What Are the Best Ways to Show Skills on Your Resume?

“All you need to land an interview is a good set of skills.”

If only that were true! Besides possessing skills, you have to present them in a way that gets noticed and shows that you are right for the job. Which skills should you showcase? What are the best ways to show skills on your resume? Let’s find out now.

What Skills to Put on a Resume

Would you say that you should list all your capabilities on your resume?

Lydia Frank, the editorial director of PayScale, told Money magazine that there are some skills you should avoid mentioning: generalized job functions. How will typing set you apart (unless you are a typist)? Abilities such as filing or copying won’t impress an employer. According to Frank, “it’s implied knowledge.” This is especially true if you have advanced capabilities—if you are an expert in advanced web programming, you don’t need to list basic web design. Save the space for your best qualities.

Alesia Benedict, a certified professional resume writer, warns that recruiters are also turned off by an onslaught of skills. “Recruiters do not have time to wade through a resume loaded with irrelevant information such as hobbies, ancient work history, out-of-date skills, or reasons for leaving prior positions.” Therefore, even though you might be proud of how good you are with tongue twisters, it probably doesn’t belong on your resume for an accountancy position.

How do you decide which of your various talents are relevant? Resume expert Natalie Severt suggests getting the information directly from the employer. No, you don’t have to call or email the company. The key skills, the most valuable qualities to the hiring manager, are usually embedded in the job description.

Take a look at some of the items listed in the qualifications section of this job listing for an educational administrator:

• Knowledge of MS Office programs (especially PowerPoint)
• Comfortable with Google Docs
• Tech-savvy and quick to learn new programs; experience with Learning Management Systems is ideal
• Passion for education and ability to connect with students
• Excellent written communication skills
• Experience with electronic file keeping and reporting
• Highly organized, but able to adapt as needs and programs evolve

Can you see all the clues provided by the potential employer? If you have technology skills, written communication skills, or organizational skills, you should highlight them if you want a good chance at being hired for this job.

How to Present Your Skills on a Resume

In most cases, job seekers set aside a section of the resume for their skills. You can simply label the section “Skills.” However, if a particular aptitude is valuable in your trade, you could be more specific. For instance, if you’re a computer technician, you might focus on technical or computer skills. If you’re applying to an out-of-country position, you might list relevant language skills.

Using the job listing from earlier, can you think of some ways to show your computer skills?

Extensive experience with Microsoft Office products

Familiarity with cloud-based apps, including Google Docs

Knowledge of OpenOffice

Besides these phrases, you might try “expert with,” “able to,” or “proficient at.”

Now that you know which skills to feature (i.e., those that are directly related to the position to which you are applying), where on your resume should they appear?

Not every resume expert agrees on the exact placement of this section, but most of their advice centers on one fact: The resume skills, along with the summary, should be the most visible parts of the document. If you use a template, find one that puts qualifications in a place that will get noticed. You might also get some feedback from friends. Ask them, “Which heading of my resume does your eye go to first?”

How to Prove Your Skills

Expert is a strong descriptor. You should support your assertions with solid evidence. The Huffington Post shared at least two ways to demonstrate that you can do what you say you can.

1 Mention tools that you know how to use in the skills section or elsewhere in your resume.

Project Management with Basecamp

2 Share completed certifications

Fluent in French DELF-certified Level B2

If you don’t present your skills well on a resume, it won’t matter how talented you are. Are you showing your skills in their best light? The job requirements provided by employers can help you decide which skills belong on your resume for each opening. If you tailor your resume today, a perfect job might be waiting for you tomorrow.

Neil Gaiman’s 5 Must-see Tips on Perfecting Your Writing

There are many celebrated writers in this world, but few ever reach the rockstar-level status of dark fantasy author Neil Gaiman.

Fans stand in line for hours at his book signings, only to faint when they finally meet him (or ask him to sign their body so they can get his signature tattooed).

His beloved novels and comics—Coraline, Stardust, American Gods, Good Omens, and The Sandman (to name a few)—have gained cult followings and been adapted for the big screen and television.

His 2012 “Make Good Art” commencement address inspired all of us to break the rules and make mistakes, making it clear that after decades of aspiring writers asking him for advice, Gaiman has a quite a bit of inspiration and wisdom to share.

So whether you’re hunting for magic, or just practical tips, we’ve gathered together some of Gaiman’s best advice on writing. Enjoy!

1Don’t Wait on Inspiration

If you’re only going to write when you’re inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you will never be a novelist — because you’re going to have to make your word count today, and those words aren’t going to wait for you, whether you’re inspired or not.

