We’ve come up with a list of people skills that will look great on your cover letter and resume.
#1. Communication Skills
Good communication skill is a very essential requirement for any resume. It helps you convey your information accurately, give efficient presentations and pinpoint relevant information when necessary.
When you consider how essential good communication skills are, it is hardly a surprise that they’re considered the number one must have soft skill for employees by Inc.com. A good communication skill will help you explain complex ideas and pass across serious points with nothing more than body language.
#2. Problem Solving
Problem solving or conflict resolution involves the ability to act as a referee when settling a dispute between two or more people. This skill is particularly useful for people working as customer service representatives who are required to handle aggrieved customers.
This skill requires a lot of calmness. The ability to maintain a cool head is an essential aspect of conflict resolution. This is because you’ll need a cool head to see both sides of an argument and come up with an acceptable compromise for all the parties concerned.
#3. Taking the Lead
With the right leadership skills, you can motivate and inspire any team. These skills will help you make the right decisions, and also help you enforce those decisions. You might not need leadership skills to secure a job, but they’re essential for leadership or supervisory roles at a company.
The company’s long term needs are some of the factors that employers put into consideration when hiring. The implication of this is that they might be looking for prospective employees with leadership skills during interviews, so they can have candidates that are ready for leadership positions in the not too distant future.
#4. Role Model
You may not be ready for a leadership position at the point of employment, but you’ll eventually get to a point where you’ll be required to take on leadership roles as you progress within the organization. It could be something as simple as taking charge of the new trainees where you’re expected to act as a leader.
There is a link between this skill and communication skills, since you’ll be expected to instruct the new hires on how to go about their job.
#5. Negotiation Tactics
The ability to negotiate and come out on top is a very essential people skill. It could involve anything from negotiating a contract, to seeking a deadline for a project or asking for a pay raise, either way, you need to possess top negotiations skills to succeed at any of the above. No two clients are the same, which means you must learn how to understand their different requirements, while maintaining the interest of your company.
With the continuous growth in the service sector, more employees are becoming customer-facing; therefore negotiation skill is gradually becoming a prerequisite for employees.
#6. Manager Experience
Effective management skill is a must for employees in position of authority. You will need this skill to be able to appraise the strength of your team, award bonuses when necessary, and give the necessary support when required.
A good management skill is a great asset to possess regardless of your position on the career ladder. For instance you might be asked to supervise new interns when there is no one else available.
Boosting your People Skills
Participating in social situations and putting yourself out there are some of the ways through which you can sharpen your people skills. Your people skill automatically improves when you interact with new people.
What are the requirements of a resume with good people skills?
When looking at samples of great resumes, one thing always stands out; it is the fact that the people skills of the writer are well-highlighted in the resume. They lay particular emphasis on the writer’s skills and use quantifiable data to explain their work experience.
We’ve highlighted some of the examples of great people skills resumes on our site. You’ll notice that a large chunk of these resumes are from industries that require constant interaction, like nursing and customer service.
A great people skill may not be necessary for every job, but it will definitely come in handy if you’re working in any of those fields.
Conclusion
Improve your people skills.
By improving your people skills, you automatically boost your ability to work well with other people, which increases your appeal as an applicant and makes you more well-rounded.
A great resume is one that contains a list of the applicant’s people skills including how the applicant was able to utilize them effectively in their past roles, but the best cover letters are those that take it a step further by providing information on how the applicant was able to use his people skills to help his employees attain major success.
What are you waiting for? You can download a sample of our people skill resume template and customize it to suit your own specifications (don’t forget to mention communication skills if it happens to one of your strong areas).
Our templates for professional resumes and cover letters is exactly what you need to showcase your people skills to your prospective employers. And it is always better for your cover letter and resume to be written with the same template. This will definitely grab the attention of the hiring manager.
Lastly, you can always use our templates as cover letter builders and resume builders to create an efficient application document within the shortest time possible if time is not on your side.
