Organizational skills help individuals manage their time, resources, and tasks effectively. That makes them invaluable in the modern workplace. Regardless of your line of work, these skills are in high demand and can help you stand out among the competition in the eyes of recruiters and employers.
However, to achieve that, you need to know not only what makes these abilities so valuable but also how to properly present them on your resume.
This article will take you through everything you need to know about organizational skills. It’ll also give you step-by-step instructions on how to best demonstrate them on your resume.
Furthermore, we’ll check out some specific examples that you could use as inspiration, and we’ll also discuss efficient ways of improving your organizational prowess. Let’s dive right in.
Key Takeaways
By demonstrating organizational skills on your resume, you portray yourself as a productive, trustworthy, and dependable candidate who can meet deadlines and work under pressure.
Some of the most sought-after organizational skills include prioritization, planning, delegation, time management, communication, and more.
You should showcase your organizational skills in your resume through concrete examples in your resume summary, objective, work experience, and optional sections.
You can always improve your organizational skills by watching relevant TED talks, reading books, attending courses, utilizing to-do lists, ignoring distractions, organizing your workspace, etc.
What Are Organizational Skills & Why Are They Important?
Organizational skills can be essential for success both in your personal life and in your professional career. This is a broad set of abilities that encompasses everything from planning and scheduling to goal-setting and time management.
Having good organizational skills can help you be more productive, meet deadlines, and even feel less stressed. Moreover, these abilities allow you to use resources efficiently and make good decisions in the workplace.
For all of those and many other reasons, organizational skills are some of the most valuable soft skills at work. Candidates who can demonstrate them are often seen as more dependable and trustworthy. In general, that also makes them better teamworkers and communicators.
By highlighting strong organizational abilities on your resume, you effectively show potential employers that you’re able to stay on top of your workload. That can help you get a head start on the competition, as you convey the message that you are a multi-skilled individual dedicated to meeting goals and achieving success.
The bottom line is that you could easily get a competitive edge in the job market by leveraging your organizational skills. Use them to show off your strengths, and potential employers will be much more likely to notice you.
Top 10 Essential Organizational Skills To Include in Your Resume
Organizational skills represent a wide-ranging skill set, so let’s take a look at some of the most prominent ones.
#1. Prioritization
Prioritization is a fundamental organizational skill, as it allows you to analyze the significance of tasks, goals, and activities and order them accordingly. By adequately allocating your time, resources, and effort to each of the items in question, you’ll be able to focus on what’s important and achieve your objectives more efficiently.
This skill is all the more important for candidates who work in fast-paced environments or on multiple projects simultaneously. Prioritization allows you to understand the importance of each assignment in relation to the others and enables you to make informed decisions on how to optimally spend resources and reach deadlines.
Prioritization Skills Example
Here’s how you could demonstrate prioritization on your resume:
Successfully managed multiple projects simultaneously by prioritizing tasks to complete everything ahead of schedule.
#2. Planning
A process of planning represents creating a roadmap for achieving particular goals. It’s a vital organizational skill that has three elements to it:
Defining what needs to be done
Establishing how it will be done
Determining when it should be done
Effective planning involves a lot of organization, such as thinking about resources, keeping track of deadlines, and predicting possible problems. It's a skill that will help you finish projects on time, within budget, and up to the required standard.
All of that makes the ability to plan valuable in almost every workplace, but especially if you're in careers that involve management, strategizing, and high levels of organization.
Planning Skills Example
Let’s see an example of planning skills demonstrated on a resume:
Boosted the company’s overall productivity by 25% through the implementation of a comprehensive cross-functional planning system.
#3. Delegation
Delegation means assigning tasks and responsibilities to others and giving them authority. The goal is to accomplish specific objectives as efficiently as possible by utilizing various individuals’ skills and advantages.
More than that, to be good at delegation, you also need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. Then, you need to have impeccable communication skills to convey what needs to be done and the ability to oversee progress and assist if needed. All of this makes delegation a must-have skill for managers, for example.
Delegation Skills Examples
Let’s see how you could demonstrate delegation skills on your resume:
Delegated tasks to junior employees, oversaw their progress, and provided assistance to improve their skills and help them take on more responsibility.
