What are hard skills and why are they important?
Hard skills are job-specific knowledge or abilities acquired through work experience, education or on-the-job training. Employers prize hard skills because they take time and effort to teach. Hiring someone who already knows how to do something is easier.
The key is to add the best hard skills for your resume. Discovering which skills those are is why you’re here.
If you’re looking for hard skills specific to your job, head directly to our Resume Builder. When you add your previous roles to your resume, you’ll get job-specific wording recommendations for your professional summary, work experience and skills section.
Pick a professionally designed resume template, download it, and land an interview today.
Hard skills versus soft skills: What’s the difference?
Most jobs require a mix of hard skills and soft skills. Understanding the difference between the two is essential to ensuring you have your bases covered.
- Hard skills are abilities and knowledge, usually tied to a specific industry or job, that are acquired through education, on-the-job training or professional development.
- Soft skills are the qualities and personality traits you possess naturally or through years of interpersonal experience that help you excel at your job.
Still not 100% sure you see the difference? Here’s a chart to help:
Notice how the hard skills are specific to certain jobs and would require training and support?
Here are some additional hard skills examples to consider for your resume:
- Video editing
- Patient records
- Employee training
- Lesson planning
- Presentations
- Email marketing
- Storyboarding
- Software development
On the other end of the spectrum, soft skills are more ingrained and harder to learn. For this reason, employers seek out employees who come by them naturally. Here are some additional examples of soft skills to consider:
- Leadership
- Work ethic
- Teamwork
- Dependability
- Confidence
- Conflict-resolution
- Storytelling
- Attentiveness
Ultimately, both skill sets are essential to furthering your career, whether you work in a highly technical field or a service-oriented one.
Hard skills for your resume – 70+ examples
The best way to brainstorm hard skills is to consider the different types that exist. We’ve collected 10 skill categories featuring more than 70 hard skills to put on your resume. While the list is not exhaustive, you’ll find more than a few skills relevant to your job.
If you need more inspiration, check out our resume examples library, which lists actual resumes categorized by job title. You can also take a look at our resume templates, which are a great way to see your skills emphasized by different styles. We also highlight popular Google Doc templates if that’s more your speed, and our resume formats will help you decide where to place the skills section.
Analytical hard skills examples
- Statistical analysis
- Forecasting
- Data interpretation
- Data presentation
- Database management
- Diagnostics
- Resource management
Computer and technology hard skills for a resume
- Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, etc.)
- Email management
- Scheduling software like Google Calendar
- Programming languages like JavaScript and Python
- Pivot tables
- Data entry
- VPN
- Words per minute (WPM)
- Productivity software like Asana and Monday
Design hard skills examples
- Typography
- Adobe Creative Suite (Indesign, Illustrator, etc.)
- Print design
- Color theory
- Photo composition
- Branding
- User experience (UX) design
- User interface (UI) design
- Illustration
Language hard skills for a resume
- Speaking in a foreign language, such as in Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, German, French or Arabic
- Writing in a foreign language
- Translating languages
Management hard skills examples
- Budgeting
- Business acumen
- Hiring
- Strategic planning
- Logistics
- Performance tracking
- Employee evaluation
- Business development
Marketing hard skills for a resume
- SEO/SEM
- Email automation
- A/B testing
- B2B marketing
- HTML and CSS
- Social media
- Funnel management
- Google Analytics
- Content management systems (CMS)
Medical and health care hard skills examples
- CPR and first aid
- Medical billing
- Electronic health records (EHR)
- Prescriptions
- Vital signs
- Nutrition
- HIPAA knowledge
Manufacturing and construction hard skills for a resume
- Physical strength
- Dexterity
- Endurance
- Drywall installation
- Roofing
- Forklifts
- Robotics
- HVAC
- Quality control
Project management hard skills examples
- Scrum management
- Kanban
- Agile development
- Risk analysis
- Project scheduling
- Financial modeling
- Prioritization
- Delegating
Writing hard skills for a resume
- Copywriting
- Technical writing
- Grant writing
- Journalism
- Press releases
- Copy editing (grammar, spelling, punctuation)
How to add hard skills to a resume: Tips with examples
After you understand hard skills and arm yourself with examples, it’s time to add them to your resume. But how?
There are four methods for filling your resume with hard skills. Let’s review each one.
Study job ads to identify hard skills relevant to the role
Every job listing includes a raft of hard and soft skills. You’ll commonly find skills peppered throughout the ad with section headers like “job description,” “responsibilities” and “qualifications.”
