How To Write A Skills-Based Resume (With Examples)

It can be challenging for recent graduates and professionals making a career change to fill out a full resume, as they lack experience relevant to their new industry.

In these cases, a skills-based resume is the perfect tool to communicate to potential employers the abilities and value you’re able to provide, despite your lack of direct experience.

In this article, we’ll discuss exactly what a skills-based resume is and when to use one. We’ll also provide you with a sample template and example to help you create your own.

What Is a Skills-Based Resume?

Skills-based resumes, also called functional resumes, are a type of resume that focuses on a candidate’s general skills rather than their work history.

They differ from traditional resumes in two significant ways:

• Skills section. Traditional resumes include a professional experience section that lists several of the applicant’s prior positions relevant to the target job.

  Under each position, a candidate typically lists a few bullet points detailing their achievements and duties at that company.

  This professional experience section is basically scraped in a skills-based resume.

  Instead of listing the previous jobs they’ve held, an applicant would include major skills they possess that could provide value for the employer.

  These could be specific, technical skills such as the candidate’s ability to use a specific software suite or weld machinery.

  They could also be more general skills, such as one’s ability to lead teams or solve problems analytically. They could even be soft skills, such as your charisma or organizational prowess.

  In either case, each stated skill should list several bullet points that cite achievements and experiences to prove the applicant’s aptitude with a given skill.

  These achievements could be from an unrelated job, college class, or any other notable moment from the past.

• Qualifications summary. The qualifications summary is a short, bulleted list that contains three to five of the most impressive accomplishments from your career and/or education.

  To win a position over candidates with more extensive job experience, you’re going to need to personalize and imprint yourself in the hiring manager’s mind.

  While it’s important to pick achievements that are relevant for the job, it’s more crucial that they’re eye-catching and clue readers into what makes you uniquely you.

  A relevant but generic achievement might be impressive, but it won’t distinguish you from more experienced professionals.

When to Use a Skills-Based Resume

Without relevant job experience that makes you competitive in your target field, there’s little sense in forcing a weak, half-empty traditional resume.

A skills-based resume may better suit your needs if any of the following applies to you:

• Recent graduate. Traditional resumes are great if you already have multiple internships or previous jobs under your belt.

  Otherwise, consider a skills-based resume. It’ll allow you to display the traits employers are looking for by citing non-work experience, such as research or clubs.

• Job gaps. Job gaps longer than a few months are a serious red flag in the eyes of many recruiters.

  If you have an impressive job history and a reasonable explanation for your resume’s gap period to give during an interview, this shouldn’t be an issue.

  If you lack an explanation and have been out of the workforce for an exceptionally long time, such as six months to over a year, then a skills-based resume may be a better fit.

• Multiple similar jobs. Even if you’ve worked several similar jobs back-to-back, it’s rare that you won’t have additional worthwhile achievements and experiences to cite on your resume.

  However, if you don’t, then a skills-based resume might be an excellent tool to better communicate to recruiters what value you can bring to the position.

• Career switch. You should consider a skills-based resume if almost none of your current work experience is relevant for your target field.

  A former electrician switching to a field technician position should submit a traditional resume, as the two roles share many similarities.

  However, a former janitor applying to an engineering position may want to consider a skills-based resume.

• History of job-hopping. This greatly depends on the norms within your industry.

  Retail and foodservice jobs typically have high turnover rates, so a history of job-hopping shouldn’t work against you.

  However, hiring managers may automatically dismiss a software engineer candidate that quit multiple jobs after only a few months.

  Many contract workers who work temp jobs as a career find greater success with a skills-based resume than a traditional one.

How to Write a Skills-Based Resume

To write a skills-based resume, follow these steps:

1. Start with a header. Just like any resume, your skills-based resume needs a header. This should include your name in slightly larger print, as well as your email address, address (city and state is fine), and phone number.

2. Open with your qualifications summary. This is where you want to put your top credentials and/or accomplishments. The hiring manager is probably a bit wary of your light experience section, so your qualifications summary has to put them at ease about your background.

   Three to five bullet points is enough for your qualifications summary — you want to leave something to talk about in the following sections, after all.

