Skills for your resume: what 212 job postings ask for, and how to write them

Which hard and soft skills to put on a resume, counted from real job postings, and how to word them so the ATS and the recruiter both find them.

The usual advice on resume skills has two halves. List your hard skills in the skills section, and leave soft skills out because anyone can claim them. The first half is right. The second half ignores what employers write in their job postings, so we counted.

On October 1, 2026 we read the requirements sections of 212 live postings for nine jobs. We then ran the matcher behind our own ATS checker on a set of skills lines and experience bullets to see what a skills section does and does not do. On October 4 we widened the count to 8,119 postings to check two more things: how often employers say "core competencies", and how they word communication, leadership, organization and analytical skills. This article gives the counts, the wording rules that follow from them, and counted skills lists for six jobs.

Core competencies or skills: same section, plainer heading

"Core competencies" is the name some resume templates give the skills section, usually a block of six to twelve short phrases under the summary. The term comes from HR. The US Office of Personnel Management defines a competency as "a measurable pattern of knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and other characteristics that an individual needs to perform work roles or occupational functions successfully." A competency is a skill plus the way you apply it on the job. On a resume, a "Core competencies" block and a "Skills" block hold the same thing.

Employers rarely use the term in their own ads.

When an ad does use the heading, it writes each competency as a label followed by a definition. A MongoDB risk analyst posting lists "Analytical Rigor: ability to interpret data and apply risk knowledge and judgment to validate risk ratings and Criticality designations, not just process tickets". That is the format worth copying on a resume: the label the ad uses, then what you did with it.

The heading matters more than the word suggests. Our resume import page sorts an uploaded resume into sections by matching each heading against a fixed list. On October 4, 2026, it recognized "Skills", "Core Skills", "Key Skills" and "Competencies" as a skills section. It did not recognize "Core Competencies", "Key Competencies", "Areas of Expertise" or "Skills & Competencies". That page only decides which sections we tell you we found, and our ATS checker's keyword score ignores headings entirely, as the next sections show. Other applicant tracking systems keep their own heading lists, which we cannot see. Our advice is "Skills", or "Core Skills" if you want the summary-block look.

Every item on the right is short enough to scan and specific enough to be asked about in an interview. The figures are examples, so put your own in.

Soft skills are in almost every posting

Most advice treats soft skills as optional. The postings disagree. Nearly every requirements section we read asks for at least one.

How we counted: we queried the public Greenhouse job-board API for 58 companies, kept at most three postings per company per job, and isolated the block headed "qualifications", "what you'll bring" or "about you". 212 postings had a block we could isolate. The 170 comes from the soft-skill list in our free keyword extractor, so you can check any single posting yourself. The 197 uses a broader set of patterns we wrote, such as "stakeholder" and "ambiguity". The boards are mostly US and UK tech and fintech companies, so a hospital or a retailer will word things differently.

The table shows how this splits by job. The soft-skill column barely moves. The tool column swings from 2 postings in 25 to 19 in 24. A hard skill or method, such as SQL, prospecting or month-end close, is named in at least 84% of the postings for every job, so that column is left out. It does not change.

Two things follow. Communication alone is in 127 of the 212 requirements sections, so it belongs on almost any resume, shown and named. And a product manager or customer success manager who fills the skills section with software names is answering a question most of those ads never asked.

How the ads word them

The ads rarely ask for a soft skill as a bare word. They tie it to a situation or an audience:

• "communicating effectively with a wide variety of stakeholders: executives, Product and Engineering leadership, day-to-day users of our software" (Samsara, customer success manager)
• "the ability to influence stakeholders across all levels of the organization" (Squarespace, FP&A director)
• "the discipline to juggle competing close and filing deadlines without letting quality slip" (Oura, SEC reporting accountant)
• "solve ambiguous problems with little direction" (Flexport, senior financial analyst)

That wording is your template. Copy the audience and the situation, not the adjective. "Excellent communication skills" answers none of the lines above. "Presented monthly variance analysis to the CFO and three business-unit leads" answers the first two.

