The Top Management Skills for Your Resume in 2024 (Update)

For job seekers trying to land a position in management, few things are more important than demonstrating that you have the right skills for the job. Unfortunately, many management candidates struggle to convey management skills in a way that entices prospective employers. Since many common management skills for a resume are properly understood as “soft skills” it is important to describe them in a more tangible way.

In this post, we will offer some important tips to help you when you’re including management skills in your resume. We’ll explain where you should place them, note some skills that offer little value for your resume, and then consider the top management skills you should include to help your resume get the attention it deserves.

What are management skills?

Before we begin to examine management skills for a resume, it is important to explain what they are. Management skills are not a singular ability, but an array of competencies that managers utilize to effectively perform their jobs. These skills include a host of interpersonal abilities and technical proficiencies that managers use to coordinate and oversee a group of employees and resources in the pursuit of a defined mission.

For example, consider the ability to effectively communicate. It’s one that almost every employee needs to be effective in today’s workplace. Strong communication skills are especially important for managers, however, since so much of their job requires them to convey information, instructions, and feedback to the members of their team. In addition, managers need to be able to communicate with clients, customers, vendors, and their own superiors if they are to effectively carry out their mission.

Managers also need to be effective listeners and have some degree of empathy for others. They need an array of organizational skills, the ability to create plans and oversee their execution, and a talent for empowering their employees to help them reach their potential. They also need key character traits like integrity, honesty, and dependability.

Why include management skills in your resume?

Any time you’re applying for a management position – or any job for that matter, you need to be sure that your resume properly conveys your abilities to employers. By including your management skills in your resume, you can help illustrate your capabilities and let any hiring manager know that you have the qualifications they’re looking for in a candidate. The key is to know how to include these vital skills in a way that captures the employer’s attention and increases your chances of earning an interview offer.

Including management skills: where to place them

One of the biggest challenges you may face when including management skills in your resume is figuring out where to place them. It is vital to look at your resume from the perspective of a potential employer. Obviously, that employer will want to be able to quickly scan your resume and identify the skills most important to the job at hand. To help simplify that process, effective resumes separate different kinds of information into easily identifiable sections.

For example, the standard approach to presenting information in a resume is to use clearly labeled sections like Professional Experience or Work History and Education. You can use those sections to your advantage by including management and other important skills in a separate section. You can label that skill-focused section in various ways, including:

• Core Skills

• Key Skills

• Skills and Abilities

• Core Competencies

This section can be found before or after a resume’s Work History section, though your exact placement may depend upon the resume format.

In addition to your skills section, management skills for a resume should also be highlighted in your work experience section. We’ll provide some tips on how to do that later in the post.

You should also read 10 Vital Skills to Put on Your Resume to learn more about the skills hiring managers want to see. 

Examples of management skill descriptions that add little value

When including management skills, it’s important to identify the ones that mean something to employers. There are a whole host of essentially meaningless skill descriptions that offer little value and may look like an attempt to pad your resume.

For example, you don’t want to include “skills” like:

• Sound judgment

• Outstanding negotiation skills

• Leadership capabilities

• Employee training

• Networking

• Multitasking

• Efficient

• Dedicated

These are skills that most employees claim they possess. If you want to stand out, you need to provide a list of management skills that better describe your capabilities and the value that you can offer to that employer. In fact, before you add any management skills to your resume, take a moment to consider whether a hiring manager would find it compelling. If not, omit that skill or find a better way to describe it.

Including management skills for a resume: examples

It’s vital to include the most important management skills that employers are looking for. To help, we’ve compiled a list of them to help you properly showcase your capabilities and stand out from the crowd. We’ve also separated these skills into different categories to help you identify the right skills for your job search needs.

Office management skills

Most managers need to possess a variety of office management skills to help them organize and oversee people, resources, and projects. These skills often include both hard and soft abilities that are critical for interacting with other people and ensuring that projects are properly created and implemented. Some examples of these types of management skills for your resume include:

• Excellent organizational skills

• Focused on accuracy and attention to detail

• Extensive conflict resolution experience

• Strong project planning skills

• A balanced approach to project prioritization

Sales management skills

Managers who work in any environment where sales are a major focus need to have specific skills to help them achieve the company’s goals. These skills include transferable abilities like communication, team development, and goal creation. The following sales management skills should be considered by any job seeker who’s seeking that type of managerial role:

• Experienced persuasive writer and speaker

• Well-developed presentation skills

• Solid goal-setting capabilities

• Extensive experience with every aspect of the sales process

• Team building and enhancement skills

Project management skills

The success of any project often depends on the quality of its team leader. All managers need to have skills in project management, which can include abilities like leadership, planning, coordination of employees and assigned duties, and delegating tasks to others. Make sure that your resume includes these types of highly-prized managerial skills:

• Team-leading skills

• Capable of delegating tasks to team members based on acumen

• Strong critical-thinking skills

• Flexible and adaptable approach to project facilitation

• Ability to integrate diverse teams to accomplish projects involving multiple competencies and disciplines

Account management skills

Many managers are also tasked with managing client accounts. It requires an appreciation for the company’s mission and vision and a customer-centric approach to achieving success. Moreover, account management often requires close collaboration with clients, so a wide variety of interpersonal skills will come into play. Below, we’ve highlighted a few of the many account management skills you may want to include on your resume.

