6. Leadership
You may not be a manager straight away, but graduates need to show potential to motivate teams and other colleagues that may work for them. It's about assigning and delegating tasks well, setting deadlines and leading by good example.
Read more about leadership skills and how employers will assess the skills on and off your CV.
7. Organisation
This is about showing that you can prioritise, work efficiently and productively, and manage your time well. It's also good to be able to show employers how you decide what is important to focus on and get done, and how you go about meeting deadlines.
Read more about time management
8. Perseverance and motivation
Employers want people to have a bit of get-up-and-go. Working life presents many challenges and you need to show employers that you're the kind of person who will find a way through, even when the going gets tough... and stay cheerful-ish.
You won’t necessarily need to list motivation as a skill on your CV, but you will almost certainly be asked about it at interview or on some tailored application forms. Read our guide to answering the tricky interview question what motivates you?
9. Ability to work under pressure
This is about keeping calm in a crisis and not becoming too overwhelmed or stressed.
Read more about how to answer questions about handling stress at interview
10. Confidence
In the workplace you need to strike the balance of being confident in yourself but not arrogant, but also have confidence in your colleagues and the company you work for.
Read about how to boost your confidence before a job interview
More key skills for your CV that graduate recruiters look for
Think you’ve got the top 10 covered? If you can show your mastery of a further five key skills on your CV – managing ambiguity, resilience, analytical skills, entrepreneurial skills and IT skills – you’ll be even better placed to land the graduate job you want.
Managing ambiguity
Our advice explains what is meant by managing ambiguity and why it is a particularly important skill in complex, fast-changing environments, such as the retail sector.
Read more about managing ambiguity
Resilience
Graduate employers look for resilience in their recruits because it enables employees to cope with change, problems and stress. Find out how to develop your resilience and how employers assess it during the recruitment process.
Read more about resilience
Analytical skills
Analytical skills enable you to work with different kinds of information, see patterns and trends and draw meaningful conclusions. Analytical skills are not usually assessed on your CV, but are often assessed using aptitude or psychometric tests.
Read more about analytical skills
Enterprise and entrepreneurial skills
Spotting gaps in the market, suggesting ways to improve processes, or coming up with new ideas are all signs of an entrepreneurial approach. You don’t have to set up your own business to make use of your enterprise skills; many employers will be looking out for graduate recruits with these qualities.
Read more about enterprise skills
IT skills
The best way to demonstrate your IT skills using your CV is to show that you have been able to use them to achieve something, and you can demonstrate this with examples from your studies, extracurricular activities or work experience.
How to describe your skills on your CV
Here are three tips to help you write skills on your CV in a way that showcases what you’ve gained and highlights your experience.
- When you are giving details of the skills you developed in a job, internship or work experience placement, reflect the competencies listed in the job description and give examples of the most relevant skills first.
- Use confident language to describe your skills, for example, by drawing attention to awards or praise employers have given you.
- If you’re struggling to find a way to write about your holiday or part-time jobs and the skills you learned on your CV, remember that it’s better to focus on transferable skills than routine tasks.
You’ll find much more advice on how to describe your skills in our guide to writing your CV .
You can also check out our targetjobs guide to the top retail skills for your CV .
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