programming languages that can be learnt. Listing every skill on your IT resume is not needed. It will end up "clogging up" the resume, making this particular section too messy.

One thing to consider when populating this section is how recent these skills are. Have you used them on the job recently? If you haven't used them for at least five years, I would suggest removing them from your resume as they aren't relevant any more. 

Also, you should consider how recent the actual technology or skill is. Sure, you may be quite experienced at maintaining Windows XP desktops, or developing software in Cobol, but unless you're going for a job that specifically requires these kinds of outdated skills, I would remove them.

How Good Are You At Each Skill?

Another thing to consider for your skills section is your actual skill level in each entry. The skills section should not be a list of every technology, language, and operating system you've ever worked with. If you do this, it can also cause the resume to fill up quite quickly and look messy. You should only list skills on your resume if you have experience with them in a commercial environment. This means, have you used them on the job? Have you used them effectively? Have you used them without supervision or on your own? If you've needed the help of others, or have just watched someone do something for a while, then it probably doesn't meet the requirements of putting it on the resume.

The need to have commercial experience in the skill is so that you can use it on the job that you're going for. If you've listed it on your resume, then it means you have some level of skill in it, and should be able to back that up with your performance.

How Relevant Are The Skills?

The next thing to consider is the relevancy of the skills. Some skills that you learn are not very relevant to your career. If you're a software developer, adding skills for languages and operating systems would be useful, but adding skills for sports might not be as they might not be relevant to the job.

Even other technical skills may not be needed on your resume. If you are a project manager, you probably don't need to add your desktop support skills on your resume, as they are not relevant to a project management career. 

Relevancy is also something to consider with how recent the skills are, as mentioned above. If the skill is no longer relevant in the industry (e.g. older programming languages), then it shouldn't need to be on there.

What Job Are You Going For?

The most important consideration is the job that you're going for. Your resume should be adjusted for each job that you apply for, rather than having a standard resume for every job. This means it's more focused and allows you to highlight certain areas as needed.

To make your skills section more effective, you should consider the job you're going for. If you're going for a software development role for a company that uses Macs exclusively, you can put down your experience with Mac computers. If you went for a job with a non-Mac company, this skill would not be relevant.

The job should be taken into consideration when deciding what skills to add and what skills to remove from this section. Have a look at the job description. Notice what skills they say are required and preferred. If you have experience with these skills, make sure they are on your resume.

What Format Should The Skills Section Be In?

For IT professionals, and possibly for other industries as well, there are several ways you can group or lay out the skills in this section: by category, or by skill level.

Laying out your skills by category means that you group your skills into different categories when you put them on your resume. For example, you may group your skills into Programming Languages, Operating Systems, and Soft Skills. Or, you may group them into Technologies, Hardware, and Management. It really depends on the kind of skills that you have.

Another way of laying out your skills is by skill level. This means that you can group your skills into your level of knowledge or experience with them, such as High/Medium/Low or Advanced/Intermediate/Novice. Then, add each of your skills under the appropriate rating to demonstrate the skill and the level.

Deciding on the format of your resume, including the choice of laying out your skills is a personal choice and depends on the skills you have. If you can't group them into categories, go with the skill level grouping.

Creating a resume and deciding on the format as well as what to include is a personal choice.  Make sure you read the job description in its entirety so that you know exactly what the company needs.  Then you will be able to determine what skills to add and what skills to delete.

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