What Skills to Highlight in Your Writer Resume

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What Skills to Highlight in Your Writer Resume

The irony befalls hard when a writer has to sit down and write a resume for themselves. 

Given the nature of their job, everyone including the recruiters has high expectations from a writer’s resume.

However, writing a resume can be confusing irrespective of what your job profile may be. That is until you learn about the basics of a resume, or like in this case, a resume for a writing career. 

Currently, almost 75% of the giant companies use the Application Tracking Software (ATS) to streamline their recruitment process. The software scans through the resumes for a particular set of keywords that are common to the job profile and just like that, it filters out the most relevant resumes for the position.

The notable point here is that the skills that you mention in your resume are crucial if you want to rank high in this ATS system and get shortlisted.  

So what are the skills that you must highlight in your writer’s resume? Well, that’s exactly what we will set forth in this blog.

 

Different Types of Skills

 

Generally, there are two types of skills that you can choose to present in your resume. They are – hard skills and soft skills. 

 

Hard skills are the skills that you have acquired through training, certification, or education for that matter. They are job-specific and can be technical in nature. 

 

For instance, the hard skills of professional writers can include:

 

  • Keyword Optimization 
  • SEO Writing
  • Business Storytelling
  • Technical Writing 
  • Copywriting
  • Foreign Language Writing 
  • Proofreading
  • Fact-checking
  • Blog-writing
  • Email Marketing
  • Technical Reporting & Documentation 
  • Content Analysis 
  • Web Writing

 

On the other hand, soft skills are part of your personal trait and behavior that determines your work style. Unlike hard skills, soft skills can be applied to any job profile. 

Soft skills of a writer can include:

 

  • Creative 
  • Adaptive
  • Detail-oriented 
  • Dedicated 
  • Strong Work Ethic
  • Interpersonal Skills
  • Patience

 

Although some recruiters for certain job profiles believe that the soft skills of a candidate are more important than their hard skills, it’s advisable to include more of the hard skills in your writer’s resume because of the nature of a writer’s job profile. 

 

Include Skills as Per the Job Listing  

 

You can get an idea about the type of skills the recruiter prioritizes by reading the job listing and figuring out their requirements. 

 

For example, a recruiter may be looking for a candidate with strong technical writing skills, in which case, focusing on your creative writing and copywriting skills in the key skills section of your resume may be unnecessary.  

 

The idea is to tailor your key skills according to the needs of the specific job description which not only allows your resume to seem like the perfect fit for the position but also enables your resume to rank high in the ATS.

 

Apart from that, you can also do some research of your own and find keywords that are common to a writer’s job profile, and include them in your resume if it stands true to you.

 

Cherry Pick the Skills from Your Professional Experience

 

While writing your resume, consider writing the education background and your professional experience section before you go on to list your key skills. 

 

This way, it will be much easier for you to figure out what needs to be listed in your skills section. Your skills have to be justified by the experiences of your past roles and responsibilities. 

 

For instance, if you have included a bullet point about your experience in optimizing keywords while writing a blog, you can add “keyword optimization” in the key skills section of your writer’s resume. 

 

Similarly, if you have mentioned your experience in proofreading and editing content, you can include “proofreading and editing” in your key skills. 

 

Segregate Your Technical Skills and Key Skills

 

Once you are done including the key skills that you picked up from your professional experience section and the keywords from the job listing, you can make a subsection under the key skills section of your writer’s resume and list your technical skills.  

 

Technical skills are basically your skills in using tools and software commonly utilized by writers to complete their tasks. 

 

Here is a list of technical skills that you can include in your writer resume:

 

  • Hootsuite 
  • SEMrush
  • Google Analytics 
  • Google Adwords
  • WebMasters 
  • Notepad++
  • WordPress 
  • HanSoft 
  • Zoho
  • MS Suite 

 

Key Takeaways 

 

  • The skills section of your writer’s resume is crucial in determining your rank in the ATS system used by recruiters to streamline the hiring process. 
  • Hard skills are the job-specific skills that you have acquired through training, certification, or boot camps. 
  • You must list your hard skills rather than soft skills while listing your key skills in your writer resume 
  • Read the job listing to understand the requirements of the recruiters and highlight the skills in your resume that fits the same purpose 
  • Tailor your key skills according to the needs of the specific job description (technical writer, SEO marketing writer, etc) to rank high in ATS and get shortlisted 
  • Research the keywords which are common to a writer’s job profile and include it in your key skills section if you possess those skills
  • Pick the key skills from your professional experience section in your writer resume
  • Segregate your skills by making a subsection for your technical skills

 

Use these tips to rank high in the ATS system and highlight the most relevant skills in your writer’s resume to get shortlisted by your target company. 

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