How to List Interpersonal Skills on a Resume | Best Skills and Examples

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Why employers want to see interpersonal skills on your resume

Interpersonal skills are the social skills necessary to build and maintain relationships. These skills are important in the workplace because employers want to build teams that will work together to achieve company goals and represent the company culture. While it is important to demonstrate the necessary technical or functional skills to perform a job, it is just as important to demonstrate strong interpersonal skills. 

The ability to understand others, interpret their communication, both verbal and nonverbal, empathize with their feelings and respond appropriately are all interpersonal skills. Interpersonal skills are sometimes referred to as employability skills because they can be a measure of your ability to work on a team and as part of an organization. In this article, you can learn about the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace and how you can showcase your own skills by including them on your resume.

How to list interpersonal skills on your resume

Listing interpersonal skills on your resume can show that you work well with others. 

Here are two ways to include interpersonal skills on your resume:

1. First, you can list interpersonal skills on your resume directly within a ‘Skills’ section

If you have a separate section on your resume for listing relevant skills, you can include important interpersonal skills in this section. For clarity, consider grouping technical or functional skills separately from interpersonal skills.

2. Second, you can include interpersonal skills on your resume within descriptions of your experience

You can also include interpersonal skills in your ‘Work/Professional Experience’ section. For example, you may include customer service as an interpersonal skill in a bullet point about how you increased customer satisfaction and retention with your organization. As another example, you may address communication in a bullet point about improving project performance by facilitating communication between different project teams.

Examples of interpersonal skills

Interpersonal skills include a variety of tools that can improve social interactions and relationships. Learning and developing these skills can improve your work relationships and increase job satisfaction. 

Here are some examples of interpersonal skills:

Communication

Communication is the ability to express ideas in ways others can understand. It involves listening to and understanding the ideas of people, and working with them to make sure each individual understands. Communication can include verbal or nonverbal behaviors and either oral or written forms.

Active listening

Active listening is the ability to listen to others with your full attention without being distracted by your own thoughts or ideas. Active listening involves focusing your attention on the other person, withholding judgment, asking questions for clarification and paraphrasing to communicate that you are listening and understanding.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand the emotions of others. It means considering another person’s situation and emotions by thinking about how you may feel in a similar situation.

Positive attitude

A positive attitude is the ability to believe the best of others and in situations. It creates the mindset necessary to interact with difficult people and the ability to overcome tough situations. A positive attitude helps you have patience. It also allows you to identify lessons so you can learn from mistakes and avoid making the same ones in the future.

Solution focus

When you are solution-focused, you focus on how to solve a problem instead of on the problem itself. People often focus on the original problem or what caused it, which can delay finding a solution. When you are solution-oriented, you focus your attention on solving problems instead of dwelling on them.

Flexibility

Flexibility is the ability to quickly accept and adapt to change without creating stress. For example, if a potential employer needs to reschedule an interview due to an unforeseen event, a flexible person accepts the change and adjusts their schedule.

Most jobs require working with other people. Interpersonal skills are necessary for building and maintaining relationships with managers, coworkers and customers in the workplace. Applicants with strong interpersonal skills are effective communicators, team-oriented, highly motivated and accepting of feedback and, therefore, are highly valued even if they are less experienced with technical or functional skills of a job. The ability to work with others is just as important as the ability to perform the work.