Writing a Resume with Core Competencies

A good job seeker would spare no effort to keep his recruiter reading his resume a little more than six seconds. He, just like you, would treat the core competencies section as crucial as the professional summary and career objective in his/her resume. 

Additionally, adding effective resume core competencies would help your resume pass the ATS scans and other resume examining bots. Next are the best ways to incorporate core qualifications in your resume!

What are the Core Competencies of a Resume?

Employee’s key competencies highlight your hard/technical skills, which may catch the reader’s regard for a chance for you to be seen as an ideal applicant for the position. This section can include your traits, certifications, job-related skills, and relevant formal knowledge. 

Core Competencies Examples

Why You Should Have a Core Qualifications Section

A proficient job candidate treats his resume as a sales pitch. He takes odds, reads the job offer cautiously, and puts himself in the best light. For doing so, weigh your accomplishments, skills gained over time and mention the best suited in your application. This exercise for the core qualification section has two significant motives.

Getting the Hiring Manager’s Attention

Make life easy for your application reader! Try your best to minimize his hustle! If a hiring manager devotes 6-8 seconds towards the resume of potential candidates, be a star and try hard to make each of his second worthwhile. Write the core competencies section at the resume’s top to facilitate the hiring managers to get your overview at a glance.

However, putting this section at the resume’s top could also be unideal if not written well. You wouldn’t want him to waste your application while easing his hassle by including the key competency section at the reader’s eye level, because the skills thus included were not either relevant or worth the job post. 

Spare time researching about the desired position. Pick what competencies to embody in your resume by treating this job application individually. Approach your hiring manager’s attention with an eye-catching, neat section layout.  

Passing ATS Scans

You must have a reasonable discernment regarding the Automated Tracking System, if you plan on submitting a resume and if you wish it to reach a recruiter’s desk! Organizations are smart today. They employ ATS systems to scan candidate’s applications nowadays. The system is fed with the position’s ideal skills and relevant keywords. 25-30% of resumes win a chance to pass these scans and achieve manual reader’s sight.

To avoid your application’s fall-out, read the job post thoroughly and research the skills most relevant to the position. Adjusting some of these skills in the resume core qualifications section is a platinum opportunity when you can’t find room to adjust such keywords in the experience section of your resume!  

Consider an example of a teaching position — key competencies for this post are definitely teamwork, student handling, lesson design, effective communication, patience, etc. Some of these can be excluded while others may be added as per the job description.  

How to Beat the Bots

Now that you are mindful of how ATS trackers work, you can beat the bot in myriad manners! Capitalize the competency section’s opportunity to include relevant keywords in the resume. Some bots decide your skillset strength by the frequency those skills were contained in your resume.  

Furthermore, if a skill/competency is written on its known without any experience mentioned, bots assign a 6-month experience to that skill. The former point is a piece of strong advice to include relevant keywords in the key competency section even if accommodated in your resume’s qualification portion! Be proactive while staying far from keyword stuffing.  

A smart and bot-friendly resume core qualification section is precise, relevant, and professional. As accommodating as these self-serving catchphrases might be to outline your center capabilities, ensure to include them only if they portray you precisely. As the craft of self-promotion is fundamental, it’s likewise imperative.

Now that recruiters are quite aware that you being an applicant are well-aware of ATS systems, they test/ question candidates on basis of skills you claimed in your resume! So, if you stated SQL as your resume core qualification, being familiar with this skill’s charisma in today’s digital business, you better be ready to answer some data questions to support your assertion!

Where to Place Core Competencies on a Resume

There are contrasting perspectives on where to add core competencies to a resume. Some layouts advise that this section can be:

• Below Education Summary
• Below the Power Statement
• Above/ Besides Education Summary
• Below Professional Summary

This section must be formatted in a neat and reading-friendly layout. Including it at the resume’s top will assist the hiring manager see you as a go-getter for the position even before reading your professional and education summary. 

Instead of showcasing yourself as an all-rounder with 25 key competencies, shorten the list to 8-10 skills. This approach is not only human-friendly but also ensures that the skills you included are strongest and that you’ve earned them naturally over the years. Make your professional skills list and don’t forget to add only those skills which are particularly related to your desired industry.  

Make this list your brilliant combo of hard skills — the skills your personality inculcated through either previous professional experiences or by training over time. Proofread, skim, and add this section in a clean layout in your resume.

Source: https://dzone.com/articles/resume-with-core-competencies

Department of Information Technologies: https://www.ibu.edu.ba/department-of-information-technologies/