Organizational Skills to Include on Your Resume (Examples)
In today’s highly-competitive job market, employers and hiring managers are often looking for more than just the basic skills needed to do a job. Skills like communication, planning, and detail orientation are vital for keeping pace with rapidly-evolving industries. Organizational skills are one of the most sought-after employment skills, since they are critical to effective planning, time management, and prioritization efforts. In this post, we’ll examine some of the most important organizational skills, and provide examples to help you include them in your resume.
Why Do Organizational Skills Matter?
Organizational skills are essential for any company’s long-term success. Without them, businesses can lose both time and money, and find it difficult to operate in a smooth manner. Unfortunately, no leader can keep a company organized on his or her own. Employees must have those skills as well, to maximize the company’s potential for success.
(We wrote a good post here on skills to add on a resume)
Organized team members can better manage their schedules, properly prioritizing tasks. They are able to recognize when an assignment needs to be dealt with immediately, and when other tasks need to be given precedence. Your strong organizational skills help to ensure that you know how to manage your time. They enable you to make the right kinds of plans and execute them in the most efficient manner possible. In short, they make you a more effective employee in every way that matters.
How Can You Identify Your Organizational Skills?
Before you can properly include key organizational skills on your resume, you need to be able to identify your unique skill set. And that means recognizing them for what they are. So, what are some of the organizational skills that employers look for?
Excellent organizational skills can include any skills that make you a more efficient and focused employee. For example:
The ability to plan effectively
Proper time management skills
The ability to delegate assignments
Maintaining an orderly work environment
Knowing how to coordinate and collaborate within a team
The ability to manage a meeting
Being adept at following instructions
Problem-identification and resolution
Goal-setting
The ability to meet deadlines
Multitasking
Tips for Including Organizational Skills in Your Resume
It’s one thing to identify your organizational skills. The real key to creating an effective resume is to know how to include them within your resume. The most important thing here is to understand that you can’t just claim to have these skills. You need to be able to demonstrate them with real-world examples of how you’ve used them for previous employers. Here are some key tips that can help you organize these listings and develop the right kind of narrative:
Focus on how your organizational skills benefited past employers
Include those physical organization skills within those prior job descriptions
Use powerful action verbs to illustrate your examples
Always remember to show, rather than tell
Never assume that your organizational skills don’t matter to the position
Review the job posting and identify organizational skill keywords that you can insert in your examples
Those resume keywords will be critical for getting past the Applicant Tracking System
Think about what the employer is likely to need from you (e.g., planning skills, project management skills, etc.), and make those skills the centerpiece of your presentation
Whenever possible, quantify your achievements. That can demonstrate the real value that your skills can offer
Examples of Organizational Skills in a Resume
To better help you develop your resume, we’ve included some examples of how you can list organizational skills in your resume. You can modify them to meet your unique needs. Just remember to rely on our key tips to ensure that your skill descriptions are as powerful and attractive as possible.
While at ABC Corp, I led the effort to enhance our organizational efficiency as part of a broader initiative to enhance productivity. I coordinated the team that reordered company communications, redesigned shift-schedule management and customer service protocols, and established new goal-setting and benchmark processes. Our efforts were credited for a 32% increase in overall productivity over two quarters, and a 32% reduction in customer attrition.
Organizational skills are one of those skill sets that can help you to achieve at just about any job you seek. Employers know that as well, so it is vitally important for you to convey those skills in your resume. When you do, you will find that your resume is more compelling than ever – and that will increase your odds of landing job interviews.
WRITTEN BY
ZipJob Team
The ZipJob team is made up of professional writers and career experts located across the USA and Canada with backgrounds in HR, recruiting, career coaching, job placement, and professional writing.