Where a skill sits matters less than how it is worded

Three of the pages that rank for this topic say the ATS needs your skills in both the skills section and your bullets. None tested it. We did, with computeKeywordMatch, the function our ATS checker uses for keyword and skills matching, which together make up 60% of its score.

The first finding is simple. Our matcher reads your resume as one block of text and has no idea which section a word is in. "SQL" counts the same in "Skills: SQL, Python, Tableau" as in "Built weekly churn dashboards in SQL for a 12-person sales team".

The second finding is the one that matters. The bullet that proves a soft skill is usually written with a verb, and the verb is not the skill's name:

We ran these on plain text on October 1 and 4, 2026, not on PDF files, so no text-extraction quirk is mixed into the results. Other applicant tracking systems use their own matching, and some are looser. But a bullet that never contains the word cannot be matched on that word by any of them.

So the skills section has a job, and it is not to prove anything. It holds the noun the ad uses, once. The bullet holds the proof, with a number. Neither replaces the other. The noun alone persuades no recruiter, and the proof alone may never be matched.

The same move works for the soft skills the table above shows most often:

1. Collaboration. "Team player" becomes "Worked with 2 engineers and a designer to ship the onboarding redesign in 6 weeks".
2. Attention to detail. "Detail-oriented" becomes "Reviewed 400 vendor invoices a month; caught $18,000 in duplicate payments in Q2".
3. Comfort with ambiguity. "Adaptable" becomes "Built the first sales forecast for a new market with no historical data; it landed within 8% of actuals".
4. Stakeholder management. "Strong stakeholder skills" becomes "Ran a fortnightly review with finance, legal and sales leads to agree contract terms for 30 enterprise renewals".

The numbers here are examples. Replace each with your own. A borrowed figure falls apart at the first interview question.

Communication, leadership, organization, analytical skills: how ads ask

Four soft skills come up in almost every list of resume skills. To see how employers phrase them, we isolated the requirements block of each posting in the October 4 set, from the "qualifications", "what you'll bring" or "about you" heading to the benefits or pay section. 7,116 of the 8,119 postings had a block we could cut out this way. Then we counted the blocks that use each word.

Three things to take from it.

Communication has an audience. The ads name who you communicate with: senior leadership, customers, non-technical stakeholders. Name yours in the bullet. "Presented the quarterly churn analysis to the CFO and two VPs" answers the Flexport line. "Strong communicator" does not.

Read "leadership" twice. In many blocks the word is who you report to or present to, not something you are asked to do. Compare an ad that asks for leadership itself: "10+ years of leadership experience managing multidisciplinary analytics teams" (Elastic). That one wants a team, a size and a duration. Answer it with the team you led and what changed, such as "Led 6 support agents; cut first-response time from 9 hours to 2".

Organization and analysis are tied to a load. The Brex line asks for organization under "multiple priorities under tight deadlines". The Vercel line asks for analysis that ends in a decision. So the proof has a volume and an outcome: "Ran month-end for 3 entities on a 5-day close", "Analyzed 18 months of churn data and found the 2 plans behind 60% of cancellations".

Then write the ad's noun once, in the skills section. The table above shows why. Our matcher counts "Organized" for "organizational skills", because the two are listed together in our keyword list, but it counts neither "Analytical rigor" nor "Analyzed" for "analytical skills". One company's competency label is not another company's keyword.

Spell skills the way the ad does

A matcher can only forgive spelling differences it has been told about. Ours knows a closed list: 199 skills in our lexicon.ts file, as of September 30, 2026. That is 93 hard skills, 55 tools, 28 degrees and certifications and 23 soft skills, written 461 ways in total. Inside that list, variants count as the same skill. Outside it, only the ad's own words and their plurals match.