The key is to comb the listing for skills and highlight the words you’ll need to add to your resume.
Take a look at this listing for a computer programmer role. We’ve pulled a couple of bullets from each section, bolding the hard skills that are resume-worthy:
When you sit down to write your resume, use the skills from the job listing as a guidebook and checklist for hard skills to put on your resume.
Include your level of proficiency
You can add a skill to your resume even if you aren’t an expert in that particular skill set. For example, let’s say you have extensive experience writing budgets, some experience tracking performance and minor experience overseeing the hiring process.
Here’s how you might showcase your varied experience levels in a resume skills section:
There are other ways to specify experience levels. You could add visual flair with color coding or utilize special graphics/design features. Only attempt the latter if you’re a skilled designer or have a resume template to help you.
Provide examples in your work experience section
Hard skills should be sprinkled throughout your resume, not simply listed inside the skills section.
Let’s review an example of hard skills adequately implemented in a candidate’s work experience section. This is a nursing assistant resume, and the skills are in bold:
Notice how the candidate above includes at least one skill in every work experience bullet point. Additionally, they use action words — like manage, maintain and safeguard — to make their work history more energetic and action-oriented.
Utilize your entire resume
Okay, you’ve got a great work experience section! What about everything else? Hard skills should be integrated throughout the document, including your resume profile — whether a professional summary or resume objective.
What would this look like? Here’s an example resume objective for a restaurant manager with hard skills in bold:
Keep reading to find out how you can learn new hard skills and continue to develop the skills you already have.
4 ways to improve your hard skills
Improving your hard skills requires time, energy and resources. Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to find free help developing your skill set. You just need to know where to look.
1. Take free online courses
Today there’s no shortage of free online classes to help you build your skill set. First, find free classes on Udemy and Coursera. Then, look to see which colleges and universities offer free classes that might suit you. Here is a handful of the respected schools with online classes:
2. Watch YouTube and other tutorial videos
YouTube remains one of the great resources for free learning. The best advice is simply to search for what you’d like to learn. For example, the keyword “how to code python” turns up several courses ranging from one to 12 hours, alongside many videos offering advice to entry-level programmers.
Dig deeper with more targeted keywords and you’ll find countless tutorials on solving specific coding problems. This exercise could be done for (virtually) any technical skill set.
3. Consider in-person classes
Some subjects lend themselves better to in-person learning. Sites like Groupon, TakeLessons and Meetup are excellent resources for finding learning opportunities in your area. You can also search for a local college or university online with the keyword “free courses” to see if they offer anything that meets your needs.
4. Practice using your hard skills
Ultimately, your hard skills must be put into practice. However, job seekers trying to acquire a new skill that isn’t already part of their day-to-day duties and responsibilities will have to think outside the box. You should try the following strategies:
Hard skills FAQ
There’s no such thing as a “basic” hard skill. Every hard skill exists on a spectrum, depending on the candidate’s experience. For example, someone can be at an expert level at writing HTML and CSS but a novice (or basic) when it comes to cloud computing.
That being said, there are some hard skills more common than others. Here are hard skills that are always in high demand:
- Graphic design
- Data analysis
- Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.)
- Programming languages (Python, JavaScript, etc.)
- Patient care
- Foreign languages
- Copywriting
- Computer software knowledge
- Project management
The top five hard skills employers are looking for this coming year include:
- Digital literacy: In 2022, nearly all well-paying jobs required a high degree of tech literacy.
- Project management: Understanding Agile development, scrums and productivity tools are a significant advantage in the job market.
- Coding/programming: Computer programmers remain in high demand in most industries.
- Data management: The ongoing data deluge shows no signs of slowing down, creating more need for data expertise.
- Customer service: As we turn the corner on the pandemic, companies need friendly faces to draw customers back.
Your cover letter is a great place to emphasize your hard skills. We suggest writing a concise, powerful anecdote about how you used your hard skills to deliver results for the company.
Alternatively, lay out your most critical skills and how they help meet company goals. Here’s a paragraph from a cover letter written for a customer service job that executes that strategy perfectly:
“For the past four years, I've worked as a customer service representative at Burlington, being accountable for quality assurance, inbound call handling and data management. I've been the escalation point for service issues that require elevated decision-making to maintain both company brand and customer happiness. I also manage to consistently meet or exceed service benchmarks.”
Don is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) with more than 10 years’ experience creating digital content, including four years helping job seekers develop their careers. He holds an M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University.
