
What to Put on a Resume: Good Things You Should Include
Find our what you need to put on your resume and what recruiters are looking for. Use these tips and examples to make a perfect resume.
What exactly does it take to be considered organized? Do you need to have a kanban board wherever you go? Or is it enough to make your bed, and scrape out time for pursuing hobbies?
In this article, we’ll try to find the best organizational skills definition, show you why they're so important at work, and how to put them on your resume. You’ll also find a list of inspiring resources to help you improve your organizational skills as well.
This article will show you:
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Learn more about listing all kinds of skills on a resume in our guide: Best Job Skills to Put on a Resume
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Organizational skills are the abilities that let you stay focused on different tasks, and use your time, energy, strength, mental capacity, physical space, etc. effectively and efficiently in order to achieve the desired outcome.
Now—
The breadth of the organizational skills definition leads to a certain paradox.
On the one hand, they’re extremely desirable by employers of all kinds. Who wouldn’t want their employees to be effective and efficient?
On the other—
It’s hellaciously hard to put a finger on what exactly they are. Is it enough to keep your workspace nice and clean, have a to-do list, and stick to deadlines to be called organized?
Don’t worry.
We’ll clear things up!
Want to learn more about managerial skills? Head straight to our guide: Top 10 Management Skills: List & Great Advice (Not Just for Managers)
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Before we take a look at some examples of organizational skills, let’s get one thing straight.
Organizational skills are transferable.
What does it mean?
Well, we have a whole article explaining what transferable skills are.
In short—
If you’re a well-organized person, you will remain well-organized regardless of the job you’ll be doing. It's one of the soft skills you'll bring with you to any position. And it's featured as an important employability skill for any employer.
Why are organizational skills important?
Well—
Strong organizational skills are important for a variety of reasons, but they all have one common denominator:
They turn you into an efficient and effective employee.
And this is exactly why employers value strong organizational skills so much. You have the right set of hard skills but without strong organizational skills, your productivity plummets. That's why both hard skills and soft skills matter in order to be a top-notch employee.
Here's a closer look at organisational skills:
Your success may depend on how effectively you can organize your collaboration with others. Plus, it’s just as vital to identify who to collaborate with and on what projects.
Disorganized and hectic communication will damage your productivity. You must speak and write in a clear manner to be sure your message is understood. This means your communication skills and active listening skills must be up to par to achieve success in the workplace.
Organizing work in a group of people is just as essential as selecting the right people to build a team in the first place. If your organizational skills are up to snuff, you’ll be able to put together a team of exceptional talents and achieve synergistic results while boosting your leadership skills.
In fact, your delegation skills are related to your teamwork skills. Well-organized individuals know what they can do themselves, and what they need to delegate to other team members to achieve the best results. It also shows you have a strong set of interpersonal skills.
We can easily say that the most important part of a well-organized undertaking happens before anything else even takes place. The ability to plan is arguably the most important attribute of any person who claims to have strong organizational skills.
Being able to give priority to your tasks is far more important than checking off items on your to-do lists. If you can identify roadblocks ahead, break complex projects into smaller components and assess their impact on the outcome, you’re building your project management skills and developing strong problem-solving skills when something doesn't go as planned.
This goes far beyond being able to think in a logical and orderly way. Mental organizational skills allow you to research and analyze situations, prepare documentation, or think strategically among others. Thanks to your analytical skills you can adopt a methodical approach to solving problems. Here’s a list of some of the most important mental organizational skills:
Being able to keep your workplace well-organized is also important. If you can’t find necessary documents, office utilities or your computer desktop is so cluttered that you don’t remember what your wallpaper looks like, your workflow will catch a hiccup. Here’s a look at a couple of skills that fall into this category:
Time management is an extremely important organizational skill. An uberskill, if you like. The ability to perform your tasks in a timely manner, schedule, and stick to deadlines is the Holy Grail of strong organizational skills. If you can keep yourself and your team disciplined, your organization will benefit from you in each and every way.
Yes, it's definitely a vital organizational skill. Efficiency at work starts with a good night's sleep and fresh mind. Organize your mental and physical hygiene so there's room for work and play. Remember: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
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Even if you happen to be the best-organized person in the world, no one's gonna believe you.
Unless you prove it.
On your resume, organizational skills can show through in at least a couple of ways. Some more, some less obvious.
Here’s a closer look at three ways in which you can give prominence to your organizational skills on a resume:
Before any recruiter reads a single word on your resume, they'll cast a perfunctory glance at the document.
A fraction of a second is enough to form a first impression.
So make sure your resume is well-organized and grabs the recruiter's attention for a longer while.
Here's how:
Remember—
A well-organized resume layout will serve as hard evidence of your organizational skills.
But that's not everything.
Want to make your resume grab the recruiter’s attention for good? Read one of our guides:
In resume writing, there's only one rule.
Relevance.
That's why it's not enough to pick the best template for your resume.
You must identify the organizational skills the employer is looking for, and show them you've got what they need.
Start by looking at the job offer.
The job listing may look something like this:
This job description comes from a listing for the position of an administrative assistant who must have excellent organizational skills.
