What would you say is your most valuable soft skill that makes you standout at work? Is it your communication, or maybe critical thinking? Do you have strong attention to detail that results to error-free outputs? Whatever it is, make sure that it is well written and represented in your resume.
In one of our previous articles, we listed down essential soft skills professionals need to cultivate. Now, we’ll share tips on how to showcase them in your professional CV to standout among recruiters and hiring managers.
Listing your soft skills doesn’t provide context or proof. Anyone can write “Strong Leadership” and “Critical Thinking” in their resume. Doing so won’t help you stand out.
Just like technical skills and specialisations, soft skills are valuable with evidence that demonstrates impact. Soft skills need to be presented not as abstract adjectives but as concrete, quantifiable accomplishments.
Instead of "Strong Leadership" why not write, "Successfully led and trained a sales team of 10, resulting in 25% increase in regional sales revenue within one financial quarter." And instead of “Critical Thinking” you can mention the time you "Analysed client feedback and identified core issues resulting to service delay, initiating an improvement in team SOPs and a system software upgrade that reduced customer complaints by 20%."
There are different structures and templates when creating or updating your resume. Regardless of the format, make sure to weave your soft skills throughout your resume. These critical skills should not be listed separately but rather integrated into your professional narrative. You can include them in your key accomplishments, professional summary, and work experience.
AI and automation will continue to reshape the demand for human soft skills in the workplace. Although soft skills are fundamentally human capabilities, AI is increasingly proving its value by assisting with and enhancing skills such as refining communication, streamlining organisation, facilitating collaboration, and improving attention-to-detail, without fully replacing the human role. It is always important to remember that there are soft skills that machine can’t learn nor replace like critical thinking, ethical judgement, empathy, curiosity, and adaptability/resilience.
Moving forward, you need to better understand the soft skills you possess, the ones you can gain, and demonstrate how they generate a measurable positive impact in your work.