• Focused on achieving mutual goals

• Skilled at balancing competitiveness with a cooperative approach

• Well-honed professional approach to customer and personnel interactions

• Committed to promoting the company’s image

• Ability to generate long-term customer and team relationships

Identifying the right management skills for your resume

As you’re including management skills in your resume, you will probably notice that many of the skills we’ve listed apply to a wide variety of management positions. This is because most effective managers share common traits that would be useful in many occupations. You should work to identify all the skills that you possess and incorporate the most relevant ones into your resume.

But how do you know which skills are the most relevant for the position you’re seeking? The good news is that you can identify the right skills for your resume if you’re willing to spend time researching the job and the company. There are some simple ways to get the information you need.

Examine the job description

Begin by examining the job posting and role description. Often, the job posting will include desired qualifications that include specific skills or traits that the company is looking for. You should make a list of these requirements since they will often include keywords that the company will be looking for as it evaluates each resume submission. Those keywords may also be used by any applicant tracking system screening software, so make sure that you include those exact terms in your resume.

 Research the company

You can sometimes learn a lot about a company, its operations, and its culture by researching it online. Visit the firm’s website, social media postings, and even news stories to learn as much as you can. Depending on what you discover, you may be able to deduce the types of skills that the company needs to see in any management candidate.

Conduct an informational interview

If you’ve examined the job posting and looked online and still can’t figure out which skills are likely to be the most relevant, then it might be time to conduct an informational interview. This will require you to either contact someone at the company or reach out to a manager who has the same job you’re seeking. If you choose the latter option, the best place to start is LinkedIn. As the world’s most important professional networking site, its membership is likely to include many professionals who meet your specific needs.

For more information, read How to Network on LinkedIn.

Showing vs telling

It is vital to recognize that these management skills can be difficult to demonstrate in any list of skills. That’s why it is important to illustrate these skills by including examples in your employment history. When you’re describing your past job achievements, you can include references to these skills to draw the connection. Done properly, you can paint a clear picture of your management skills that will help to showcase you as the perfect candidate for the job.

But how do you do that effectively? 

Well, the first thing to do is to understand how to use your Employment History section properly. Many job seekers assume that this section is a place to just list their jobs and duties. If you do that, though, chances are that your resume won’t be much different than any of the hundreds of other resumes that hiring managers are considering for any given job. After all, if your previous jobs were like theirs, your duties were probably also similar.

• How can you separate yourself from that pack? 

• What can you do to show that you’re the best candidate for the job instead of just claiming that distinction? 

It’s simple: illustrate the value that you provided in each role by including several examples of achievements that benefited those employers. Below, we highlight several tips that can help you accomplish that goal.

1.     Use bullet point achievements

Rather than including a block of text that showcases all the results you achieved for each job, break them up into distinct bullet points. That makes it easier for hiring managers to skim through as they’re searching for the qualifications they’re targeting. Try to include at least three of these bullet point achievements for each job.

2.     Include real numbers

Again, focus on the results you achieved rather than the duties or responsibilities. Remember, every employee has responsibilities; employers are more interested in seeing the type of value you can bring to the role. To do this, quantify your achievements by including real numbers that demonstrate value. This value doesn’t even need to be an exact dollar amount, of course. If one of your achievements increased your team’s productivity, mention that. If you developed a system that improved workflow or reduced inefficiency, include that.

3.     Focus on achievements that align with the job you’re seeking

Finally, make sure that you highlight accomplishments that are in alignment with the job you want. There’s little benefit to including achievements that have no relation to your desired position. For example, if you worked for a charity as a fundraiser, chances are that your success in raising $50,000 for a cause won’t excite a hiring manager who’s considering you for a graphic designer role.

How to prove you have these skills

Basically, these achievement bullet points are the best way to show a hiring manager that you possess the management skills on your resume. But how can you prove that you have those skills? 

Ultimately, that will depend on how well you perform in your interview. You’ll need to be able to discuss your achievements, and how you used various management skills to add value to your previous roles. At the resume stage, however, your efforts to prove your skills will rely entirely on the type of examples you highlight.

For example, let’s say that you want to showcase your ability to create strategic plans. Now, you could just include a line that claims you’re a strategic thinker who excels at planning. However, that message would probably be close to what other job candidates are saying. So, how can you detail that skill in a different, more value-added way? One option would be to say something like:

“Developed and implemented a strategic plan to streamline the sales process, resulting in a 26% increase in conversion rates and 30% more sales.”

As you’ll notice, the latter approach offers specific and quantifiable results, demonstrating how your actions created real benefits for your prior employer. A hiring manager who reads a resume filled with those types of quantifiable achievements will have an easy time imagining you providing similar benefits to their company.

EXPERT TIP: Make your bullet points stand out by using the STAR method on your resume.

The right management skills make all the difference in your job search

In a highly competitive job market, there’s no substitute for a truly compelling resume that properly showcases your qualifications to an employer. Because management roles can be complex, highlighting your managerial skills can sometimes be a real challenge. Fortunately, there are ways to figure out which skills to include and the best way to present them to hiring managers.

By following the tips and guidance in this post, you should be able to identify the most relevant management skills for your resume and learn how to include them in a way that shows your value to prospective employers. That should provide you with the clear messaging you need to convince hiring managers that your qualifications and potential value make you the best candidate for their job.

Landing your next managerial role doesn’t have to be a roll of the dice. Take a few moments to get your free resume review from our team of experts to make sure that the management skills on your resume are delivering the right message to potential employers.

Recommended reading:

• Resume Skills: How To Use Skills to Land an Interview

• A Guide to the Best and Worst Management Styles

• Showcasing Management Skills in Your Resume without Management Experience