#4. Time Management
At its core, time management is an organizational skill, as it represents the process of planning and organizing your time in order to maximize productivity. To be good at time management, you also need to know how to prioritize your tasks and set realistic deadlines.
As you can see, this ability is tightly connected to many others in the same category. Furthermore, by demonstrating it on your resume, you’ll also portray yourself as a disciplined candidate capable of ignoring distractions and focusing on what’s important.
Time Management Skills Examples
Here’s an example:
Conceptualized and implemented a time-tracking system to monitor progress and ensure a 100% delivery rate for multiple concurrent projects.
#5. Self-Management
Self-management revolves around controlling your own behavior and emotions to achieve a professional goal. It’s an organizational skill that consists of setting goals, developing plans on how to reach them, and taking responsibility for your actions.
Self-management skills also show that you are self-aware and self-disciplined and that you can take on hard challenges and deal with stress well. This is important in all aspects of life, but it also makes you more productive, resilient, and adaptable in the workplace.
These skills are also valued by employers since they make people able to work independently, maintain focus, and expertly handle their workloads.
Self-Management Skills Examples
Here’s an example of how to demonstrate self-management on your resume:
Effectively managed emotions and behavior in high-pressure situations, improving relationships with coworkers and supervisors.
#6. Decision-Making
Decision-making is an organizational skill that allows you to make the best choices when you’re presented with two or more alternatives. It involves analyzing information and evaluating different options until the best one is found.
This skill also conveys additional details about you, such as your ability to assess risk, work under pressure, manage your time, and be creative.
All this makes decision-making crucial in leadership roles and those careers that require operating in fast-paced, dynamic environments. Proficiency in these skills leads to an increase in productivity and better overall outcomes, which is why recruiters value them highly.
Decision-Making Skills Examples
Here’s how to demonstrate your decision-making skills on your resume:
Communicated with cross-functional teams to gather information and make decisions based on it, boosting productivity by 25%.
#7. Goal-Setting
Goal-setting is the process of defining specific objectives. One of the most popular principles of goal-setting is the SMART model, which represents a mnemonic acronym for designating specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and timely goals.
This organizational skill is important in a professional setting, as it allows you to stay focused and motivated while working towards an objective. By emphasizing goal-setting on your resume, you also tell recruiters that you’re a self-disciplined and persevering individual who knows how to prioritize and manage their time effectively.
Goal-Setting Skills Examples
Let’s see how you could show your goal-setting skills on your resume:
Facilitated goal-setting workshops which resulted in increased collaboration between cross-functional teams and improved productivity.
#8. Collaboration
Collaboration involves working with others to achieve a common goal. As such, it requires a great deal of organization in order to be able to function optimally with colleagues and team members.
This complex skill has many aspects, including communication, teamwork, and problem-solving. You also need to be able to build trust and be flexible to work with diverse teams and individuals.
Collaboration as a skill is necessary in many modern work environments. It allows people to organize and utilize each other's strengths and expertise to reach objectives faster and more efficiently.
Collaboration Skills Examples
Let’s see an example of how you could demonstrate your collaboration skills on your resume:
Collaborated with cross-functional teams, resulting in improved overall morale and a 30% increase in efficiency.
#9. Communication
Communication is a critical organizational skill that enables the exchange of information between individuals or groups. Effective communication is a must if you want to establish trust between team members, foster effective teamwork, and ensure everyone’s accountability.
Like many other abilities in an organizational group of skills, communication is multifaceted. It involves everything from listening actively and speaking clearly and concisely to being adept at nonverbal communication and adjusting communication styles based on different audiences.
Strong communication skills are important for every member of a professional organization, but even more so for those in leadership and management roles.
Communication Skills Examples
Here’s how you could demonstrate them on your resume:
Utilized active listening, relationship-building skills, and effective communication to improve customer satisfaction ratings by 27%.
#10. Working Under Pressure
The ability to work under pressure allows you to remain calm, focused, and effective in high-pressure situations. It’s a versatile ability that doesn’t just help you manage stress but also prioritize tasks and make informed decisions in a timely manner.