What that means when you write your skills section:

• Some aliases are covered. "JS" matches "JavaScript", "detail-oriented" matches "attention to detail", "team player" and "collaborative" match "teamwork", "Office 365" matches "Microsoft Office".
• Common ad wording is not. "Stakeholder" is in 68 of the 212 requirements sections, "cross-functional" in 62, "ambiguity" in 37 and "ownership" in 25. None of them is in our list. Write them the way the ad does. An ad asking for "cross-functional collaboration" was not matched by "Collaborated with cross-functional teams".
• The tool, not the suite. "Excel, Word, PowerPoint" does not match an ad that asks for "Microsoft Office". If the ad names the suite, name the suite too.
• Your label, not a shorter one. An ad keyword "communication skills" was not found in a resume that only says "Communication". Copy the ad's whole phrase once.
• Capital letters on tool names. Seventeen forms in our list are also ordinary words: Excel, Tableau, Slack, Notion, Word, Go, Rust, AI and a few more. Our matcher only counts them with their capital letter or in full capitals, so that "you will excel" is not read as software. "Skills: excel, powerpoint" was missing Excel. "Excel" and "EXCEL" both matched. Write tool names as the company that makes them does.

Skills lists by role, counted

These lists come from the same 212 postings, for four jobs. Each figure is the number of requirements sections that name the skill. A skill near the top is one most employers in this sample screen for. One near the bottom is a differentiator when the ad asks for it. Variants were counted together, so "AWS, GCP or Azure" is one row.

Two rows appear in all four jobs. Years of experience is a minimum your dates have to show, not a skill to list. AI is in the requirements of at least half the postings for each of the four. Name the tools you use and what you used them for, in a bullet with a result.

Software engineer

25 postings, 12 companies. AI or LLMs 13 · distributed or large-scale systems 12 · degree 11 · Python 11 · Go 9 · testing 8 · APIs 8 · debugging and incident response 7 · TypeScript or JavaScript 7 · AWS, GCP or Azure 7 · Java 5 · SQL 4 · Kubernetes 3 · CI/CD 3.

Languages are often asked as "one of" ("Python, Go, or Java"), so list the ones you would defend in a coding interview, in the ad's order.

Skills: Go, Python, TypeScript · Distributed systems: Kafka, PostgreSQL, gRPC · AWS (ECS, S3, Lambda) · Testing and CI/CD: GitHub Actions · AI coding tools: Claude Code, Copilot

Product designer

25 postings, 15 companies. AI in the design workflow 18 · prototyping 17 · shipping work end to end 16 · portfolio 12 · visual design 11 · code or front-end 11 · Figma 10 of the 22 postings from companies other than Figma · mobile 10 · interaction design 10 · systems thinking 9 · design systems 8 · user research 4 · accessibility 2.

Prototyping beat Figma by a wide margin. The ads ask how you test ideas, often in code, more than which drawing tool you open.

Skills: Figma, design systems and tokens · Prototyping: Framer, coded prototypes in React · Interaction and visual design · AI-assisted prototyping: Cursor, v0 · Mobile: iOS and Android

Recruiter

24 postings, 16 companies. Full-cycle recruiting 20 · recruiting data and metrics 18 · sourcing 15 · stakeholders 13 · AI tools 12 · closing candidates and offers 11 · senior leaders or executives 10 · technical recruiting 9 · hiring managers 8 · in-house 8 · an ATS such as Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby or Workday 7 · candidate experience 6.

Recruiting metrics came just behind full-cycle recruiting. Put your funnel numbers in the bullets: time to fill, offer acceptance rate, hires per quarter.

Skills: Full-cycle recruiting · Technical sourcing: LinkedIn Recruiter, Gem · Greenhouse · Recruiting metrics: time to fill, offer acceptance · Offer negotiation and closing · Stakeholder management with hiring managers

Accountant or financial analyst

24 postings, 21 companies. Excel 17 · ERP such as NetSuite, Oracle, SAP or Workday 15 · AI tools 14 · degree 12 · financial modeling 11 · CPA 10 · month-end close 9 · public accounting or Big 4 8 · US GAAP 7 · SQL 6 · variance analysis 4 · SOX or internal controls 4 · PowerPoint 4.

Of the nine jobs, this is the one where ads named a tool most often. Name the ERP you used and what you did in it, since "ERP" alone tells the reader nothing.

