Effective employees leverage versatile communication skills to accomplish their work. These communication skills facilitate the exchange of information verbally, nonverbally or through writing to achieve a desired outcome. Furthermore, professionals with experience navigating complex communication that encourages diverse viewpoints, beliefs and backgrounds is a highly desired qualification for every industry. These skills are especially critical when remote colleagues or customers do not have body language and other in-person visual cues to interpret your message.
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Professionals who list these modern communication skills on their resumes stand out over other applicants not just because their skills look strong but because of the relevance of what is being included. Hiring companies are looking for impact, which comes as a direct result of effective communication. How do you state communication skills in your resume? Candidates who show how they use their written and verbal skills, in general and specifically, to persuade and collaborate, give employers a much better gauge of qualifications.
Here are 10 must have communication skills to show on your resume.
— Inclusivity.
— Empathetic Listening.
— Remote Collaboration.
— Analytical Expression.
— Written Communication.
— Verbal Communication.
— Group Communications.
— Training.
— Persuasion.
— Problem-Solving.
[READ: Should You Tell Your Co-Workers Your Salary?]
Inclusivity
Highlight how you support and collaborate with others that are different from you. For example, how have you led productive meetings for customers across time zones or unified business needs with others who have vastly different priorities, roles and even languages? Demonstrate your methods for including others to improve overall outcomes.
Empathetic Listening
There is the old adage about people having two ears and one mouth for a reason — listening is often more important than talking for business success. In your resume, reflect examples of how you understand and incorporate perspectives and viewpoints that differ from your own.
Remote Collaboration
Remote interaction and meetings can be trickier to get desired results, so capturing your comfort and success with virtual relationships is a must. Be sure to include how you have used communication tools such as Teams or Slack to support your value in virtual or remote work settings. It is also critical to show your comfort with video and conference call meetings and tools like Zoom, Teams, GoToMeeting and Google Hangouts.
Analytical Expression
Your resume can be an opportunity to show how you use data insights to influence or guide teams and decisions. Give examples of how you communicated your analysis — in reports, meetings, using graphics or presentation. Show key questions you analyzed, how you shared your knowledge and what benefits your company or clients gained to help you prove this skill and stand out.
[Read: Work Productivity Tips for Remote Jobs.]
Written Communication
Your resume is the first sample of your writing — so make sure it is well written, well edited, concise and coherent. In addition to demonstrating excellent resume writing, look for opportunities to describe any written communication in your experience and the impact of your work. Show both what you did and why it is of value.
The ways writing can impact results and daily operations are numerous. Capture how your written communication adds the most value to help a potential employer see how you could complement their team.
Verbal Communication
While the interview process will truly test your verbal communication, there are many options to weave verbal communication strengths into your resume. In your resume, include everyday verbal communication needed to update, guide and influence co-workers, managers, direct reports and customers.
Group Communications
These examples include your contributions in small groups and productivity/status check meetings as well as in formal presentations. List if your experience is primarily in person or if you frequently communicate via phone, video or more formally hosted meetings. Be sure to include if (and how frequently) you present your insights and analysis verbally. In addition to highlighting the types of interactions, also show the positive impacts from your contribution.
Training
Do you train or play a role in the development of others. Whether formally (as a trainer) or informally (as a mentor), communicating in a way that helps others to grow, develop and/or perform better at work is of interest to potential employers.
Persuasion
According to a recent LinkedIn survey of most desired skills, persuasion is one of the five most in-demand soft skills that requires both written and verbal communication.
Your resume is an ideal place to show how your skills of persuasion make you an asset. For example, were you able to change a previously accepted practice or institute a new process that had a positive impact? Did you play a role in improving work culture or recruiting talented new employees? Did you convince management to invest in a new productivity tool even though it was not approved initially in the budget?
[READ: 15 Resume Mistakes to Avoid.]
Problem Solving
Use your resume to show how you approach problem solving and how you this approach enables you to solve business problems. Include how you assess issues, collaborate with other teams, build consensus and ultimately get to a result.
At its best, communication leads to successfully conveying or sharing ideas and information. Given the complexity of business communication, employers respond well to resumes that help them to determine if a job seeker’s skills will be ideal for their business needs. The great news is that many job seekers have highly developed communication qualifications; what they lack are specific examples of those strengths in action. To increase the effectiveness of your resume, expand on your versatile communication toolkit. The quality of your communication skills will be assessed in your writing, your results and during your interview.
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10 Communication Skills for Your Resume originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 03/18/22: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
