How to List Time Management Skills on a Resume | Best Skills and Examples

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Why employers want to see time management skills on your resume

Time management skills are methods to prioritize goals and efficiently organize everything to achieve those goals. If you practice good time management, you will achieve more than if you approach your work without a plan. Effectively managing your time can help you shorten the time spent on routine work, move up your deadlines and perhaps take on additional projects. Identifying and listing your time management skills on a resume will show a potential employer your efficiency and organizational skills. This article helps you recognize and understand the various time management skills you already have and how to effectively list those skills on your resume.

How to identify your own time management skills

Here are some steps you can take to identify and list your time management skills on a resume: 

1. First, reflect on your own habits for punctuality and meeting deadlines

Reflect on your daily habits, both personal and professional. Ask yourself if you have set and achieved goals within a reasonable period. Reflect on past goals and see whether you met your own expectations for meeting them in a timely fashion. Think about the methods you have used to meet personal or professional deadlines.

2. Next, ask a friend for feedback about your timeliness

Ask a friend to give you their honest opinion of your time management skills. Setting times and dates to meet with friends can be just as important as following up with your time commitments at work. Friends whom you travel with, for example, can attest to how well you manage time on a trip to ensure itinerary plans are followed. 

3. Then, think about your performance at your current job or previous roles

Once you have reflected and consulted with friends, broaden your range of time management by considering examples for work or volunteer situations. Ask your former employers, supervisors and trusted coworkers whether they have input. Look through former performance reviews or annual reviews you may have received from your supervisor.

4. Last, choose time management skills to list on your resume

Consider all of the valuable feedback you have collected and the accomplishments you have gained. You can use this information to help you decide what your strengths are. Use these attributes to determine and define your own time management skills.

Best time management skills to list on your resume

Here are time management skills you may already be practicing on a regular basis that you can integrate into your resume:

  • Goal setting. Whether your goal is a promotion, project leadership or a chair position on a charity board, knowing what your goals are will help you direct the proper time and attention toward the things that contribute to your happiness and success. 
  • Task prioritizing. Identifying and ranking your tasks by importance or urgency will help you achieve your most important tasks. If you are not already in the habit of doing so, begin making lists. Seeing what needs to be done on paper or smartphone helps to prioritize.
  • Task breakdown. Simply identifying a task won’t help you efficiently do the job. Good time managers break one task into smaller portions and allocate time accordingly. For example, the task of painting a bedroom can be broken down into these steps: measure the room (approximately 15 minutes); move furniture out (30-45 minutes); cover floors (15 minutes); buy paint and equipment (1.5 hours); tape room (1 hour); paint (3 hours); remove tape (15 minutes); replace furniture (15-30 minutes); clean up (30-45 minutes). 
  • Deadline setting. In order to achieve their goal, good time managers give themselves a reasonable end date to complete the task. It’s important the deadline be well-thought-out to prevent frustration. For example, if your goal is to save enough money for an Alaskan cruise and you work part-time while you go to school, two months may not be a sufficient timeframe.
  • Delegating and outsourcing. Good time managers save their own time for what they do best and allocate tasks not in their area of expertise to others. For example, if you are a personal chef, you can shop for ingredients and prepare food yourself, but perhaps hire someone to clean your kitchen and an accountant to manage your bookkeeping so you can spend your valuable downtime learning more about your craft. 
  • Focusing. Multitasking might help us do more than one thing at a time, but it is not always best for us. People who show strong time management skills often focus intensely on one priority for a set amount of time, guaranteeing they complete a large portion of the task they were attempting to do.
  • Reducing distractions. In order to focus, skilled time managers are able to politely decline invitations to conversations, meetings and social events that will distract from their ability to complete a task. By restricting access to their cell phones, social media and email for set periods, they can give themselves uninterrupted pockets of time in which to target their goals. 
  • Tidying up. Keeping distractions to a minimum includes your physical environment. Not seeing a desk covered in memos, notes and other cries for attention can help you focus only on the task at hand. Removing clutter and organizing papers so you don’t waste time looking for them are valuable aspects of time management.

Examples of time management skills on a resume

Once you have identified your time management skills, incorporate specifics and statistics to show your success rather than merely listing the skills.

Here here are some examples to help you list time management skills on your resume:

  • Example for an executive assistant: 
    • Organized an office-wide clutter-reduction campaign that resulted in a reduction of the firm’s storage expenses by 35 percent.
  • Example for a human resources manager: 
    • Recruited staff members to test-drive time-tracking apps and then offered vacation incentives to those who agreed to use the software. As a result, I reduced the time the agency spent on a campaign by an average of two working days.
  • Example for an assisted living facility coordinator: 
    • Created a questionnaire to understand residents’ dietary preferences and then outsourced the cooking to a catering firm, reducing food expenses by 23 percent and increasing positive feedback from residents and their families.
  • Example for a content manager: 
    • Introduced an incentive-based deadline scheme that awarded bonuses as a percentage of the article fee in return for writers submitting articles early. Resulted in additional days for editing and layout, significantly reduced error and boosted morale in the newsroom.
  • Example for an office manager: 
    • Created a program of mandatory ‘quiet times’ when employees were to not call or visit each other’s desks for three thirty-minute periods a day. During the three months, we piloted the program, and six of the ongoing seven projects were completed on or before deadline.