All the planning and organizational skills that the employer requires are highlighted in yellow.
Now—
The trick is to prepare the experience section of your resume on the basis of the job posting.
This is how you could describe your organizational skills in your resume job description:
See how it works?
A job description like this does three things:
We can still take it a step further.
If you take another look at the job description above and take out the very essence of it, you’ll end up with a list that looks more or less like this:
To give more prominence to these organizational skills, put them in a separate key skills section.
This way they’ll not just truly stand out on your resume, but will be entirely justified by what you’ve put in the experience sections.
To sum up—
There are at least three ways in which you can display your strong organizational skills on a resume:
Do you happen to be writing a resume for an administrative assistant? Well, we have a resume writing guide just for you: Administrative Assistant Resume Sample & Guide (20+ Examples)
When making a resume in our builder, drag & drop bullet points, skills, and auto-fill the boring stuff. Spell check? Check. Start building your resume here.
When you’re done, Zety’s resume builder will score your resume and tell you exactly how to make it better.
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Once your resume lands you the long-awaited job interview—
You need to be ready to answer interview question about your organizational skills.
What to expect?
Well, you’re in for a pleasant surprise.
But before I tell you what exactly to expect and how to nail your answers, let’s take a closer look at a certain interviewing technique.
Have you heard of the so-called behavioral interview questions?
These are questions that refer to particular situations from your past work experience and whose aim is to learn how you coped with or behaved in that situation.
For example:
Now—
In order to nail your answer, it’s best to stick to the so-called STAR structure. STAR is an acronym which stands for:
A good answer consists of all four elements:
You describe a situation where you were given a particular task related to the interviewer’s question. Then you explain the actions you undertook to cope with the task and discuss the results of your actions.
In the case of interview questions to determine your organizational skills, you may expect something like:
“Tell me about a situation when your planning skills and attention to detail made a difference.”
Here’s the promised good news—
The interview questions to assess your organizational skills will be based on your resume.
So, if you followed the steps outlined in the previous section:
You’ll know exactly what to expect.
Since your resume highlights your planning skills and attention to detail among others, well, expect the recruiter to be interested in these organizational skills in particular.
Now—
The only thing you need to do is to connect these skills to the achievements in your job description and structure your answer according to the STAR method.
Your answer could recount how your attention to detail and strong focus helped you review 100+ invoices and packing slips weekly to make sure all shipments are correct.
You can detail your process and tell the recruiter what steps you take to do the task efficiently. Maybe there was a moment when this task was particularly difficult to complete? How did you manage to get things right? If you failed, what did you learn?
As to your planning skills, focus on how the introduction of a shared calendar system helped you coordinate office logistics.
Tell the recruiter about the challenges you had before and how the calendar helped you deal with them.
Remember—
The interview questions to test your organizational skills will not be random. They will be based on your resume and the requirements for the position.
If you’re still not sure how to cope with interview questions on organizational skills, read our guides:
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If someone tells you, you can’t learn organizational skills—
They're either lying or have no clue what they’re talking about.
After all, we’re not talking talents.
We’re talking skills.
And skills you can learn.
The first step is to realize you need to develop your organizational skills.
But—
We can safely assume you’re past this stage.
So, without much further ado, here’s a list of resources you may find useful:
Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator
Tim Urban was once a self-proclaimed master procrastinator who realized that life is just too short to put things off. And came up with a brilliant way of getting organized.
How to Gain Control of Your Free Time
Laura Vanderkam is a time-management expert. In her talk, she will teach you how to “build the lives we want in the time we’ve got.”
How to Manage Your Time More Effectively (According to Machines)
This short TED Lesson casts an entirely new perspective on scheduling. If you want to become the master of your time, this one is just for you.
How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings
As the title suggests, David Grady will show you a couple of ways in which you can make your meetings more effective.
Time Management: How to Write a To-Do List & Know Where Your Time Goes
Gina Trapani, author of “Upgrade Your Life,” will show you how to put simple to-do lists to good use to take better control of your time.
Forget Multitasking, Try Monotasking
As a Product Designer, Paolo Cardini must work effectively and efficiently. In his talk, Paolo questions the value of multitasking, to encourage monotasking, that is doing one thing at a time.
Time Management & Organizational Skills for Students
This book is not just about improving high school students’ time management and organizational skills, it’s for their parents as well.
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
This classic book by David Allen will help you get organized and get rid of stress.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Another classic. Stephen R. Covey teaches you how to maximize your effectiveness and efficiency.
Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World
Well, if you want to get a grip on yourself and make sure your organizational skills are second to none, learn how to do it from a former Navy SEAL. General McRaven's military experience can be universally applied to a lot of non-military contexts.
If you’re seriously serious about honing your organizational skills, you might want to consider taking one of the online courses:
And—
Try some of these apps to help you get organized:
Here’s a quick recap of what you need to know about organizational skills:
Do you have any questions about organizational skills? Maybe you’d like to share some tips on developing organizational skills? Give us a shout out in the comments below! We’d love to hear from you!
Find our what you need to put on your resume and what recruiters are looking for. Use these tips and examples to make a perfect resume.
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