Skills: Excel: Power Query, pivot tables, financial models · NetSuite: month-end close, journal entries · US GAAP · Variance analysis · SQL · CPA (2024)

Marketing manager

This list and the next come from the larger October 4 set, with the requirements-block method described above, so their counts are not comparable with the four lists before them. 180 postings with "marketing" in the title, 32 companies. Analytics, metrics or data-driven 98 · writing or storytelling 96 · cross-functional 91 · campaigns 72 · go-to-market or launches 72 · stakeholders 68 · demand generation or pipeline 63 · positioning or messaging 49 · Salesforce 46 · Marketo or HubSpot 30 · lifecycle or email 27 · paid media 26 · SQL 15 · SEO 5.

SEO, the first item on many marketing-skills lists, is in 5 of 180. Most of these boards belong to B2B software companies, where marketing jobs are product marketing, demand generation and events, and where an SEO job says SEO in its title. A retailer or an agency will rank SEO higher. Put analytics and writing near the top, with a number for each.

Skills: Campaign analytics: Salesforce dashboards, pipeline attribution · Positioning and messaging for 2 product launches · Demand generation: webinars, paid social · Marketo · Lifecycle email · SQL for funnel reporting

HR or people partner

30 postings from 15 companies, a small sample, so read the order as a hint. People data, analytics or metrics 21 · an HRIS such as Workday, BambooHR or Rippling 15 · coaching or advising leaders 15 · employee relations 11 · change management or org design 11 · stakeholders 10 · performance management 10 · confidentiality or discretion 9 · employment law or compliance 8.

People data came first. The Vercel HR business partner posting quoted above wants analytical skills used "to tell stories, identify trends, and inform decisions". Name the reports you build, and the decision one of them changed.

Skills: Employee relations: 40+ investigations a year · Performance management cycles for 600 employees · Workday HCM and reporting · People analytics: attrition and engagement dashboards · Change management for 2 reorganizations · Coaching first-time managers

For any other job, count three postings yourself. Paste each requirements section into the job description keyword extractor, note which skills come back in two or three of them, and start your list there.

Hard skills vs soft skills: what goes in the section

A hard skill can be named, tested and checked: a language, a tool, a method, a license, a certification. A soft skill is a way of working: communication, collaboration, judgment, organization. Recruiters can verify the first kind in an interview task and can only infer the second from what you did.

That difference decides placement, not whether to include them. Hard skills make up most of the skills section. Soft skills appear there only when the ad names them, in the ad's words, and every one you list has a bullet below that shows it. A soft skill with no proof on the page is a word every other applicant wrote too.

How many skills, in what order, at what level

Six to ten items is enough for one posting. More than that turns the section into an inventory, and the recruiter stops reading after the first line. Skills the ad does not ask for move into your bullets, where they have context, or out of this version of the resume.

Order them the way the ad does. The first skill in its requirements is the first in your list, so the person who wrote the ad finds their own priorities in the same order.

Write levels in words or facts, never as bars or stars. "Excel: Power Query, pivot tables" says more than five dots, and a rating graphic often reaches the ATS as an image or as stray characters. For languages, use a scale the reader knows, such as "Spanish: professional working proficiency" or a CEFR level like C1.

Group long lists by kind, such as "Languages", "Tools", "Methods", so the eye finds what it is looking for. Keep the heading plain: "Skills" is what both people and parsers expect. Our ATS guide covers the other headings and file formats.

No experience or changing careers

With little relevant work history, the skills section carries more weight, and the proof has to come from elsewhere: coursework, a project, volunteer work, a previous job in another field.

The method does not change. Take the skills the ad names, keep the ones you can show, and put the proof in whatever section holds it. For example, a retail supervisor applying to customer success can show "stakeholder management" with "handled escalations from 40+ customers a week and resolved 90% without a manager". A graduate can show SQL with a class project that names the dataset and the question it answered. Our resume guide covers the structure for a first job and for a career change.

Do the same for your LinkedIn profile, which recruiters search with the same skill names. Our LinkedIn guide explains where those skills go there.

Check your skills against a real posting

Two free tools do the comparison for you. The job description keyword extractor reads a posting in your browser and sorts what it asks for into hard skills, tools, degrees and soft skills. Then the HiredFolio ATS checker compares your resume against the same posting and lists the skills the ad asks for that your resume never names.

Read the missing list one item at a time. A skill you have but did not write goes in the section, with a bullet that proves it. A skill you do not have stays out. The checker will not know, but the interviewer will.

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