How To Highlight Patience Skills On Your Resume (With Tips)

Updated 26 July 2023

In many positions and industries, such as education, customer service, management, IT and HR, having patience is necessary to perform job duties effectively. Being patient is an integral part of maintaining professionalism and people with this quality tend to be better at conflict resolution, decision-making, persuasion and self-discipline. Learning about these abilities can help you convey them in your resume or job application. In this article, we discuss patience skills to include on your resume, explain how to highlight them when applying for positions, share some useful tips and provide a resume template and examples.

Patience Skills To Include On A Resume

Patience skills allow you to wait for the right time to respond, adapt to new circumstances, act calmly and respond positively to challenging situations. Patience-related skills help you behave with strength, control and focus. Patience allows people to regulate negative emotions, solve problems and make decisions without the influence of short-term distractions or disruptions. To display this quality on your resume, include the following skills:

Flexibility: Flexibility refers to the ability to adapt and adjust to changing situations effectively without reacting adversely. This skill helps you to be patient, stay positive and adopt new approaches when necessary.
Tolerance: Tolerance allows you to cope with difficult events and situations calmly and without losing focus on your long-term goals. Addressing negative circumstances with positivity is essential to developing patience and professionalism.
Easy-going attitude: Possessing an easy-going attitude means staying positive and professional even during challenging situations, such as when a project has a short deadline or requires changes. Easy-going people usually find it easier to collaborate, network and develop relationships, as they can manage difficult circumstances with patience and understanding.
Resilience: Resilience helps people listen to differing perspectives from customers or team members and respond calmly even during disagreements. Resilient people recover from setbacks with ease, make informed decisions in difficult circumstances and continue to perform well in high-pressure situations because they can retain focus when facing adverse situations by concentrating on the positive aspects.
Self-control: Self-control and self-discipline refer to effectively managing your emotions, impulses and short-term desires. People with strong self-control seldom have adverse or extreme reactions, and they can react positively and cope patiently with complex or challenging situations.
Calmness: Staying calm and maintaining composure in complex or uncertain situations is an essential skill for being patient. People who are calm can usually work efficiently and steadily in challenging circumstances and emergencies without negative emotions impacting their responses.

How To Highlight Patience Skills On A Resume?

You can highlight patience as an essential soft skill on your resume. Here are a few ways to do this:

1. Mention patience in the professional summary

Mention the term patience and its related abilities at least once in the professional summary. This ensures that prospective employers learn you have this skill immediately when they start reviewing your resume. Make the opening statement impactful, and highlight your patience-related skills. For example:

A patient, focused and resilient customer service manager with an easy-going attitude and over 12 years of experience. I am an expert at resolving complex customer complaints in a positive and calm manner.

2. List duties and achievements that demonstrate patience

If possible, mention some duties or achievements that demonstrate your ability to be patient, and explain them thoroughly. Use action verbs to illustrate how being patient helped you execute specific responsibilities. If you can show how this quality improved your performance or benefitted your employer, it helps convey that you are an extremely patient person. For example:

Patiently managed more than 100 customer queries and complaints every day
Supervised over 40 young children every day with patience and care

3. Include patience-related skills

When listing your skills, include ones that convey your patience. To clearly display that you have many abilities of different types, separate the skills section of your resume into categories, and list the patience-related ones under soft skills. The following is a list of qualities you might include:

Persuasion
Decisiveness
Empathy
Problem-solving
Determination
Focus
Composure
Self-discipline
Willingness to learn
Motivation

4. Explain the personal and professional benefits of having patience

When writing your professional summary, job duties and achievements, use specific examples to explain how being patient improved your work performance. Additionally, if your previous supervisor or colleagues showed appreciation for your patience, you can quote them or provide their reference information. Mention how this quality helped you overcome challenging personal or professional situations.

Resume Writing Tips

Here are some tips for creating a resume to help you impress hiring managers:

Check examples from your industry. Review some examples of well-written resumes within your industry. In addition to looking for online templates or samples, consider asking mentors and industry leaders for advice or feedback on your resume.
Use reverse-chronological order. When writing each resume section, start with the latest information at the top. For example, in the work experience section, list the duties of your current or most recent job first, and then add information about previous roles.
Include relevant keywords. Check the job description and the company's website to understand what the hiring manager is looking for in candidates. Then add pertinent keywords to your resume regarding the skills, qualifications and achievements that align with the position and the organisation's values.
Reiterate your top skills across different sections. Identify two or three core technical and soft skills that are relevant to the role, and mention them in multiple places in your resume. You can include them in the professional summary, work experience and skills sections to highlight them adequately.
Customise your resume for every job. In addition to creating a unique cover letter for each job, modify the professional summary, work experience and skills sections of your resume to highlight relevant aspects for each position. This allows you to focus on specific skills or achievements and makes your application more effective.

Resume Template

Try referring to the following template while writing your resume:

[First name] [Last name], [Degree or certification if applicable]
[Phone number] | [Email address] | [City], [State or Union territory]

Professional Summary
[Two to three sentences that highlight your years of experience, relevant skills, education or certifications, and achievements as a professional.]

Experience

(For the most recent role, list 5 experience items. For previous roles, list 3.)

[Job Title] | [Employment dates]
[Company Name] | [City], [State or Union territory]

(Strong verb) + what you did (more detail) + reason, outcome or quantified results
[Job duty]
[Job duty]
[Job duty]
[Job duty]

[Job Title] | [Employment dates]
[Company Name] | [City], [State or Union territory]

(Strong verb) + what you did (more detail) + reason, outcome or quantified results
[Job duty]
[Job duty]

Education
[Degree], [Name of School or University]
[City], [State or Union territory]

Certifications (optional)
[Certification Name], [Host Organisation] - [Year completed or expiration date]

Examples Of Highlighting Patience On A Resume

The following example shows how to describe your patience in the descriptions of your work experience:

Performed over 150 surgical procedures lasting six hours with a 100% success rate
Manually transferred data from more than 10,000 patients from legacy systems with over 99.99% accuracy
Calmly conducted classes and field trips for over 100 students aged 5 and 6 years old
Patiently conducted research that tested 14 hypotheses for a study with minimal errors

The following example shows how to add patience-related abilities in the skills section:

Customer service skills: Self-control | Timely complaint resolution | Persuasion | Empathy | Negotiation
Soft skills: Communication | Patience and resilience | Easy-going attitude | Leadership | Composure | Flexibility