3. Include a relevant skills section. While a chronological resume would typically end with a short list of skills with little or no description, a skills-based resume makes them the star of the show.

   Provide three to five skills in larger or bolded text. Beneath each skill, give three or four bullet points describing your background with that skill. Each skill you choose should align directly with a major skill listed in the job description.

4. Give a short work history section. While skills are the star of your show, you still have to consider ATS (applicant tracking systems). Most big companies use these software systems to parse through resumes before they ever reach a human reader.

   If you want to get past the bots, you’ll need to include at least some information about your former employment. Plus, a human reader will also be suspicious about a resume that includes no details about where you worked and what your actual job title was.

   You don’t have to provide bullet points for each job entry, because you’ve already covered the major topics within your skills section.

5. Include an education section. If you went to college, it’s certainly worth including your degree and the name of the school at the bottom of your resume. Your GPA and relevant coursework might also come in handy if you’re fresh out of school.

   High school education is also worth listing if you don’t have any college experience and are new to the job market.

6. End with any additional sections. If you want to include a section on volunteer experience, awards and honors, languages, published works, continuing education courses, or any other additional sections, you can wrap up your resume with one or two, maximum.

Hybrid Resume

There’s no rule that your resume must either be fully skills-based or traditional in format. You should adapt your resume to suit your particular situation and job history.

For example, consider a new graduate or career-switching professional who’s only worked one previous job in the industry. They could combine a short professional experience section on their resume with a longer-than-average skills-based section to compensate for their limited job history.

Of you could open with a resume summary statement instead of a qualifications summary, but then proceed with the rest of the resume in the skills-based format.

Skills-Based Resume Template

For a skills-based resume, some career advisors recommend not adding bulleted items to the previous jobs listed in your professional experience section. This is to save space and emphasize the skills section.

However, this advice only applies if your previous jobs are entirely unrelated to your target job.

Even if your previous roles are only tangentially related, we recommend you mention your duties as long as your resume isn’t already too long.

Maybe your skills section cites impressive achievements you’ve made at school and volunteer jobs, but hiring managers would still like to see how you’ve generated value for an actual company.

Skills-Based Resume Example

Our skills-based resume example will be for a hypothetical retail store manager position that lists the following key duties and skills:

• Meet or exceed store sales.

• Adhere to annual expense budgets.

• Provide leadership and coordination of staff.

Note how each bulleted item in the example qualifications summary addresses one of the above essential requirements.

The skills section is also organized to target the key abilities listed in the job posting.

Without further ado, here is the skills-based resume example:

Skills-Based Resume Writing Tips

Before we provide you with a sample skills-based resume template and example, note the following critical resume-writing guidelines.

These rules should be followed, no matter what type of resume you’re writing:

• Achievements should include numbers. When writing about your former jobs, don’t simply say, “I did X.”

  Quantify the actual value was generated through your achievements by using numbers. “I did X, which saved the company $Y” and “I did X, which improved the process of Y by 23%” are much stronger bullet points.

  If your past jobs didn’t involve quantifiable achievements like that or you didn’t have access to that data, you can also use numbers as a way of providing context. For instance, you can write about how many customers you served on an average day, or how many pounds of cargo you moved.

  Every job involves numbers, and these numbers help the hiring manager better understand the scope of your former role. Even if you don’t know exact stats from past jobs, it’s fine to give estimates — so long as you don’t write any wild exaggerations.

• Informative but concise. It’s recommended that professionals just starting their careers create resumes that are no longer than a page.

  If you’re writing a skills-based resume, then this probably applies to you.

• Tailor your resume. Take note of the key duties and skill requirements given in the job listing so that you can customize your skills-based resume.

  Your competition will likely include candidates with plenty of relevant job experience, so it’s absolutely critical that every skill and achievement you cite directly targets an essential element of the job description.

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

Expert

Don Pippin, MHRM, CPRW, CDCS

Don Pippin is an executive and HR leader for Fortune 50 and 500 companies and startups. In 2008, Don launched area|Talent with a focus on helping clients identify their brand. As a Certified Professional Resume Writer, Certified Digital Career Strategist, and Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Don guides clients through career transitions.