Nowadays, more and more companies are adopting team-based structures and emphasizing cross-functional collaboration. For this reason, collaboration skills are becoming increasingly important for employees at all levels.
Highlighting your ability to effectively cooperate with others is one of the best ways to stand out among the candidates. Whether you’re applying for a high-level management position or looking to get an entry-level role, your resume will greatly benefit from properly demonstrated collaboration skills.
In this article, we’ll discuss the key collaboration skills, what makes them so important and sought-after by recruiters, and how you should showcase them in your resume.
Key Takeaways
Collaboration skills are some of the most popular abilities that recruiters and employers look for on resumes.
They represent a broad skill set that includes communication, active listening, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, etc.
When listing collaboration skills, you should demonstrate them next to relevant achievements in your resume summary, objective, and work experience section.
There are many ways of improving collaboration skills, including actively listening for feedback, communicating clearly, utilizing appropriate software and tools, etc.
Why Are Collaboration Skills Important For Your Resume
As much as 97.5% of employers consider collaboration skills highly important in the workplace. They are essential for any job seeker to include in their resume in almost every industry. Moreover, in today’s fast-paced work environment, these abilities are critical to staying competitive and achieving business goals.
By demonstrating collaboration skills on your resume, you show that you can effectively contribute to a team dynamic and play a vital role in achieving common goals. Among other things, these skills showcase your ability to communicate, listen, and work well with others.
Another reason why employers value these skills is that they lead to increased productivity, innovation, and better decision-making. Individuals with strong collaboration skills are generally adaptable and show flexibility when working in different environments.
Being able to work with people from different backgrounds and with varied skill sets is becoming all the more important as organizations strive to become global and diversified.
In essence, the benefits of having strong collaboration skills are multifaceted, meaning they indicate more than just your proficiency in a particular skill. They represent a collection of intertwined traits and competencies that portray you as a capable candidate, thus increasing your chances of landing your dream job.
23+ Collaboration Skills To Include in Your Resume
We just concluded that "collaboration skills" represents an umbrella term for an entire assortment of abilities. Let’s see some of the most popular examples of collaboration skills recruiters prefer to see on resumes with some examples!
#1. Communication
Communication is a foundational collaboration skill as it facilitates the sharing of information, ideas, and feedback among team members. It enables you to understand other people’s perspectives, respond constructively, and work together towards achieving common goals.
Clear workplace communication fosters understanding, trust, and cooperation between team members, which leads to increased productivity and better outcomes.
Communication Skills Example
Here’s an example of how you could demonstrate your communication skills on your resume:
Collaborated with cross-functional teams to develop and implement a new product, utilizing strong communication skills to ensure alignment on project goals and timelines.
#2. Active Listening
Active listening is a subskill in the communication group that represents the ability to focus on and fully understand what someone is saying. By actively listening, you can interpret not only verbal but non-verbal communication as well, such as body language.
In return, all of that allows you to respond appropriately, which often leads to improved collaboration and better outcomes.
Active Listening Example
Here’s one way to highlight your active listening skills:
Utilized active listening skills to successfully mediate a conflict between two team members, resulting in improved collaboration and boosted productivity.
#3. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence enables you to identify and manage your emotions. That, in turn, reflects on your ability to understand and empathize with the emotions of others. As a resume skill, emotional intelligence demonstrates that you can work well with others, communicate effectively, and handle challenging and stressful situations.
Emotional Intelligence Example
You could show emotional intelligence on your resume by using a bullet point under a relevant work accomplishment, like in the following example:
Demonstrated emotional intelligence by effectively navigating a high-pressure project and completing it on time by utilizing active listening and conflict resolution skills.
#4. Conflict Resolution
We just touched upon conflict resolution, which is another crucial collaboration skill. It involves the ability to identify conflicts and address them in a productive and collaborative manner. By showcasing this skill on your resume, you also demonstrate that you can communicate effectively, negotiate, and solve problems.
Conflict Resolution Example
Here’s how you could demonstrate your conflict resolution skills on your resume:
Successfully resolved a conflict within a team of 5 members regarding the delegation of tasks by facilitating an open and respectful discussion, acknowledging each member’s needs and concerns, and finding a mutually agreeable solution.
#5. Time Management
Time management revolves around your ability to prioritize tasks effectively, handle your schedule optimally, and get the most out of your time to maximize productivity and meet deadlines.
By demonstrating this skill on your resume, you portray yourself as a reliable and organized person. Time management belongs to collaboration skills, as its effects translate to the whole team’s efficiency.
Time Management Example
Here’s an example of how you could demonstrate time management skills on your resume:
Utilized time management and prioritization to supervise multiple projects and consistently meet or exceed deadlines.
#6. Flexibility
Flexibility is a collaboration skill that allows you to adapt and adjust to changing circumstances or expectations. These situations generally occur more often when you’re part of a larger team in a dynamic environment.
