Professional skills to be included in the CV

When you have to fill a CV with useful information, it can happen to arrive at a dead end and not know what to add or realize that you have written too much. Certainly among the fundamental things that cannot be missing on a well-written CV, professional skills play an important role. In this guide we discover what are the professional skills to be included on the CV and how to insert them.

What is meant by professional skills?

Professional skills are all those that qualify for a particular job and likewise define a candidate’s personality. They can be of different types, as we will see below, and they all contribute to improving a CV if they are peculiar and well connected to the job position for which you are applying. Among the most important and peculiar professional skills there are certainly linguistic and computer skills, in their respective fields of application.

Professional skills: what are they and how are they classified?

There are three types of professional skills: Transferable skills, adaptive techniques and skills. Let’s see them in detail.

1. Transferable skills: are those skills acquired during the course of one’s job but which can also be transferred to other jobs.

Technical skills: these are skills acquired in a specific working environment and strictly linked to this, because they are the result of specific training for that specific job in that specific company. They can be spent elsewhere, but their scope of use is limited.

1. Adaptive Skills: are the simplest and most common in curricula, and are based on the willingness of candidates to do something.

Examples of different types of skills

Transferable skills concern, for example, IT skills, which can be carried from one job to another, or tax or still the linguistic ones. The most striking example of professional skills are medical / nursing skills that allow you to carry out only that type of profession, in limited areas, and limited to your own training.

Finally, among the adaptive professional skills, we highlight the classic adaptability, ability to work in a team, loyalty and so on: that is, personality traits that help in the job, regardless of the chosen job.

Why include skills on the curriculum vitae?

It is clear today that including skills on the curriculum is essential. These are just some main advantages they can bring:

• They broaden their job attractiveness: specific skills allow you to better present yourself in front of an employer;
• difference in the selection phase: declaring that you have specific skills and strictly linked to the job you are aspiring to put you in an advantageous position compared to another candidate who does not have those skills;
• They allow you to obtain different positions : it is not necessary to apply for important positions to benefit from one’s skills, because in the long term the same skills can become essential for a career.

How to decide which skills are worth mentioning?

The decision about which skills are worth mentioning must take into account two elements: the relevance to the purpose of the job you would like to obtain and the level of knowledge of the same.

As a rule, only computer skills should be indicated that are mastered not perfectly but at least well and that are relevant or that have an added value for the role for which you want to apply.

In evaluating which skills to include and which to omit, you must always keep in mind that once you arrive at this item of the CV, the document must be coherent and logical to read: therefore also skills will have to follow the rules followed for all other sections, putting consistency and relevance at the top.

Professional skills vs personal skills

Personal skills, i.e. those we have called Adaptive, must be inserted in one of a special voice because it is a question of character traits rather than acquired and practical skills. This is because a recruiter wants to have a clear picture of the candidate’s professional situation, leaving the personal part at the end, for an overall final evaluation.

What happens if you do not have relevant professional skills?

It may happen that you are in a situation where you do not have relevant professional skills for the position for which we apply. Not a big deal, unless the ad requires specific skills. If they are not required, just do not enter any information about it: we always remember that it is better to eliminate unnecessary information and make sure that the curriculum vitae is coherent, logical and not excessively long.

Finally, remember that lying about your knowledge (and in general lying about your CV) is harmful on a professional level and can really put you in a position of discomfort if the lie is discovered.

Lying on a skill is dangerous and harmful on a professional level.

In summary

• There are 3 types of competences and each of them has a different importance for work purposes;
• The CV must be coherent and logical, and for this reason it is good to report only the truly characterizing skills;
• When adding skills to a CV, it is necessary to be honest about your level of knowledge;
• While for some positions skills can be avoided, for others they should be specified as one of the most important elements;
• If you do not have relevant skills to report on your CV, it is better not to report any.