5 Ways To Highlight Leadership Skills In Your Resume

Use your transferable experiences to highlight your leadership skills on your resume

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With the emergence of AI and its dominance over the workforce, comes the pressing need to upskill, not only in its use, but in soft skills that cannot be replaced by AI. One such soft skill set is leadership. There has never been a better time to develop and showcase one’s leadership skills than now, especially since, according to Zippia’s 2023 leadership research, 83% of employers view this skill set as essential across all organizational levels, whether the employee is in a leadership role or not.

In particular, employers prize versatile leadership competencies such as critical thinking, problem solving, initiative, teamwork, and communication.

So how do you highlight your leadership skills in your resume, especially if you’re relatively new to the field of management? Here are five ways you can showcase your leadership potential and position yourself as a stand-out candidate in your resume:

Identify Transferable Experiences

Reflect over your previous experiences and look for stories to share that demonstrate where you have displayed your leadership skills. Remember, you don’t need to limit yourself to paid work experience alone, neither do you need to worry about having “manager,” “supervisor,” or “head of___”, in your title. You can pull from a range of experiences, from college or university, to volunteering and community outreach projects, to training and mentoring team members or occasionally deputizing for your boss. Even having a strong hand in the operations of the family business, if your family has one, counts as leadership experience. Remember, the value of the experience and your perceived value as a leader lies more in what you achieved and delivered, than a mere job description or title.

Use Leadership Vocabulary

Leaders and managers initiate action and drive transformative change. They are visionaries and can inspire entire teams, stakeholders, and departments at various levels of the organization toward a common goal. Bring your transferable experiences to life through the use of powerful, impactful verbiage that paint a lively picture of who you are as an emerging leader. Steer clear from cliched phrases or buzzwords and start each bullet point in your work experience section with a powerful verb that is commonly associated with leadership skills.

Some verbs you can use include:

Drove
Led
Spearheaded
Directed
Coached
Persuaded
Garnered
Negotiated
Mentored
Headed
Accelerated
Doubled/tripled
Shaped
Optimized

Quantify Your Impact

Show, don’t tell. Which of the following bullet points is more convincing and attractive?

“Managed operations and performance for new commercial product in a failing area of the business,” or “Directed performance of new commercial product and launched operations from scratch in a failing area of the business, that saw customer engagement grow by 200% within six months.”

The first sentence merely alludes to your job description; the last one nails the specific of the value you brought to your work using numbers wherever possible. Potential employers care about tangible results, which demonstrate that you actually made a positive difference in your last/current job—a sign of budding leadership skills. The focus is on the numbers, not your theory about work ethics or a mere list of job responsibilities.

Study Job Description

Thoroughly study the person specification within the job posting, and extract the keywords and key phrases that you feel closely align with your own leadership experiences. You can even use a Venn diagram to make a visual comparison so you see clearly where your strengths are. This will help you to decide if you meet at least 70% of the job requirements or not, before proceeding further. Ensure your resume and application answers speak directly to these requirements.

Craft A Compelling Summary

Your resume’s professional summary, also known as a professional profile, is a paragraph that is strategically placed at the top of the first page of your resume. Since it is the first section the recruiter or hiring manager will lay their eyes on, it is essential to make it as concise and impactful as possible. This is where you should should use some of the keywords and phrases you have found in the job description in the previous step, and also highlight your tangible experiences. Be sure to include quantifiable details such as how many years of experience you have, what size budgets you were accountable for or worked on, team headcounts, percentage of KPIs achieved, etc.

Through following these five steps you will sell yourself effectively to secure opportunities to progress up the ladder within leadership roles. And in the meantime, remember to maximize every opportunity to showcase and polish your leadership skills so you have more stories to pull from in your resume and in interviews.