In today’s competitive job market, there’s more to getting hired than just matching the qualifications.

Whether it’s interpersonal qualities, specific job skills, or personality characteristics, employers look for a blend in the ideal candidate. When you’re immersed in the job search alongside hundreds or even thousands of other candidates, highlighting the right qualities can help you stand out from the crowd.

What Skills Do Employers Look For?

Highlighting your strongest and most marketable skills on a resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile can help create a powerful impression that gets you through the door. While each industry and job requires a different set of skills, certain core qualities are essential to prove yourself as the right fit.

We’ve shared five of the most sought-after skills that employers look for in candidates.

Leadership

One of the many soft skills that employers look for is leadership. Whether you’re managing a team or taking a head role in a collaborative project, leadership involves keeping others on task and accountable. When you demonstrate great leadership, you’re also accepting responsibility for outcomes, volunteering to take on assignments, and being prepared to take charge in challenging situations, and employers love to see that skill in potential employees.

To demonstrate leadership on a resume, you can emphasize skills like dedication, dependability, active listening, integrity, communication, delegation, responsibility, and decisiveness.

Problem-Solving

Problem-solving skills allow you to objectively assess a situation and determine how to move forward. It means seeking solutions despite challenges and setbacks in the workplace.

Employers look for candidates who can take action and brainstorm solutions to some of the problems the company faces. Skills to highlight include communication, decision making, research, creativity, critical thinking, and analytic thinking.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Regardless of the role, teamwork skills are critical. Even in positions that rely heavily on independent work, you’ll still be expected to connect with other roles, teams, and departments.

Cross-functional collaboration means being able to cooperate with colleagues who may each specialize in different areas. Despite having different areas of expertise, the team members need to be able to work toward a common goal and implement new strategies to improve operations.

To show your collaborative skills, you can highlight communication, openness, the ability to give and receive feedback, flexibility, empathy, and responsibility.

Self-Management

In fast-paced work environments, self-management is crucial. Employers want to know that their staff can manage their own time effectively and stay on track, without anyone looking over their shoulder.

Self-management skills allow you to manage your own time, keep track of your progress, and maximize your productivity. In addition to contributing to the company’s growth, you should focus on your own professional growth day by day.

There are some skills to feature on your resume include time management, organization, motivation, goal setting, multitasking, strategic thinking, and prioritization, that will show great self-management.

Initiative

Employers look for candidates who will take initiative in the workplace instead of waiting for their boss to direct them. This means being proactive about opportunities and finding new ways to move the company toward its goals.

Demonstrating this kind of inner drive can prove that you’ll add a lot of value to the company. Skills to highlight include initiative, self-motivation, organization, persistence, and diligence.

What Employers Want To See From You

If you ask recruiters what they look for in an applicant, you’ll hear a lot of similar answers: efficiency, dedication, honesty, leadership, and motivation. These qualities can prove that you’re the right fit, but there’s more to the ideal candidate than technical or soft skills. There are certain traits employers look for that might not be as visible.

These elements of the hiring process are often overlooked, but they can help you stand out among equally qualified or even more experienced candidates.

Thinking and Problem-Solving on the Job

It’s not just about the skills you possess on your resume. It’s also about how you’re going to use those skills and apply them to your work.

Employers value critical reasoning, problem-solving, and solution-oriented thinking because these elements are key to almost any role. You want to demonstrate your ability to assess a situation, analyze the information, recognize what needs to be done, and take action to implement efficient and creative solutions.

Positioning yourself as a creative, practical, and innovative thinker takes more than just the right keywords on your resume. You need to prove that you have faced challenges in the past and come up with a successful solution. Highlight these experiences on your resume and cover letter, and have a few examples prepared for your interview.

Cultural Fit vs. Skills-Based Fit: What’s the Difference?

In the world of recruiting, hiring managers debate between two qualities: cultural fit and skills-based fit.

A cultural fit refers to your ability to fit seamlessly with your team members. You want to have the right cultural alignment, get along well with coworkers, collaborate with different teams, and inspire others in the workplace.

While culture can mean a lot in a workplace environment, skills are just as important. If you bring the right skills, you can hit the ground running on new tasks and projects. You might not require as big of an up-front investment of time and resources.

Finding the Right Balance

While the cultural vs. skills-based fit continues to be hotly debated, you don’t need to choose between the two. You can strike a balance between fitting into workplace culture and bringing the right skills to the role.

While the required skill set might be laid out in the job description, it’s harder to seek out a good cultural fit. Before applying, take a moment to research the kind of work environment at the company you’re applying to. Use resources like Glassdoor, Fishbowl, and other career sites to get a sense of what the company might be like behind closed doors.

How Capstone Resumes Can Help

The best skills and qualities to put on a resume will depend on the industry, job type, and career level. Before you apply for a job, take a moment to assess the skills that the employer might consider the most valuable.

Anticipating what an employer might look for can allow you to fine-tune your resume to highlight the personal strengths that align with the company’s goals. Identifying these connections between the company’s needs and your strengths will help you make a solid impression.

If you’re looking to stand out with your resume, contact us to schedule a personal resume consultation. Our experts will work with you to highlight your strengths and showcase the value you can bring to the table.

You have years of experience and knowledge to bring to a company. You’re a proven leader and you have what it takes to succeed in an executive role. Now you just have to convince a hiring manager of that.

The executive candidate pool is highly competitive, and standing out amongst that level of professional expertise and skill can seem daunting. But, it doesn’t have to be an impossible task.

