Soft skills on a CV: how to write them with real examples (and which to choose)

Why "team player" is no longer enough

Open ten CVs at random and at least eight will contain the same words: "team player", "problem solving", "excellent communication skills", "flexibility". Recruiters read them so often they no longer notice them. Worse: a soft skill that is claimed but not demonstrated is just your opinion of yourself.

Yet soft skills really do matter, and more and more. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 places analytical thinking, resilience, flexibility, leadership and curiosity among the most important skills for employers in the coming years, alongside technological skills. The question isn't whether to put them on your CV, but how to make them credible.

Hard skills vs soft skills

• Hard skills: technical, measurable and specific to a job. Examples: accounting, welding, Excel, Python, a foreign language, a food safety certificate.
• Soft skills: transferable skills about how you work with others and tackle problems. Examples: communication, organisation, stress management, leadership, negotiation.

Hard skills are proven with qualifications and certificates; soft skills are proven with facts and behaviour. That's the key to this whole article.

How to choose which ones to include

You don't need ten soft skills. Three to five are enough, chosen like this:

1. Read the job ad and highlight the transferable skills it asks for: they're often explicit ("ability to manage priorities", "customer focus").
2. Think about the role: a customer service agent needs empathy and patience, a project manager organisation and communication, a salesperson persuasion and resilience.
3. Choose those you can prove: for each one you need at least one concrete example from your experience.

Use the same words as the job ad when they match reality: it helps the recruiter find them and recruiting software recognise them.

The core principle: show, don't tell

A soft skill becomes credible when you link it to a concrete situation and a result. Compare:

• "Excellent organisational skills."
• "Organised the logistics of a company event for 250 attendees, coordinating 6 suppliers and staying within budget."

The second sentence doesn't contain the word "organisation", yet it demonstrates it far better. That's the most effective way to write soft skills: inside your experience, through facts.

Where to put them on your CV

In your profile

One or two key soft skills can appear in your opening profile, always tied to a fact. Example: "Store manager with 8 years in retail; led teams of up to 12 people and cut staff turnover by 40%." Leadership comes through without being named.

In your experience

This is the best place. Each bullet point can demonstrate a transferable skill alongside a technical one.

In your skills section

You can list 3-5 soft skills, but only if the rest of your CV confirms them. A useful format: skill + short evidence. Example: "Negotiation: renewed 20 supplier contracts with an average saving of 8%".

In your cover letter

It's the ideal place to tell one story in more detail, using the STAR method (situation, task, action, result).

Examples for the most sought-after soft skills

Communication

• "Presented monthly sales results to senior management, summarising data from 5 stores in a one-page report."
• "Wrote customer guides for the software, reducing support requests by 20%."

Teamwork

• "Worked with the marketing and logistics teams on the launch of a new product line, meeting the release date."
• "Supported 3 colleagues through the switch to the new system by running internal training sessions."

Problem solving

• "Identified the cause of delivery delays (a duplicate manual check) and proposed a procedure that cut lead times by 2 days."
• "Resolved an average of 30 technical tickets a day with an 85% first-contact resolution rate."

Leadership

• "Coordinated a team of 8 people on shifts, handling scheduling, holidays and onboarding of new hires."
• "Led a university project group (5 students), dividing the work and presenting the final result: top grade."

Organisation and time management

• "Managed the diaries of 3 executives, with over 40 meetings and trips a week."
• "Combined university studies with a 20-hour-a-week part-time job, graduating on time."

Adaptability

• "Moved from office-based to remote work in 2 weeks while maintaining customer service levels."
• "Learned SAP in one month to cover for a colleague on parental leave."

Customer focus

• "Managed 15 key accounts with a 95% renewal rate and a satisfaction score of 4.8 out of 5."

Critical and analytical thinking

• "Analysed 3 years of sales data and identified 12 unprofitable products, which were then removed from the catalogue."

Soft skills when you have little experience

Students and graduates can draw on contexts other than work: university, sport, volunteering, societies, seasonal jobs. They work very well when described precisely:

• "Captain of the university volleyball team: organised training and managed communication with the coach."
• "Volunteer at a community kitchen: weekly shifts, coordinated 6 volunteers over the holiday period."
• "Summer job at a holiday resort: activities for groups of 50 children, handling issues with parents."

Mistakes to avoid

• Long lists of adjectives: "dynamic, proactive, flexible, empathetic, resilient" prove nothing.
• Soft skills that contradict your CV: "attention to detail" in a CV full of typos is an own goal.
• Bars and percentages: "Leadership 80%" means nothing to the reader.
• Copied clichés: if the text sounds machine-generated, recruiters notice. Write your own real examples, then polish the wording.
• Skills you can't talk about: in the interview you'll be asked for an example of each soft skill on your CV. Prepare a story for each one.

From CV to interview

The soft skills on your CV often become interview questions: "Tell me about a time you had to handle a conflict in your team." So for each one, prepare a two-minute story using the STAR method. The CV opens the door; the story convinces.

WizardsCV has dedicated skills sections with suggestions for each role; fill them in, choose a template and download your PDF for free.