Here’s How to Showcase Leadership Skills on Your Resume
Author: Lori Wade
Leadership skills are vital to career growth as a business owner and as a professional. Every job you have gives you some kind of experience with leadership, either as a leader or as someone being led. Numerous companies rely on these so-called soft skills yet it is difficult to know who has the skills needed to succeed in a particular position. to extract data from resumes.
Unfortunately, many applicants do not know how to showcase their strong leadership skills on their resumes. If you’re considering making a change and need to update your file, this post is for you. These tips can help you update your resume to properly communicate the skills you have and make it through the door for that coveted interview!
Here are some of the ways to make your skills stand out in your resume:
How To Showcase Leadership Skills On Your Resume
Customize your resume to fit the job posting
Do not rush to fill a position if you have not customized your resume. Most job listings add the required leadership criteria they want to hire. The secret is creating a resume that would handle the leadership skills required by your prospective employers.
You can include your skills under a particular job, or conversationally on your cover letter.
Provide examples
Applicants will always tell you that they have the skills a company wants. However, only a few applicants go the extra mile to prove their leadership abilities. Therefore, you must show your skills with specific leadership examples to support your claim. You can also improve your knowledge with MCQ questions in different areas and get ahead of other applicants.
Use verbs that relate to your soft skills
When writing your resume, you should use verbs that talk about your skills. A major mistake is that many people avoid using verbs on their resumes. However, verbs have the power to make your resume believable.
You can implement verbs such as “campaigned, mobilized, mentored, focused, engaged, motivated, advocated, ignited, spearheaded, championed, empowered, influenced, and focused”.
Today, numerous companies rely on soft skills to extract data from resumes. As a result, businesses spend less time scanning through resumes for suitable candidates with software such as resume extraction.
Quantify Measurable Results
Good leaders go overboard with the results. They not only lead and motivate others, but they can also quantify their results. You should highlight your achievements over the years as a leader or employee. Give your potential employer hard numbers and statistics and do not make use of vague narrations or descriptions.
Influencing Peoples’ Skills
Leaders understand the strength of their team members. They push their team to become better people and increase employee engagement. If you have strong interpersonal skills, and have successfully implemented these kinds of changes, then show them off! Mention them as a matter of fact accomplishment associated with that particular job position.
Tips to showcasing leadership abilities on your resume
Commitment
Whether you were a leader in your previous position or not, you should list projects that you started and completed. In addition, you should ensure that you highlight your commitment that shows steady employment strength.
Communication skills
A good leader displays the ever important communication skills. Therefore, communication has its place in your resume. You should prove that you are a team player who listens to others. Use language that highlights this ability clearly.
Competence
You become valuable to your team or company with your knowledge as a leader. Understanding the tools and processes of a business or project is essential to help you delegate work. You need to highlight your competence through delegation and leadership. Bring up experiences that you handled successfully, especially how you conquered obstacles. You do not have to make a mountain out of a mole. Be sincere and believable in highlighting this feature on your resume.
Creativity
You should be creative in your resume. However, avoid the temptation of using elaborate images or fonts on your resume. Instead, you can highlight your creativity through explanations of problem solving, or how you uniquely led your team to overcome hurdles.
Honesty
Honesty is a hallmark in any business. While you talk about the good things about you and your worth as a leader, you should prove that you are trustworthy. What this means is that you have to be accurate in your details. You must positively present everything without lying. Before you submit your resume, read through and carefully analyze what you wrote on your resume.
Organization
A resume proving leadership strength must be organized. You should present your resume in a logical and easy-to-read manner. The way you write your resume talks more about your strength. No one wants to employ someone with a poorly written resume.
Teamwork
Be sure to describe team work-related projects as collaborative. Leaders are not only about guiding others but also being able to work with anyone. Successful group projects, team building activities collaborative efforts, and the like, should be documented clearly so that whoever is interviewing you can see it!
Vision
As a leader, you should show that you can see the potential and scope of every project. You explain this with the language used in your work description and executive summary. Use intentional and meaningful language to talk about your vision.
Conclusion
In this article, we have listed some tips that would help you showcase your leadership traits on a resume. Many applicants lose on juicy job offers because they couldn’t use their resumes effectively. Do you have leadership qualities that can stand your resume out?
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Author’s BIO: Lori Wade is a journalist and content writer from Louisville. Lori creates news and informative articles about HR, recruiting, and employee productivity. You can find her on LinkedIn.
