How to present your skills in your CV?

Skills are an important part of any CV and one of the sections that the recruiters concentrate most on. To be able to present the skills that you have well is an art in itself. Even an activity that might seem trivial to you could be concealing some skill that might be apparent to a potential employer. For instance if you have worked abroad when on a holiday or if you engage in a particular sport or hobby could reveal some aspect of your personality to the other person.

The plus factor of skills is that they are transferable. This means that if you have excelled in anything at your social level they can definitely be used in the work place. Apart from a hermit, all the activities undertaken by people in their daily routines reflect some traits in their personality. Often what seems mundane to us and makes us feel that we have no skills might reflect to someone else a plethora of skills hidden in them.

If you suddenly realize that you posses certain skills and are apprehensive how will they be taken by the prospective employer, then it is within your control to present them. A mature student will by the end of his graduation have acquired specific work related skills. However how they should be presented to the employer needs some strategic planning, the interpretation of the skills needs to be in such a manner that they translate into direct work related skills.

Something as simple as managing children in your holidays might not appear as any skill related activity to you but if analyzed then you can make out how much of good it has done to your time management and organizational skills. If academic records have been a bad site for you for instance if you have poor grades or have flunked a year or something then you should not hide it ever, rather own up to it and trust the employer to look beyond that and concentrate on your strengths.

If you have been studying at a university that is not at all targeted by them you will have to convince them that your skills are at par with someone coming in from a better university too. However no details should be hidden from the recruiters as that s unethical and will hurt your reputation once discovered.