Writer’s block can be a frustrating and even terrifying experience. Gaiman’s advice is twofold. First, work on multiple projects simultaneously, so when one project stalls you can switch over to another. (Now you know why his publishing record is so prolific.)

Second, keep writing even when the inspiration has dried up and you’re convinced that every word you’re putting down is terrible. Your experience of “inspiration” is subjective.

Looking back at your work, you won’t be able to tell the difference between “which bits were the gifts of the Gods and dripped from your fingers like magical words and which bits were the nightmare things you just barely created and got down on paper somehow.”

2Find Your Unique Voice

Tell your story. Don’t try and tell the stories that other people can tell. Because [as a] starting writer, you always start out with other people’s voices—you’ve been reading other people for years… But, as quickly as you can, start telling the stories that only you can tell—because there will always be better writers than you, there will always be smarter writers than you… but you are the only you.

It’s easy to waste time comparing yourself to others and wallowing in imposter syndrome, but the truth is that you are actually your own greatest asset. Don’t get stuck in imitation mode—you will only hold yourself back.

Do your own unique thing, whatever that is. Gaiman always says: “There’s nobody who can write a Neil Gaiman story like I can.”

3Don’t Obsess Over Your First Draft

For me, it’s always been a process of trying to convince myself that what I’m doing in a first draft isn’t important.

One way you get through the wall is by convincing yourself that it doesn’t matter. No one is ever going to see your first draft. Nobody cares about your first draft. And that’s the thing that you may be agonizing over, but honestly, whatever you’re doing can be fixed. …

For now, just get the words out. Get the story down however you can get it down, then fix it.

Writing your first draft can be intimidating, terrifying, and often embarrassing. You may feel like there’s a gulf between where your writing is and where you want it to be.

This is all normal. The key is finding a way to press on despite your insecurities.

Gaiman writes his first drafts by hand because there’s less pressure—what he’s written isn’t “real” until he’s typed it up. Whatever you have to do to trick yourself into writing, do it.

4Make Mistakes

Any perfectionists in the room? The lure of playing it safe and the fear of falling short make a powerful and paralyzing cocktail.

Gaiman shares that the willingness to let go, take chances, and make mistakes is of the utmost importance. Why?

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

…Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

5Be Kind to Yourself

Writing is a skill and learning to write well doesn’t happen overnight, yet we beat ourselves up when our writing isn’t of the same caliber as our favorite authors.

We forget our heroes weren’t always writing bestsellers. Gaiman himself has had the frightening experience of unearthing a story he wrote at age twenty and realizing just how awful it was.

When asked how to get past loathing your own work, Gaiman answered this way:

Write more. And remember that everyone who writes anything good wrote a lot of bad stuff first. You are learning, be kind to yourself, just as you would be kind to anyone learning to do something hard, like juggling or ballroom dancing or surgery.

Learn from your mistakes, and get better, and one day you’ll write something you won’t loathe. (Also, it’s fine to dislike something you’ve written. But don’t dislike yourself for having made it.)

How to Write a Good Pitch

So you have an idea for a story that’s burning a hole in your brain, and you need to find it a home—ideally somewhere that will embrace and enhance your style, share your work with a broad readership, and pay you decently.

In other words, you hope to surmount one of the greatest hurdles that separates the writing world’s dreamers from its doers. No pressure, though.

If writing is your calling, there’s tough work ahead, but it’s doable. We’re here to help color in the details of how. This is what new(-ish) writers should know about pitching.

Where do I want to go?

You dream of someday writing for renowned newspapers and prestigious magazines. Pitch them. So long as you’re polite, the worst they can tell you is “not right now.” What’s to lose?

But as you reach for the stars, know that such dreams only rarely come true overnight. In the meantime, most writers hone their craft in more attainable venues. An ambitious young journalist who wants to cover a bustling statehouse for a daily newspaper, for instance, might not walk into that job straight out of college. Instead, she might get her start reporting on school-board or city-council races for the town’s scrappy alt-weekly.

Early in his career, John McPhee, the industrious pioneer of literary journalism, longed to find a place at The New Yorker. He eventually became an institution there, but the octogenarian tells The Paris Review he first spent a decade writing elsewhere:

The thing about writers is that, with very few exceptions, they grow slowly—very slowly. A John Updike comes along, he’s an anomaly. That’s no model, that’s a phenomenon. I sent stuff to The New Yorker when I was in college and then for ten years thereafter before they accepted something. I used to paper my wall with their rejection slips. And they were not making a mistake. Writers develop slowly. That’s what I want to say to you: don’t look at my career through the wrong end of a telescope.

