How to write the skills section

The skills section is the easiest part of a CV to write badly, because listing things feels like progress. A long list is not evidence. It is a claim, and every item in it is a question you have invited.

Eight to twelve, not thirty

List the skills you would be happy to be interviewed on. If you would flinch at "tell me about a time you used this", it does not belong. Thirty items at implied equal depth tells a reader nothing except that you were not willing to choose.

Be specific enough to be checkable

• Vague: "Communication". Everyone writes it; nobody believes it.
• Specific: "Stakeholder reporting to board level".
• Vague: "Microsoft Office".
• Specific: "Excel — pivot tables, Power Query, financial modelling".

Group them when there are a lot

Technical roles often genuinely need a longer list. Group it: languages, frameworks, infrastructure, tools. A grouped list of eighteen reads faster than an ungrouped list of ten.

Skill rating bars

Four dots out of five means nothing to a reader, because they have no idea what your five looks like. They are also invisible to a parser. Use them if the design needs the texture, but do not rely on them to communicate anything.

Matching the advert

Where the advert names something that is genuinely true of you, use their word for it. If they say "stakeholder management" and you wrote "worked with clients", change it. What you should not do is paste their requirements list into your skills section — a recruiter reading their own advert back knows exactly what happened.