Working Under Pressure Examples
Individuals who can work under pressure can also:
Maintain a positive attitude in stressful situations
Effectively meet deadlines even when conditions are challenging
Avoid burnout through self-management
Keep effective communication going with other team members
All those characteristics are highly sought-after by employers, which is why you should definitely demonstrate the ability to work under pressure on your resume if that’s your strong point. Here’s an example of how you could do that:
Made quick and informed decisions in high-pressure situations that resulted in 21% improved efficiency and a 12% decrease in error rates.
How to Add Organizational Skills to Your Resume
One of the best ways to add organizational skills (or any other resume skills, for that matter) to your resume is through specific examples. In other words, you should focus on distinct achievements and results obtained thanks to them.
To do that, you could showcase them in your work experience section as well as your resume objective, summary, and some optional sections.
Firstly, you’d want to research the job ad to figure out which organizational skills recruiters are looking for specifically. Since it’s a complex skill set, you should be precise and only include the required skills. Here’s an example of one such job ad:
Good Example
Job Title: Office Manager
We are seeking a highly organized and motivated office manager to join our team. The ideal candidate will have a keen eye for detail and a proven track record of successfully managing a fast-paced office environment.
Key responsibilities:
Collaborate with departments to ensure timely project delivery
Communicate with stakeholders and facilitate contact with customers
Plan schedules and manage deadlines to ensure smooth office functioning
Requirements:
Strong organizational and time management skills
Impeccable written and verbal communication skills
Ability to prioritize and make informed decisions in a fast-paced environment
Here are a few expert tips to help make your organizational skills truly pop on your resume:
Expert Tips
You should use specific keywords such as “organized,” “prioritized,” “scheduled,” “coordinated,” and “planned” in your resume. They showcase organizational skills to recruiters and help with the ATS.
Consider using bulleted lists instead of blocks of text when describing relevant achievements. They are much easier to read and can help you draw attention to your key skills.
You can include any relevant education, coursework, or certifications that could add credibility to some of your organizational skills.
11 Other Highly Sought-After Organizational Skills
Here are some more examples of organizational skills recruiters look for:
Attention to detail
Record keeping
Resource allocation
Risk management
Problem-solving
Leadership
Adaptability
Work-life balance
Self-motivation
Conflict resolution
Event planning and coordination
How to Improve Your Organizational Skills
Organizational skills are transferable, which means that you can apply them in some capacity at every job. You can also pick them up and improve them in various different ways. Here are some of the most common and effective ways to do this:
Pro Tips
There are plenty of TED talks that can help you improve your organizational skills. Some deal with procrastination and how to overcome it; others dive into time management or the pros and cons of multitasking.
Similarly to TED talks, you can read books on the topic of organization. Whether you’re looking to improve your organizational skills as a student or a senior executive, there’s plenty to learn from relevant publications.
If you prefer a more hands-on approach and want to fast-track your improvement, you could always join some online or in-person classes.
Practice creating to-do lists. Write down and prioritize your tasks. That will help you remain focused and efficient throughout the day, and the results of your endeavors will quickly show you the importance of organizational skills.
Get rid of distractions. Figure out what makes you lose focus (browsing social media, checking your phone constantly, etc.) and find ways to minimize those activities. For example, you could try turning off your phone or using noise-canceling headphones.
A cluttered workspace can be a major distraction. You might spend more time than necessary looking for items that you need, which could result in a loss of focus, motivation, and productivity. Organize your physical workplace—desk, files, supplies—and it’ll become easier to organize your activities as well.
Consider using technology to your advantage. While many apps and software can be the cause of distraction, there are some exceptions that can help you stay organized and manage your tasks, projects, calendars, and more.
Closing Thoughts
As mentioned previously, organizational skills are paramount in the modern workplace. They can make you more productive regardless of your career, and recruiters usually look for them on resumes. By implementing all the tips and guidelines discussed in this article, you’ll be able to properly demonstrate your organizational skills, meaning you’ll get a head start on the competition.
On top of that, you’ll find plenty of advice on how to improve your abilities to further increase your employability. All the time and effort invested in refining your organizational skills will help your career and life reach new heights!