Last year we discussed what to include in your executive resume. Now, we’d like to discuss how to ensure you stand out amongst the other highly qualified executives who are applying for the same position as you.

First, here’s a quick refresher on the things you should include in your executive resume:

• Executive Summary – This is where you convey who you are and include information relevant to the specific job you are applying for. The executive summary gives you an opportunity to capture the hiring manager’s attention.
• Professional Experience – Relevant career experiences are a way to show the hiring manager how your unique experiences can benefit the company and what you will contribute.
• Career Highlights – Career highlights should focus on what you have accomplished rather than simply what your job responsibilities were.

How To Get Your Executive Resume Noticed

Include Your Title

You’d be surprised how many executives don’t define their professional title. A title clearly defines your current role and the position you’re looking for. Without a title, recruiters who are quickly scanning your resume won’t have a clear and immediate idea of what role you’re applying for. It’s also important to make sure the title is descriptive and compelling.

Define Your Value

You’ve most likely heard the term “value proposition.” It doesn’t just apply to products or services, it can also come in handy when you are trying to market yourself to a hiring manager. Defining your value is a huge part of your executive resume. Ask yourself, what is it that you specifically can offer your future employer to benefit the company? What experiences, skills, and achievements do you have that make you the right fit?

Be as specific as you can about your experiences and achievements and be sure you’re using examples and context to paint a full picture of who you are as an employee.

Know What You Want

As you work on your resume, ask yourself what exactly it is you’re looking for. What type of company do you want to work for? Do you want to manage a large team? Are you looking to have a narrowed focus or do you prefer a broad range of responsibilities?

It’s important to know the type of specific position you are looking for and the type of company you want to work for so that your resume can be tailored to that. Think about the title you want to hold and industry you want to work in and then make sure every part of your resume speaks to that target audience. When thinking about your career history, target each of those experiences and accomplishments to the specific role you are applying for.

Get Specific

When it comes to executive resumes, it’s important to be as specific as possible. Especially when it comes to your achievements. Be sure to measure your success and the value you added to the company by using quantifiable data. Instead of simply saying “improved production” or “cut costs” say how much you improved production by or how much you cut costs with exact figures. This will prove your value and give clear data that is quick and easy to understand.

Prioritize

It’s important to make sure all of the critical details of your professional history are on the first page of your resume. Hiring managers are busy and see hundreds of resumes a week. If they can’t quickly find out that you have an MBA and were part of a billion dollar project, they most likely won’t ever see it.

A simple way to make sure you aren’t burying the important information is to make a list of your top achievements, skills, degrees, etc. Once you do this, compare them to your resume. Are all of them listed And more importantly, are all of them listed towards the top of your resume? Or at least on the first page? If the answer is no, it’s important to rework the document to ensure the most relevant and impressive information takes priority.

Still not sure how to go about crafting your executive resume? Check out our blog to learn what sells an executive resume. Or, contact Capstone Resume Services today to schedule a personal resume consultation with one of our Certified Professional Resume Writers!

If you’re an executive or are looking to make the jump up to executive level, it’s important to ensure your resume speaks of your successes and achievements that align you with these positions.

Your executive resume should tell who you are and what you’ve accomplished. Recruiters have hundreds of resumes pass across their desks a week, and it’s important to make sure yours is specific to you. Your resume should tell your story and leave a recruiter with a better idea of who you are, how you approach and resolve organizational level issues and challenges as well as how your leadership can benefit their company.

There are certain things that recruiters, board members, and top-level executives look for while reviewing resumes, and we can help you stand out from the crowd by ensuring you cover all of the necessary bases.

Executive Summary

A strong executive summary is essential when creating an effective executive resume. The executive summary is how you capture your future employer’s attention and convey who you are. Be sure to include information that is relevant to the specific job for which you are applying.

Using the job description to draw specific details is a good place to start, as it shows that you’ve taken the time to customize your resume for this specific position. If you know this company is looking for someone with strong negotiation skills and experience, be sure to include that in your executive summary to showcase you are qualified for the job. These could include past successful negotiations with high profile businesses or clients as well as the general value of the negotiation. This gives an immediate visual statement to the reader. You’ll be able to showcase all of your skills later on in your resume, but the executive summary is where you want to highlight those that are most likely to capture attention and show that you are someone to be considered for a high-level position.

Professional Experience

In your executive summary, show the hiring manager how your unique experiences can help them with their specific needs.

Include relevant career experience to demonstrate how you will draw on your past experiences in your new position. Be sure to target your experiences to the capabilities, leadership over diverse groups and skills needed for the job.

Your executive resume should be consistent, with a clear and strong message throughout. It is important to add context to help the reader understand what you did and why it had such an impact. When talking about your experiences, be sure to include all relevant details to help the recruiter fully understand your background and skills.

Career Highlights

When writing your career highlights, focus on achievements rather than job responsibilities. Achievements show what you did for your company and how you can make a difference moving forward. Showing what you have accomplished is much more effective than simply covering the responsibilities you had in your previous jobs.

Be sure to include action words and leave out weak verbs that don’t add anything to your resume. When possible, quantify achievements using $, % or #’s. It’s important to be specific and show hiring managers the value you can add to their company.

When writing your executive resume, design is also important. Make sure your resume is clean and organized, with attention to detail and a focus on the most relevant experience.

Now you should be ready to write an impressive executive resume. If you’re still unsure or need some assistance, contact Capstone Resume Services today to schedule a one-on-one resume consultation. Our experienced team will work with you to understand your specific career goals and learn about your experiences to help create a targeted executive resume that is tailored to your specific job search.