7 Skills to Leave Off Your Resume

7 Skills to Leave Off Your Resume7 Skills to Leave Off Your Resume When writing a resume, some folks subscribe to a spaghetti on the wall philosophy - throw everything that youve got on it and see what sticks. But to recruiters and hiring managers, its all about quality, leid quantity. After all, with only about seven seconds to capture their attention , you want to make sure you get to the good stuff right away. Because of this, its probably a good idea to pare down your skills section from time to time.Consider an artists portfolio, for example.Any serious practitioner will tell you that your portfolio is only has strong as its weakest piece. The same can be said of the skills you list on your resume - less is more, says Aurora Meneghello, career coach and founder of Repurpose Your Purpose .Wondering what exactly you should strike from your resume? Start with these seven items.Sure, you took French in high school for a few years, but are you really at a level wh ere you feel comfortable holding everyday conversations with native speakers, or reading in that language? If the answer is no, it doesnt belong on your resume.It doesnt matter that you have basic or intermediate understanding of a language. Unless you have mastery of it, and can actually use it for work, leave it out, suggests Meneghello.In a worst-case scenario, your recruiter or hiring manager could be fluent and try to engage you in conversation - if they call your bluff, you can bet that you wont be invited to move forward in the hiring process .At this point, listing email or Microsoft Word as skills is almost equivalent to listing reading or basic math. Theyre not differentiators - theyre expected.By adding these as a skill, candidates may appear to be trying to add fluff to their resume, i.e., that they are grasping for anything to include because they dont have enough relevant skills to list out, says Peter Riccio, Founding Partner of recruiting firm Atlas Search .One e xception to this would be if youve honed a very specific practice using these programs, such as creating an access database from scratch and importing data from Excel and other databases, says career coach Mary Warriner . Now that is worth mentioning in your skills section.You might have thousands of Twitter followers, tons of Facebook friends and countless Instagram likes, but managing your personal brand and managing a companys professional brand are two completely different things. Working in social media in a professional setting often requires much more than just posting engaging content - it often involves data analysis, experience with paid media and more.You may be awesome at posting pics of your friends and even sharing news about your current company however, if you are not applying for a Social Media Strategist position, you shouldnt mention your Facebook skills, Warriner says. Instead, review the job posting for the required skills and be sure to list the significant skills that you do possess.This ones a little tricky, because recruiters do love to see soft skills on your resume. However, they need to be demonstrated through examples rather than stated flat-out - saying that youre a good communicator, for example, is useless without concrete examples to support it.The single most common mistake job seekers make is to list out soft skills on their resume - for example communication, multitasking, leadership, harte nuss solving, etc. The message that sends to anyone reading the resume is I may not have made clear what my soft skills are, so Im listing them out just to make sure you see them, Riccio says.Instead, demonstrate those soft skills by showing rather than telling.Its so important to make sure that your soft skills are very clearly communicated in the body of the resume. For example, instead of listing multitasking or leadership as a skill, candidates should write led multiple concurrent projects through to completion leading to x% ROI under the relevant position, Riccio advises.Job seekers are often told to pepper in keywords from the job description to their resume. But if you dont have one of the skills listed in the description, you shouldnt include it in your resume just for the sake of mirroring the language. While you might think you can get away with it now, it will eventually come to light.If you are not an excellent oral communicator, dont put that on your resume If the job requires you to stand up in front of a group of people and deliver a message on a daily basis, you will probably fail miserably in that job, Warriner says.But that doesnt mean you need to have every single skill listed in the job description to apply for a job - a good rule of thumb is that you should be an 80 to 90 percent match .The preferred software and technology used in the workplace can change rapidly, but its important to stay on top of it nonetheless. Otherwise, you risk looking like youre unable to keep up in a dyna mic workplace.Companies are looking for sophisticated, flexible professionals who understand technology. By including technology thats outdated in the skills section of your resume, it gives employers the impression that your skill set is stale and that you will have a much steeper learning curve, Riccio says. In a competitive market, employers want to invest people who have demonstrated an ability to learn quickly.So leave off things like coding languages that are no longer widely in use, outdated versions of modern software programs and other irrelevant technology.This may sound obvious, but there truly are people who still list things like expert-level guacamole maker or certified ping-pong champ on their resume.Do not include skills that are irrelevant to the job you are applying for. I know I am amazingly proud that I make the best award-winning cookies, but Im in HR - I do not put that on my resume Warriner says.Sure, there probably are a few recruiters and hiring managers ou t there who will find it funny or charming. But when youre applying to a job, you dont know who will appreciate that and who wont - so its better to err on the side of professionalism .