Don’t be dissuaded from dreaming big, but don’t quit if you have to start small.

Who do I talk to?

Different publications have different pipelines and processes for bringing in outside writers. Some only rarely bother, while others do it all the time.

To land a pitch, start by researching the outlets you hope to write for. See if you can find a copy of their submission guidelines online, and study them carefully. What’s their style? What’s distinct about their approach? Don’t propose a sprawling feature to an outlet that traffics mainly in tight news articles.

It’s vastly easier to place a story when the editor you’re pitching knows you. Cultivate these relationships. Email writers and editors whose work you admire and introduce yourself. Such correspondences needn’t be epic in scale—these people are busy—but they can afford you an inside track on who handles pitches, what their budget is like, and what they’re hungry for.

Hal Humphreys, a principal at Pursuit magazine, private investigator, and erstwhile storyteller on national shows like Marketplace, recommends against a scattershot template-email approach. Instead, he advises, think like a spy.

The craft of building a network of clients and colleagues isn’t about casting a wide net. It’s about seeding real relationships. It requires time and calculation. It can even seem a bit creepy at times.

Be gentle, Humphreys says, and this approach, used in good faith, can spark not just useful professional connections but also earnest friendships.

What do I show them?

Landing a writing gig often centers less on your resume than on clips—recent samples of your published work. Your clips show editors what you’re capable of delivering. A journalist whose work has been picked up nationally can get more traction than a scruffy newcomer, but everyone has to start somewhere.

For students, this might mean building up a portfolio at the student newspaper or college radio station. For the rest of us out in adult-land, obliged as we are to put rent on the table, you may have to launch your work as a side-hustle. This is what Jesse Thorn means in his Make Your Thing manifesto when he says “start now.”

Stephanie Foo used to spend eight hours or more each day listening to podcasts while working as a graphic designer. “I got so obsessed that I was like, ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this with my life. I should be doing radio,’” she told Tape.

With dreams of being on This American Life, she made the leap outside her day job by starting her own show—a podcast that took her to weird events like a medieval battle reenactment and a porn convention. In time, that gave her something to share with Thorn, who knew a rising star in the industry, who connected her with an editor who would hear her pitches.

My first day there, I brought a notebook with 20 pitches in it. . . . I rattled them all off super fast, and he was just kind of stunned and was like ‘um, one of them seemed good.’

That was enough to get the ball rolling. Some years on, Foo is a producer at This American Life.

But what do I say?

A wise editor once said “brevity is the better part of valor.” Don’t force editors to scroll and skim to figure out what you’ll be writing about. And remember to focus by pitching stories, not topics.

Also, do your homework. You have to know what the outlet you’re contacting has written about your subject already, and articulate a fresh angle. Find a way to advance the story. Editors regard failure to do so as a common error, as Meg Guroff told The Open Notebook:

Another (common mistake) is presenting a story as something you’re dying to write, rather than as something our reader would be dying to read. Successful pitchers don’t lead with their own desires or credentials. Instead, they focus on what’s amazing about a story and how the story would fit into what the publication is trying to do.

It’s best to pitch editors after you’ve researched enough to be sure you can deliver on your premise, but before you’ve ferreted out every last detail, let alone written the thing. This matters because editors will often help fine-tune your idea early in the process.

Note that editors hate having to click through to an attachment just to read your idea. Put it in the body of the email. Use plain text for readability. And do email, by the way; editors vastly prefer written pitches over cold calls.

You can want to send a query to one place at a time, so be deliberate about pacing your efforts, and ask editors what works best for their timeframe.

Finally, be persistent, but not too persistent. While it’s a good idea to gently nudge editors you haven’t heard back from after a week or so, you don’t want anyone to feel barraged. Try and keep a fresh idea in your pocket, so if one pitch doesn’t stick, you’re not at a dead end.

The world is full of stories, after all, as well as places to tell them. Get yours out there.

“Barking up the wrong tree” and Other Funny Idioms

Have you heard the expression “barking up the wrong tree?” According to North Carolina State University, there are 23,000 different kinds of trees. What type of tree is incorrect? Idioms can be puzzling, but perhaps less so when you learn more about the phrases. Let’s delve into six interesting idiomatic expressions.

