How To Highlight Relevant Soft Skills On A Tailored Resume

46% of employers prefer resumes that highlight soft skills alongside technical skills.

Your most valuable skills might not be the ones you can list. You can’t add "Resilience under pressure" or "Unwavering work ethic" to your skills section next to "Python" and "Salesforce." These crucial qualities—the soft skills that truly determine success in a role—are written in invisible ink on most resumes.

Recruiters are desperately looking for them. They know that while hard skills get you in the door, soft skills like communication, leadership, and problem-solving are what make you a great hire. A recent LinkedIn study found that 92% of talent professionals say soft skills matter as much or more than hard skills.

So how do you make the invisible, visible? You can’t just claim them. Anyone can write "team player" on their resume. You have to prove it. Here’s how to make your soft skills shine through, loud and clear.

Rule 1: The skills section is for hard skills only

First, let's clear up a common mistake. Do not list soft skills like "Good Communicator," "Problem-Solver," or "Teamwork" in your skills section. This is the fastest way to look unoriginal and unconvincing. It’s a classic case of telling, not showing, and recruiters are trained to ignore it.

Your skills section is for tangible, verifiable abilities (software, languages, tools). Your soft skills belong elsewhere.

Rule 2: Weave them into your accomplishments

The most powerful place to showcase your soft skills is within the bullet points of your work experience. This is where you provide the evidence. You don't say you're a problem-solver; you describe a problem you solved.

Here’s how to translate a soft skill from the job description into a compelling bullet point:

• If they want: "Collaboration" or "Teamwork"

  • Don't say: Team player.

  • Do say: Collaborated with a cross-functional team of engineers and designers to launch a new app feature 2 weeks ahead of schedule.

  • If they want: Leadership.

  • Don't say: Leadership skills.

  • Do say: Led a team of 4 junior analysts, providing mentorship that resulted in a 15% improvement in the team's reporting accuracy.

• If they want: "Problem-Solving"

  • Don't say: Excellent problem-solver.

  • Do say: Identified a critical bottleneck in the customer onboarding process and developed a new workflow that reduced client churn by 10%.

By wrapping your soft skills in a real-world achievement (using the STAR method), you make them believable and impactful.

Rule 3: Frame them in your summary

Your professional summary is another prime spot to highlight a key soft skill. After reading the job description, pick the #1 soft skill they seem to value most and frame your summary around it.

• For a management role: Empathetic leader with a passion for building and developing high-performing teams...

• For a client-facing role: Client-obsessed Account Manager dedicated to building trusted partnerships and driving customer success...

It's Hard to brag about yourself

Translating your experiences into these powerful, story-driven bullet points is difficult. It requires self-reflection and a bit of creative writing to showcase your best qualities without sounding arrogant or using generic buzzwords. Many people struggle to articulate their own soft skills effectively.

Your personal storytelling assistant

What if you had a tool that could help you find the right words? A tool that understands what soft skills an employer is looking for and helps you weave them into your career story?

This is a core function of the TailorMyResume iOS app. Our AI doesn't just look for hard skills. It analyzes the job description for the crucial soft skills the company values. It then helps you rephrase your accomplishments to demonstrate these qualities naturally and effectively within your bullet points and summary. It helps you "show," not just "tell."

Stop hoping recruiters will read between the lines. Start writing in bold.

Ready to make your most valuable skills visible? Download TailorMyResume from the App Store and let us help you prove your worth.