Flexibility Example
Candidates who successfully highlight this skill on their resumes also show versatility and open-mindedness. Here’s an example:
Quickly adapted to changing project requirements, adjusting work plans, and collaborating with team members to successfully deliver high-quality results.
#7. Problem-Solving
Problem-solving represents your ability to identify and analyze complex problems or challenges before finding optimal solutions. As a resume skill, it showcases that you can think critically, creatively, and strategically to overcome obstacles and achieve the organization’s goals.
Problem-Solving Example
Individuals with sharp problem-solving skills can help teams deal with any hardships and quickly bring everything back on track, positively impacting everyone’s efficiency. Here’s how to demonstrate this collaboration skill on your resume:
Identified and addressed any inefficiencies using problem-solving skills to develop and implement a new inventory management system, reducing waste by 23% and increasing the team’s productivity by 17%.
#8. Empathy
Empathy describes your ability to understand and share the feelings and perspectives of others, which makes it a collaboration skill by definition. Empathic individuals are compassionate communicators who can build strong workplace relationships, which positively influences their capacity to work efficiently.
Empathy Example
Here’s how you could showcase empathy as a skill on your resume:
Established strong customer relationships by actively listening to their concerns, showing empathy, and coming up with personalized solutions, resulting in a 97% customer satisfaction rate.
#9. Leadership
Leadership is a skill that involves inspiring, guiding, and motivating a team toward achieving a common goal. It can be a vital collaboration skill for students and CEOs alike. By highlighting it on your resume, you also demonstrate your ability to convey information, delegate responsibilities, boost everyone’s productivity, and make important and difficult decisions.
Leadership Example
Let’s take a look at an example:
Led a cross-functional team in the successful launch of a new product, providing clear direction, goals, and expectations while fostering a collaborative and positive work environment, resulting in a 25% revenue increase.
Other Collaboration Skills
The list of collaboration skills goes far beyond what we previously examined. Here are many other abilities that you could demonstrate on your resume:
Decision-making
Delegation
Diplomacy
Facilitation
Trust building
Networking
Cultural competence
Coaching and mentoring
Strategic planning
Innovation
Accountability
Risk management
Feedback
Active participation
Empowerment
How to Add Collaboration Skills to Your Resume
Since there are so many different abilities that fall into the collaboration skills category, you want to focus on those that recruiters are looking for the most. To find out which ones to include, you could research the company and the job ad.
Let’s examine one brief job ad to learn how we could extract which collaboration skills to demonstrate on a resume:
Good Example
Job Title: Marketing Coordinator
We are seeking a marketing coordinator with excellent communication and collaboration skills as well as experience in project management.
Responsibilities:
Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including sales, product, and creative.
Lead the development of marketing collateral, such as brochures, flyers, and presentations.
Track and report on marketing campaign performance, regularly communicating updates to stakeholders.
Requirements:
Bachelor’s degree in marketing, communications, or a related field.
Strong organizational and time management skills, with the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
Ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams.
Once you have a list ready, you can do more than just put it in the skills section of your resume. Just like in the examples that you’ve read in the previous part of this article, you should demonstrate your collaboration skills through concrete examples of related workplace achievements.
You can mention some of these abilities in the work experience section of your resume as well as in your resume summary or objective.
To make them truly stand out and be memorable, you can include prominent action verbs and power words as keywords, such as “collaborative,” “cooperative,” or “team player.” Furthermore, adding numbers and percentages whenever applicable helps quantify your accomplishments, lending more credibility to your collaboration skills.
How to Improve Your Collaboration Skills
The importance of collaboration skills in the modern workplace makes it all the more valuable to improve them whenever possible. Here are some tips that can help you start improving yours right away:
Be a good listener because listening is a crucial part of a collaboration. When working with others, make sure to actively listen to their ideas, concerns, and feedback and be open to their perspectives.
In addition to actively listening, you should also practice clear communication. It helps to avoid unnecessary jargon or language that might be overly technical for the listener.
When working on a project with others, aim to set clear goals and expectations from the beginning. That way, you can make sure everyone is on the same page regarding roles, responsibilities, and timelines.
You should foster a positive team environment since it can further boost collaboration. Encourage teamwork, communication, and feedback whenever possible, and recognize and celebrate successes.
Work on and cultivate your emotional intelligence. In addition to being empathic and working on relationships with colleagues, you should strive to be self-aware and better understand your own emotions to be able to do the same with others.
Learn and make use of various digital tools such as video conferencing software, project management software, screen-sharing tools, and others.
Participating in fun and engaging team-building activities strengthens the bond between coworkers, promotes teamwork and collaboration, and positively impacts everyone’s workplace productivity.
Closing Thoughts
This sums up everything you need to know about collaboration skills in relation to resume writing. You now know what makes these abilities important and why they are so sought-after by recruiters.
Moreover, we’ve given you specific explanations of the most prominent skills from this group, examples of how you could demonstrate them, as well as means of improving your competence.
Whether you’re trying to demonstrate collaboration skills for a teacher or a senior manager, you’re now armed with the required knowledge and ability to make your resume truly stand out to potential employers