Barking up the wrong tree

Hunters sometimes use scent hounds to locate and pursue animals. When the dogs trap, catch, or even kill an animal, they bark to alert their masters. Certain quarry, such as squirrels and raccoons, climb trees to escape. Occasionally, dogs lose the scent or become confused by an old scent trail. The animal is long gone, but the mistaken dogs circle a tree where they believe it to be hiding and sound the alarm. The fruitless barking of the dogs represents pursuing a mistaken or misguided course.

Brenda thinks she’s going to make money on that shady investment scheme, but she’s barking up the wrong tree!

Sick as a dog

Speaking of scent hounds, was it a touch of congestion that befouled their hunting expedition? Why are dogs associated with illness in the phrase “as sick as a dog?” Canines don’t get sick more often or with more severity than other animals. Disappointingly, the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs reports only that the first recorded mention of the simile was in 1705 and adds, “why a dog should be viewed as particularly sick remains unclear.”

After cleaning Fido’s vomit from the carpet, I was the one who felt as sick as a dog.

Smell a rat

A rat is a slang term for an untrustworthy person. If you “smell a rat,” you suspect something is wrong or that a person has been disloyal. Skunks are famously stinky, but live rats aren’t heavily malodorous. However, many homeowners have located dead rodents in the walls or floors of their homes by following a stench.

The uniformed man claimed to be a home inspector, but I smelled a rat.

Curiosity killed the cat

In Ben Jonson’s play, Every Man in His Humour, the phrase “care will kill a cat” appears. Care (as in worry), not curiosity, is the supposed source of danger in this earlier expression from the 1500s. In 1909, O. Henry was the first to use “curiosity killed the cat.” Nowadays, you would say it to warn someone not to meddle in an affair that doesn’t concern them or to explain why adverse consequences result from being overly inquisitive.

The cops arrested George because he was snooping around the scene of the crime. Curiosity killed the cat!

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch

Despite a mother hen’s best efforts, there are predators—even curious cats—that would devour a tasty egg. Temperature changes and other factors can also affect an embryo, so you can’t be sure of an egg’s viability until it hatches. Written around the sixth century BC, the story collection known as Aesop’s Fables included the tale of a milkmaid carrying milk on her head. She fantasizes about selling butter and cream to buy eggs. The dream of hatching and selling the chickens is so real that she tosses her hair in anticipation of the young admirers who will check out her newly purchased dresses. She drops the milk, illustrating that you can’t ascertain the result of a hypothetical situation in advance.

I am expecting a raise this quarter, but I don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch.

Every cloud has a silver lining

“There does a sable cloud / Turn forth her silver lining on the night, / And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.” In the 1600s, John Milton penned these words in Comus: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle. Captivated with the pretty verse, many writers wrote about “Milton’s clouds” with silver linings. In time, people applied the idea to dark situations in life. In time, you often find that something good can follow unpleasant circumstances.

Ramona’s grandmother congratulated her on how much she improved her reading the summer that she broke her leg: “See! Every cloud has a silver lining.”

If you try to find literal meaning in idioms, you can end up as disappointed as dogs baying at the bottom of an empty tree. Many idioms, like the ones above, have fascinating origins. What expressions would you like to research next?

Despite vs. In Spite Of

What’s the difference between despite and in spite of?

The easy answer: none. Despite and in spite of, despite what you may have heard, work identically in a sentence.

In other words, these two prepositions, in spite of what you may have heard, are basically identical.

In most cases, both mean “notwithstanding,” “even though,” or “regardless of.”

Despite their similarities, keep these things in mind to make sure your usage gives no cause for complaint.

Where they go in a sentence

Both despite and in spite of are prepositions that show contrast. They can show up at the start of a sentence or in the middle, but you’ll often need an extra clause to show the flip side. For example:

In spite of this dependent clause, this sentence needs an independent clause (this one!) to be a full sentence.

As you may have guessed, the same would be true if we replaced the “in spite of” in that sentence with “despite.” What matters is that the independent clause—the one that could stand alone as a sentence—is there to balance out the dependent clause that starts with “in spite of.”

What comes after them

Not just any part of speech can be used with these two little prepositions. For the most part, you’ve got three options for what can follow your spite-related phrases.

A noun

For the next two hours the new boy’s behavior was exemplary, despite the spitballs, shot from the nib of a pen, that occasionally splattered against his face. —Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Grammatically savvy, and classy, too.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself! —Clement Clarke Moore, The Night Before Christmas

This take on Santa Claus (not be confused with an independent clause) demonstrates the common construction, “in spite of oneself.” This speaker means he laughed without meaning to. Sorry, Santa!

This is also an important exception: “in spite of oneself” is a fixed idiom: you wouldn’t say “despite oneself.”

