Technical Skills for a Resume: What Counts and How to List Them

On a resume, technical skills are the specific, teachable abilities you need to perform the work itself. O*NET defines its technical skills category as "skills used to design, set up, operate, and fix machines and systems at work", covering items such as installation, operation and control, programming, quality control analysis, repairing and troubleshooting.

Resume writers use the term more broadly, to mean any hard skill a person can be trained and tested on. Cal State Dominguez Hills' career center gives examples that show the range: proficiency in Adobe Suite, coding, cooking if you are a chef, and CPR certification. If you can name it, learn it in a course or on the job, and someone could check it, it belongs in this group.

The first table below shows the technologies U.S. employers named most often in 2025 job postings, from O*NET's Hot Technologies data. The second lists technical skills by field.

Nearly. "Hard skills" is the wider term: it also covers abilities like a foreign language, bookkeeping methods or typing speed. Clark College Career Services lists speaking a foreign language, typing speed, computer programming and operating machinery as hard skills. "Technical skills" usually means tools, systems, equipment and procedures.

On a resume the distinction rarely matters, because both go in the same section and both are what recruiter keyword searches look for. The line that does matter is between hard and soft skills: hard skills can be listed and believed, while soft skills such as communication need an example in your bullets.

O*NET's Hot Technologies list counts the technologies named in employer job postings. For 2025 it drew on Lightcast data covering 46,885,153 unique U.S. postings. Office software leads by a wide margin, followed by programming languages, data tools, cloud platforms and enterprise systems such as Salesforce and SAP.

Read the table as a signal, not a shopping list. Epic Systems (311,250 postings) matters only in healthcare, and Autodesk AutoCAD (265,898) mainly in design, construction and engineering, yet in those fields they can decide whether a recruiter's search finds your resume at all. Use the list to check that you have not left off a common tool you already know.

Retail jobs use more technology than many applicants give themselves credit for. The BLS notes that retail sales workers operate "a cash register or point-of-sale system" and that training usually covers that system. It also lists math skills as an important quality, because retail workers calculate price totals, discounts and change owed.

O*NET's profile for retail salespersons lists point of sale software, inventory management systems, customer relationship management tools such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, and Microsoft Excel among the technology used. On your resume, name the actual systems and the procedures you handled:

• POS systems by name (Square, NCR, Toast, Shopify POS, Oracle Xstore) and transactions such as returns, exchanges, voids and gift cards
• Cash handling: opening and closing counts, drawer reconciliation, bank deposits
• Inventory: handheld RF scanners, cycle counts, receiving and truck unloading, markdowns
• Merchandising: planogram resets, signage changes, visual displays
• Online order fulfillment: buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) and ship-from-store
• Loss prevention procedures and age verification for restricted sales
• Excel or Google Sheets for sales logs, schedules or stock reports

IT resumes are judged mostly on technical skills, so group them tightly and keep them current. A help desk or support resume usually covers operating systems, ticketing, identity and device management, networking basics, scripting and certifications. CompTIA A+, which CompTIA calls the industry standard to start an IT career, requires two exams: Core 1 (hardware and networking) and Core 2 (operating systems and security).

For engineers and administrators, add cloud platforms, infrastructure as code, monitoring and the languages you write in production. Show versions only when they matter to the employer (Windows Server 2022, Python 3), and drop retired technology unless the job is maintaining it.

• Operating systems: Windows 11, macOS, Linux (Ubuntu, RHEL)
• Ticketing and service management: ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, Zendesk
• Identity and devices: Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, Intune, Jamf
• Networking: TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VLANs, VPN, Wi-Fi troubleshooting
• Cloud and infrastructure: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes
• Scripting: PowerShell, Bash, Python

Use a section titled "Technical Skills" or "Skills", with two to five labeled rows of comma-separated items. Pick labels that fit your field: Languages, Frameworks, Cloud and Tools for software; Clinical, Equipment and Systems for healthcare; Equipment, Software and Licenses for the trades.

Write each item the way the posting does. If the posting says "Microsoft Power BI", do not shorten it to "PBI". For terms people search both ways, include the full name and the acronym once, such as "computer-aided design (CAD)". Keep graphics out: icons, logos and skill bars may not survive text extraction by an applicant tracking system.

If levels help, use words: advanced for skills you use daily and could teach, proficient for regular independent use, familiar for tools you have used but would need to refresh. Never list a tool you could not answer interview questions about.

Yes. A technical skills section directly under your summary, above experience, is standard for software, IT, engineering and data roles, and it helps career changers and new graduates whose job titles do not yet show those skills. A combination (hybrid) resume is built around this order.

Experienced candidates in non-technical fields usually do better with experience first and a short skills section lower down, because their titles and results already carry the story. Whichever order you choose, keep the top block to a few lines so your experience still starts on the first half of the page.

Four skills sections for different jobs, plus a weak version. All details are fictional.

A listed skill becomes believable when a bullet shows it at work. The people and numbers are illustrations.

• Skills to Put on a Resume: Examples and How to List Them
• Computer Skills for a Resume: What to List and How to Show Your Level
• IT Support Resume Example and Writing Guide
• Retail Resume Example and Writing Guide
• Software engineer resume
• How to List Certifications and Licenses on a Resume

We opened every page below on that date. Pay, rules and requirements change, so check the source before you rely on a detail.

1. O*NET OnLine (U.S. Department of Labor): Hot Technologies (top technologies in 2025 U.S. job postings, with unique posting counts (Lightcast data))
2. O*NET OnLine (U.S. Department of Labor): Browse by Transferable Skills (definition of the technical skills category and its skills)
3. O*NET OnLine (U.S. Department of Labor): Summary Report for 41-2031.00, Retail Salespersons (technology used by retail salespersons: POS, inventory, CRM, Excel)
4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Retail Sales Workers, Occupational Outlook Handbook (cash register and POS operation, math skills as an important quality)
5. Cal State Dominguez Hills Career Center: Skill Development (technical skills definition and examples, listed in the skills section)
6. Clark College Career Services: Resume Guidelines: Hard Skills, Soft Skills and the Difference Between the Two (hard skill examples: foreign language, typing speed, programming, operating machinery)
7. CompTIA: CompTIA A+ (A+ requires the Core 1 and Core 2 exams)