Are you a manager who wants to take their career to the next level? If you’ve been too focused on building a strong team, it’s likely time to take a step back, concentrate on yourself, and evaluate your resume. To do it properly, you should showcase a combination of professional accomplishments and management skills.
Think of your resume as your personal brand, which needs to speak volumes about your competence. You want it to show that you’re a capable leader, an adept communicator, a stellar organizer, and so much more.
So, if you’re wondering which management skills to include in your resume to stay competent in the current job market, this article has got you covered!
Key Takeaways
Management skills allow individuals to effectively plan, organize, lead, and control teams and projects.
By showcasing valuable management skills on your resume, you can stand out from the competition.
When adding these abilities to your resume, you want to include only the relevant ones and prove them with appropriate achievements.
You can improve your management skills by learning from others, seeking feedback, fostering strong relationships, setting goals, leading by example, and more.
What Are Management Skills?
The four fundamental functions of management are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. So, management skills represent a set of abilities that allow you to effectively perform those functions.
They are critical for individuals in managerial positions, as they help them enhance teams’ performances, boost overall productivity, achieve organizational successes, and more. For all those reasons, management represents one of the ten most in-demand skills employers are looking for in resumes.
Individuals with strong management skills are needed for many reasons, including the following ones:
They have the ability to effectively manage resources, including time, finances, and people. That allows them to get the most out of their assets.
Management skills help people guide and motivate others, foster a better, more productive, and positive work environment, encourage innovation, creativity, continuous improvement, and more.
Competent managers should possess strong decision-making skills. That allows them to quickly and efficiently come up with optimal solutions, ensuring both short-term and long-term success.
Why Are Management Skills Important For Your Resume?
The complexity and value of management skills in business make it all the more important to showcase them on your resume. These abilities are essential for most roles that involve leading or supervising teams or individuals, as well as various projects.
When hiring managers look at resumes, they often spend most of the time examining work history and skills. That's why you want to ensure you’ve highlighted them optimally to demonstrate your ability to guide, handle, and oversee teams and projects.
One of the main reasons to make an effort to properly add these abilities to your resume is to set yourself apart from the competition. In addition to crafting a comprehensive professional history section, the next best thing that can speak volumes about your expertise is your skills section.
In summary, management skills for a resume help you demonstrate your leadership and organizational abilities, showcase your vast experience in the field, and subsequently increase your chances of landing the managerial role you’re after.
How to Add Management Skills to Your Resume?
The trick to properly adding management skills to your resume is two-fold, and it requires you to be relevant and factual.
First off, since there are many different management styles, roles, and positions, each requires different sets of skills. That’s why you want to highlight only the most relevant ones on your resume, giving recruiters exactly what they want to see.
You can accomplish that by thoroughly reading the job description and looking into the company or organization that you’re applying to. That’ll help you find out which skills your potential employers are looking for, allowing you to tailor your skill section (and your whole resume, for that matter) to the specific position you’re after.
The second phase of the process involves demonstrating your skills to make them concrete in the eyes of hiring managers. What you want to do is show impressive accomplishments that came as a result of you using your skill set. That way, you’re not just making unsubstantiated claims that you’re a capable individual; you’re giving legitimate proof.
To do that, try to work in some of your most notable skills throughout your resume. The best places for it are your resume summary or objective as well as your work experience section. Also, make sure to include your managerial abilities when you’re writing the bullet points containing your professional accomplishments.
9 Management Skills To Include in Your Resume
Let’s check out some of the most sought-after management skills, with examples of how to demonstrate them on your resume.
#1. Leadership
As far as management skills for your CV or resume go, leadership is one of the most important ones. It enables managers to inspire and motivate their teams while guiding them toward common goals.
Effective leaders foster trust between team members. They know how to create a positive work culture that results in a better environment, more productive collaboration, and an overall increase in productivity.
On top of all that, leadership skills play a crucial role in making valuable decisions under pressure or in short time spans. Moreover, they also help managers resolve conflicts and crises.
Here’s an example of how you could demonstrate leadership skills on your manager resume:
Led a cross-functional team of 15 members to devise and implement new sales strategies, achieving a 19% increase in sales revenue.
#2. Planning
Planning is a crucial management skill, as it allows individuals to set clear goals. This way, managers can develop actionable strategies and effectively allocate resources to achieve those goals.
Managers with strong planning skills can see the bigger picture and optimize their teams’ performance to maximize productivity and successfully navigate projects.
On top of that, competent planners can anticipate potential risks and challenges that come with business objectives. This allows them to proactively come up with solutions and mitigate any potential damages.
You can highlight your planning skills by mentioning them in relation to specific accomplishments, like in the following example:
Developed a contingency plan in collaboration with stakeholders, mitigating a crisis and saving the company $750,000 in potential damages.
