How to list your personal strengths on a resume?

While not as important as skills, a well-written strengths section can take your resume to the next level.

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Written by Kick
Updated over a week ago

The strengths section is completely optional. After all, your strengths and personality traits should be obvious just from looking at your work history and hard skills. 

If don’t have enough space to include one more resume section, you can easily skip this one.

Yet, you might still want to include a strengths section to fight off applicant tracking systems, since it can be filled with as many relevant keywords as possible.

Here's how to write it:

  • Start with the job advertisement. Carefully review it and make a list of core skills, knowledge and experiences. You’ll end up with a list of keywords with which you’ll want to populate your resume. See where the list you created overlaps with your own strengths and capabilities. List them on your resume.

  • Go beyond what’s expected. Now try to think of strengths you have but aren’t listed on the job advertisement that will make you a top candidate. The section should still be 75% about strengths from the job advertisement, but with 1 in 4 strengths you can be a bit more aspirational.

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