CV Skills: Choose Relevant Skills and Prove Them

Choose skills for this application

Read the person specification and separate essential requirements from desirable ones. For each requirement, note a task you actually completed, the setting and what you produced. If you have no example, leave the claim out or describe the learning you are doing without implying competence you have not reached.

Hard skills describe specific abilities, such as preparing a spreadsheet or using a particular programming language. Transferable skills describe how you work, such as communicating or organising. Both need context. The National Careers Service suggests drawing on work, education and everyday life when identifying your skills.

Make each skill point to evidence

Use this original fictional example as a pattern. The evidence is what makes the skill understandable; the label alone does not show what you can do.

• Spreadsheet work: matched supplier invoices to purchase orders and recorded differences for the manager.
• Communication: explained library booking rules to visitors and wrote a handover note for colleagues.
• Organisation: kept a project action list, recorded owners and followed up incomplete tasks.

Put the detail where it can be understood

A skills list helps someone find a relevant tool or language. Put the supporting example under the job, placement or project where it happened. This keeps the context and dates visible. Link to public work only when you have permission and it supports the claim.

For a career change, a skills-based CV can group evidence from different settings. Keep a dated work history as well. If recent work already proves the requirement, a chronological CV may be easier to follow. Use the work-experience examples to turn a skill into a specific contribution.

Describe your level without rating bars

Write what you can do independently and what still needs supervision. A course completion is evidence of study, not automatically evidence of using the skill at work. Give a qualification its exact name; do not turn attendance into certification.

Replace a bar marked “advanced” with a practical description, such as “use pivot tables to summarise monthly transactions”. For a language, describe a real task you can handle or give an achieved qualification. Do not invent a proficiency label.

Check every claim against your CV

Read your skills list beside the experience and education sections. Remove duplicates and unsupported adjectives. If a tool is named in the vacancy, use its correct name when it describes your experience; do not add it simply to produce a wording match.

The CV checker finds visible omissions and placeholders. It cannot assess your competence. The editor’s private notes let you pair a requirement with your evidence before adding it to the CV.