#3. Flexibility
The role of a manager is a dynamic one, and it’s crucial to adapting to sudden changes in circumstances. As today’s business environment constantly shifts and evolves, it’s essential for managers to possess high degrees of flexibility. This enables them to adjust their strategies quickly and efficiently, change priorities, and modify plans on the fly.
All of that often results in time and resource savings. Furthermore, flexible managers can help diminish or completely eliminate any potential damage to the company’s goals, projects, and assets.
Let’s see an example of how you can demonstrate flexibility in your resume:
Successfully managed a team through a major company restructure, maintaining project competition rates while quickly adapting to new roles and responsibilities.
#4. Communication
To effectively manage teams and navigate projects, you need to be able to convey ideas and expectations, as well as give and receive feedback. That’s why clear and concise communication represents one of the fundamental skills of any manager.
As a manager, you need to be able to communicate with everyone, from the members of your team and other coworkers to executives and stakeholders, but also with clients, vendors, and various other parties. Moreover, you should be adept at all five types of communication, from verbal and non-verbal to written and visual, as well as active listening.
On top of all the other benefits, effective communicators can also manage conflicts, make quick and efficient decisions, and negotiate agreements.
Here’s how you can demonstrate communication skills on your resume:
Effectively communicated complex concepts during team members’ training sessions, ensuring thorough understanding and knowledge retention.
#5. Negotiation
The ability to negotiate stems directly from your communication skills and allows you to achieve outcomes that are beneficial to all involved parties while maintaining positive relationships. Effective negotiators strongly rely on their active listening and problem-solving abilities. They can take different needs and opinions into consideration, balancing everyone’s interests.
Negotiation skills help individuals manage and lower risks, reduce costs, and optimize resource spending.
Let’s see how you can highlight these skills on your resume:
Negotiated favorable contract terms with vendors and suppliers, saving the company $150,000 in costs and assets.
#6. Organization
Organization is a vital skill when it comes to managing complex projects and large teams. It includes the ability to organize people, resources, time, and information to achieve set goals. To be adept at organizing, you should be able to plan projects, delegate tasks, and monitor progress.
Let’s see a resume example of a candidate showcasing their organizational skills:
Coordinated cross-functional teams to speed up a product launch and achieve a 25% increase in sales.
#7. Delegation
We mentioned delegation as a crucial organizational skill, but it’s a must-have ability for managers regardless. It enables them to find the best team members for specific tasks and delegate work to them to maximize productivity.
To be good at delegating, you need to be aware of each team member’s strengths and weaknesses, and you should also be able to look at the bigger picture. Smart delegation will likely result in increased collaboration and trust within the team.
Here’s how to show this skill on your resume:
Delegated tasks and responsibilities to a 7-person team, achieving a 31% increase in productivity.
#8. Problem-Solving
Problem-solving skills involve a manager’s ability to spot, examine, and solve difficult problems. This can result in an increase in performance, a reduction in costs, a boost in customer satisfaction, and more.
You can highlight your problem-solving prowess with relevant achievements, like in the following example:
Resolved a complex operational issue to reduce system downtime by 17%.
#9. Conflict Resolution
Conflict resolution skills help managers handle disputes and disagreements. That can happen between everyone, from team members to stakeholders and clients. Managers with effective conflict resolution skills foster a friendly work environment, reduce customer turnover, enhance performance, and more.
Let’s see how you can demonstrate your conflict resolution skills:
Resolved a long-lasting dispute between two team members, improving team morale and boosting efficiency.
How To Improve Your Management Skills
Training your management skills can be a lifelong process, but you’ll only get better with time. Here are some tips to help you start right away:
Learn from others. You can look for mentors and collaborate with competent managers to learn from their actions and experiences.
Work on your professional relationships. Try to develop strong connections with team members and superiors. That will help you maintain better communication and a more positive work environment.
Seek feedback. You can ask your colleagues, superiors, and team members for feedback to help you understand how you can improve.
Set specific goals. By having a measurable target, you’ll be able to evaluate your own performance and the performance of your team.
Lead from the front. Be there for your team and show that you can get the job done. Lead by example and participate in projects beyond merely giving directions and overseeing the process.
Closing Thoughts
As you keep perfecting your resume, don’t forget to pay special attention to your management skills. After all, you’re a multitasking maestro, and optimally showcasing your abilities is yet another skill that you can learn and apply to your resume-building process.
As you’re highlighting your prowess, remember that you’re not here to talk the talk but to prove your competence. That means you should focus more on factual results and accomplishments and less on substantiated claims and clichéd phrases such as “awesome leadership skills.”
By following the guidelines, tips, and tricks discussed in this article, you’ll portray yourself as a jack of all trades and a master of many. Hopefully, it won’t be long before you’ll be having an interview and landing your dream managerial position!
