What Are Effective Management Skills For A Resume?

By Indeed Editorial Team

Published 3 January 2022

The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed's data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey.

When applying for an executive role, it is vital to show the recruiter that you have the necessary technical, conceptual and human management skills to qualify for the role. By strategically placing the most sought after management skills, you can increase your chances of getting one step closer to a management position. To do that, it is important to find out what those skills are and what it means to put those skills in your resume. In this article, we define some management skills for a resume and explore five soft skills and five hard skills essential to becoming successful managers.

What are management skills for a resume?

Management skills for a resume refer to any qualities in a candidate that makes them capable of leading a team or a project. A manager makes sure that the company meets all its goals and everyone stays on track with their individual tasks. To ensure this, a manager supervises and motivates the team, provides guidance and support and solves any problem that may arise.

Here are some of the trademark qualities of an excellent manager:

Offering rational solutions to problems
Leveraging exceptional industry knowledge
Communicating with transparency
Giving and receiving feedback
Working towards company goals
Organising training programs
Setting achievable standards and expectations
Acknowledging and motivating employees

Whether you are applying for a managerial position or any lower-level role, showcasing management skills in your resume positions you as a promising candidate. Managers directly impact the company's performance. Recruiters are often particular about the requisite skills while hiring a managerial candidate. Adding the right skills to your resume increases your chances of impressing the recruiter and moving on to the next stage in the hiring process.

5 soft skills for an impressive management resume

Soft skills are your natural, transferable skills, which you can develop with time. You might have many soft skills, but only some are valuable in a managerial position. Here are 5 of the most important ones:

1. Interpersonal skills

At the core, managers work with individuals. Your ability to communicate, interact and lead people can be important. The sooner you can build a good relationship with people, the better you can manage them.

The term "interpersonal skills" usually refers to the following qualities:

Active listening
Verbal communication
Motivation
Empathy
Patience
Collaboration
Trust building
Awareness of others
Constructive feedback
Responsibility
Dependability
Tolerance and respect

2. Conflict resolution

When multiple people work as a team, there can be misunderstandings between team members. Conflicts can also arise out of differences in opinion, disagreements, non-cooperation or an array of other issues. Managers handle such issues to ensure the smooth functioning of the team and maintain a healthy work environment. To be an expert at conflict resolution, it is necessary to be impartial, diplomatic, patient and open-minded. Listening to both parties without any bias and reaching an amicable solution is important to maintain peace and harmony in a team.

3. Problem-solving

As a manager, you may experience complex business challenges and face adverse situations. Overcoming those obstacles is part of the job. In such situations, it is necessary to remain calm and address such problems analytically to reach an effective decision.

For example, a store manager might face a complex scenario where an angry customer asks for a refund, but the company policy does not allow refunds. In this scenario, two options include either breaking company policy or losing a customer. A good manager may offer some other form of compensation to the customer to keep them happy while adhering to the company policy. This skill requires emotional intelligence, creativity, diplomacy, research and risk management abilities, along with effective communication skills.

4. Delegation

Managers oversee all tasks within a team or company and ensure their completion. To do so, they distribute responsibilities to other subordinate employees. Delegation is the act of transferring authority on certain tasks and projects. It requires the ability to recognise employee strengths and weaknesses and a knowledge of what kind of work suits an employee the best. Whether a task gets done perfectly and on time largely depends on it being assigned to the right candidate. Delegation is a crucial responsibility in any managerial position.

5. Team building

Be it a small team of five or a company of 500, it is a manager's responsibility to turn a group of individual contributing employees into a cohesive team. Effective team building initiatives lead to transparent communication, smooth collaboration, enhanced employee relationships and elevated performance and productivity. To build efficient teams, managers might host team meetings, arrange group activities or bring in professional consultants to facilitate the process.

Five sought-after hard skills that display managerial prowess

Skills you learn with education or professional training are your hard skills. You may have many such hard skills that are valuable across different professions and job levels but not all qualify as management skills. Here are 5 necessary hard skills for managers:

1. Budgeting

As a departmental or financial manager, you might be responsible for handling a portion of the company's budget. This includes tracking income and expenses and calculating the four essential aspects of budgeting, like revenue, operating expenses, capital expenses and employee expenses. A manager with remarkable budgeting skills could ideally forecast expenses for a year or more in advance. Their job is to ensure that the department or company can cover all its costs.

Here are some critical skills necessary for budgeting expertise:

Budget preparation
Budget tracking
Accounting (cash and accrual)
Financial analysis
Financial forecasting

2. Scheduling

Scheduling decides the workflow of a team or department. It is the foundation of a highly productive workforce. Scheduling helps in managing the workforce by eliminating the possibility of over-staffing or understaffing and helping to reduce excess expenses. Managers with the capability of prioritising and scheduling individual tasks for a project ensure its smooth completion. Scheduling directly affects the time, quality and financial aspects of any project.

These are some of the most effective scheduling skills:

Time management
Finance
Billing
Documentation
Concept estimation
Cost control
Procurement
Contracting

3. Agile and Scrum

Project management is an indispensable skill for any manager. The most in-demand qualities associated with this enormous task are familiarity with the Agile philosophy or framework and the Scrum methodology of project management.

The Agile philosophy involves managing a project by breaking it up into multiple collaborative phases. Managers who follow the Agile framework take their teams through cycles of plan, execution and evaluation to ensure continuous improvement. This creates an early, definable return on investment (ROI). Scrum project management is one of the most popular Agile methodologies used by project managers. The Scrum methodology implements Agile principles to identify and define strategies that help teams practically structure and organise the project.

4. Spreadsheets

Recording and analysing data is part of a manager's job description. Managers use spreadsheets for multifarious purposes, such as storing information, presentations, future planning, financial calculations, statistical analysis and project tracking. Candidates who know how to create and manipulate databases using spreadsheets have a winning edge over others when fighting for an executive position. Whatever application or software you use, it is essential to list your spreadsheet skills in your resume.

Here are some advanced spreadsheet skills you can master to become a spreadsheet pro:

PivotTables
Flash Fill
Filters
Conditional Formatting
COUNTIF
Charts
SUMIF
IFERROR
Slicers
Power Pivots
Sparkline

5. Industry-specific knowledge

All the soft skills and hard skills listed so far apply to managers across several industries. Your industry-specific hard skills change depending on the company. A manager of a retail store requires a different skill set than the manager of a medical factory. For this part of your resume, enter only those skills that are relevant to your industry.

For example, if we assume that you are applying for a managerial role in an IT company, your hard skills can include:

Coding
Programming languages
Application development
Cloud computing
UI/UX design
IP setup
AutoCAD
Information management
Database administration
TensorFlow

Showcasing a list of job-specific hard skills in your resume authenticates your knowledge of the industry. It shows the recruiting manager that you have the necessary insight and exposure into the workings of the company to be able to manage it.