A gerund

A gerund is a verb masquerading as a noun. Here’s how it looks with our words of the day.

‘Now, above all, he must be convinced that he is on an equal footing with all of us, in spite of his taking money from us,’ Alyosha continued in his rapture. —Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Taking” works as a noun here—same as the nouns in the examples above. That -ing is what sets it apart.

Despite ‘throwing rocks,’ Mike knew, we all knew, that mighty Terra with eleven billion people and endless resources could not be defeated by three million who had nothing… —Robert Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Phrases with what or how

When not used to start a question, what, how, and their other wh- friends function as relative pronouns when they connect phrases in a sentence, or as adverbs when they modify a verb. Here are a few now.

The shower head. It worked fine despite how it looks. —TripAdvisor comment

“The shower head” is a fragment. But at least it works (grammatically and water-wise).

In spite of what happened to it, the pounding rain and hurricane-force winds, the barn still stands intact. —Peter H. Hare and Edward H. Madden, Causing, Perceiving and Believing: An Examination of the Philosophoy of C.J. Ducasse

Where they come from

“Spite” is a noun defined as “ill will or hatred toward another, accompanied with the disposition to irritate, annoy, or thwart.” That’s a fancy way to say “holding a grudge.” “Spite” is also a verb, which means “to purposely hurt or annoy.” For example:

Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

In other words, don’t look for revenge out of spite if you may end up harming yourself in the process.

Contemporary usage of despite and in spite of isn’t quite so, well, spiteful. But in some cases you can still pick up a hint of contempt in the “spite” part of these prepositions:

Cory ate all of the cookies in spite of his mom’s warnings.

In Cory’s case, “in spite of” means “regardless of,” but Cory may also hold a grudge against his mom for trying to curtail his cookie-eating.

Despite the many examples, now you’ve got a solid grasp of how these words work. Just don’t use them in spite, in spite of where they come from.

5 Reasons You Should Be Reading African American Literature

In the month of February, Americans place a special emphasis on the achievements and history of black Americans, or Americans of African descent. Each year, a theme promotes one facet of black heritage. This year, 2016, the theme is “Hallowed Grounds: Sites of African American Memories.” The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) website explains, “From port cities where Africans disembarked from slave ships to the battlefields where their descendants fought for freedom, from the colleges and universities where they pursued education to places where they created communities during centuries of migration, the imprint of Americans of African descent is deeply embedded in the narrative of the American past. These sites prompt us to remember and over time became hallowed grounds.” You might encounter descriptions of many of these important locations in African American literature, such as the books mentioned in the article “5 Inspiring Authors to Read During Black History Month.” But why should you be interested in the works of these African American writers?

A Complete Education

History helps you to understand the present. It also helps you to see the consequences of actions and attitudes. African American history is an integral part of American and world history. To appreciate historical events, you need to know more than just the names of people and places or the dates of events. Why did the people involved act in the way that they did? What were the prevailing attitudes of society? How did the social, environmental, political, and religious climate impact the people and events? African American historical novels reveal what was happening in the black community during significant world events. You won’t fully comprehend the past until you examine it from all possible angles.

Exposure to Different Perspectives

If you are not of African descent, you may view the world differently than someone who comes from that background. Of course, the best way to get to know people is to spend time with them in person. However, reading is another great way to consider the world from a perspective other than your own.

Development of Empathy

When you read any literature from another cultural standpoint, you will see differences in the way people of that culture think, speak, and behave. You might be surprised to learn how many similarities you notice. Emotions such as love, anger, curiosity, desire, sorrow, and fear are common to all people. Perceiving these similarities may help you to feel more connected to black Americans as a group. When black Americans read these books, they also feel more connected to their ancestors. Studies prove that reading positive stories about members of your ethnic group increases feelings of self-worth and belonging. Children, adults, blacks, and non-blacks benefit from reading multicultural literature.

Cool Culture

One of the best things about American culture is that it incorporates traditions, cuisine, art, and other facets of many world cultures. By reading literature rooted in African American culture, you may learn that some of the customs you already practice have African origins.

Everyone Loves a Good Book

Why do you read any book? Did you receive a recommendation from a friend or teacher? Does the title intrigue you? Are you looking for specific information? These same factors can move you to read African American literature.

You don’t have to limit your appreciation for black history to the month of February. African American literature is an enjoyable way to celebrate American culture all year round. Whether you do it to fill out your knowledge of world history, to challenge yourself to view things from another perspective, or just to find a good book, you won’t regret exploring this fascinating genre.