Published on
February 26, 2025
by
Tom Challenger, BA
Revised on
April 17, 2025
Hard skills for a resume are specific competencies that you typically acquire through formal education or training or by doing a particular job (e.g., being able to program using JavaScript or speak a foreign language). This contrasts with soft skills, which are to do with how you interact with other people and your personality (e.g., patience, attention to detail, and flexibility).
Hard skills relate to the know-how you need to perform a specific task, whereas soft skills enable you to collaborate effectively, manage your time well, and adapt to different work environments—making them relevant to a wider range of jobs. Descriptions of hard skills are a crucial component of resumes, cover letters and letters of interest.
Technical skills are a subcategory of hard skills. These are the hard skills required to use specific tools or technologies such as programming languages (e.g., Python), machinery (e.g., forklifts), or software platforms (e.g., CAD software).
The simple past tense of ski is “skied,” and its past participle form is also “skied” (i.e., spelled with one “i.”). However, if you want to use the verb “ski” in the past progressive tense, the verb form has a double “i” (e.g., “She was skiing in Aspen”).
Published on
February 18, 2025
by
Tom Challenger, BA
Revised on
March 27, 2025
In the context of resumes, cover letters, and letters of interest, action verbs are words that help you to create impactful descriptions of work experience, skills, and professional achievements because:
They are verbs that describe a dynamic action—rather than nouns that describe a duty or task or stative verbs like “was” or “became.”
They typically replace overused words (e.g., “supported” or “facilitated,” instead of “helped”).
They often imply that you can work independently and under your own initiative (e.g., “executed” or “implemented” instead of “tasked with”).
Action verbs are also sometimes referred to as power verbs or active verbs.
Action verbs for resume examples
Strong description using action verb(s)
Weaker alternative
Supported, guided, and reviewed the work of a three-person team
Supervisor of a team of three people
Operated the reception desk
Reception duties
Planned, coordinated, and executed customer events
Responsible for organizing events
Collaborated on a wide range of marketing projects
Your resume should showcase the skills that are most relevant to the job, internship, scholarship, or program you’re applying for. So, when selecting the skills for a resume, you need to analyze the posting or application documentation carefully to determine the skills they’re looking for and edit your resume to prioritize the ones you have.
Make sure you put a mix of hard and soft skills on your resume.
Hard skills are specific abilities that you can learn to do on a course or by doing a particular job (e.g., using Microsoft Word or bookkeeping tasks).
Soft skills are more difficult to acquire through formal education and training because they’re to do with your personality and how you interact with other people (e.g., staying calm under pressure or attention to detail).
If your resume format has a separate skills section, the skills can be listed in categories, like “technical skills” (e.g., proficiency in using specific software, IT tools, or equipment), “languages,” and “soft skills.”
Edit the list so the most relevant skills are at the top.
If you’re listing over 15 items, it’s probably too many—some experts recommend as few as five. Limiting the number of items will also help you to keep your resume to a suitable length.
The list in the skills section can be key words and phrases (e.g., “MS Word & Excel”) or extended bullet points (e.g., “Proficient in Microsoft Word & Excel for document creation, data analysis, and office automation”), depending on the resume format you’ve chosen.
Don’t forget to provide concrete evidence of the most important skills in your cover letter, letter of interest, or in the work experience or education sections of your resume—tangible examples such as descriptions of duties that required these skills.
Resume skills section exampleTechnical skills
MS Word and Excel
Mailchimp
HTML
Basic Python
Soft skills
Adaptability
Conflict resolution
Problem solving
Languages
English – Advanced (TOEFL score: 116/120)
Spanish – Native speaker
TipMake sure your resume is typo-free by checking it with a grammar tool such as QuillBot’s free Grammar Checker.
Function words like “in,” “on,” “at,” and for (prepositions)—which are typically covered in grammar rather than vocabulary lessons when you’re learning a language—convey meaning by helping to show relationships between different parts of a sentence. Content words, on the other hand, like “definition” (a noun) or “define” (a verb), which we think of as “vocabulary,” carry a lot of meaning on their own.
Because for typically doesn’t mean very much as an individual word, knowing how it functions in terms of its part of speech is key to understanding what it communicates. “For” almost always functions as a preposition, helping to express ideas such as “intention,” “purpose,” “reason,” and “duration.”
For (preposition) in a sentence examplesI bought this shirt for Clive.
The simple past tense of spread is spread. “Spread” is also the past participle of the verb “spread,” which means “distribute, expand, or extend over a wide area.”
Spread past tense in a sentence examples
Simple past tense of spread
Past participle of spread
He spread the frosting as evenly as he could and then added the birthday candles.
You haven’t spread it very evenly, have you?
The wildfire spread rapidly across the dry forest.
When I returned, she had spread out a map of the city across the table.
She spread her arms, inviting the child to jump down from the wall.
Experts now believe that the disease was spread by humans, not rats.
The past tense of troubleshoot is troubleshot. “Troubleshot” is both the simple past tense form and past participle form of the verb “troubleshoot,” which means to “find the cause of a problem and solve it” or “perform the role of a troubleshooter.”
Past tense of troubleshoot in a sentence examplesI built the computers and troubleshot any issues with the operations systems.
I troubleshot for the implementation team last week.
I have troubleshot everything on the list.
NoteYou may see or hear “troubleshooted” rather than “troubleshot” used as the past participle or past simple form of the verb “troubleshoot.” However, “troubleshot” is the best choice for formal writing such as essays, as it is the more commonly used form and only a few dictionaries list “troubleshooted” as an alternative.
