Top 15 Employability Skills Hiring Managers Look For

So, you've identified the job-specific skills you must showcase on your resume. Check! Now, what about the always-desirable skills that employers look for, regardless of role or industry? 

In HR lingo: employability skills. Traits such as adaptability, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills give you an edge over similar applicants who excel in technical skills alone. Knowing what they are and how to add them to your resume gets the needle moving on your job search.

This guide breaks down 15 critical employability skills you can incorporate in your applications straight away. 

What are employability skills? 

Employability skills are evergreen traits and abilities that businesses need across industries, roles, and seniority levels. Hiring managers value employability skills like communication and adaptability because they support long-term career growth, team cohesion, and productivity. 

They may be secondary to job-specific skills—those required to perform a role to desired standards—but they can still differentiate you from other qualified candidates, especially for entry-to-mid-level positions. Recruiters screen quickly and competition is high, so include them in your resume even if they seem "obvious." 

Employability skills vs. soft skills vs. hard skills

Soft skills and employability skills can overlap, but they represent different skill categories. Soft skills are non-technical, transferable skills that help teams achieve goals sustainably (such as collaboration and attention to detail). Meanwhile, employability skills help workers stay relevant across jobs and industries, and include adaptability, reliability, and independent thinking.

In contrast, hard skills are technical competencies, often based on formal qualifications and training, such as using specialized software or sales techniques.

Top 15 employability skills (with examples and resume tips)

Part 1: Looking to the future

These skills tell an employer that you're a solid investment—not just for a few months, but potentially years.

Digital skills

Few jobs involve zero interaction with technology (especially in the age of AI), so digital skills ranging from internet research to using role-specific software are must-haves. You can list specific tools (e.g., Canva) and methods (e.g., video editing) in your resume’s Skills section and link them to measurable results in your Work Experience bullet points.

Some advice from Teal Founder Dave Fano: "Show Proficiency Levels. Consider adding context: 'Python (five years)' or 'Salesforce (Certified Administrator)' when it strengthens your case."

Example: Configured and maintained point-of-sale (POS) software for a busy retail floor, cutting checkout errors by 30% in six months.

Adaptability

Adaptable employees embrace change, learn quickly, and learn from their (and others') mistakes. We're living through rapid technological, economic, and regulatory change, so adaptability is top priority. You can highlight, for instance, how you co-ordinated team-wide changes in past roles.

Example: Adjusted lesson plans to suit online learning tools, maintaining 95% student participation throughout the transition.

Pro Tip: Build your bullet points manually using our examples—or save time by drafting and editing them with Teal's Bullet Point Generator.

Leadership

It may be a loaded word, but leadership isn't an exec-only must-have skill. Strong leadership means caring about teams, best practices, and long-term success, and making hard decisions. Plus, it's a spectrum. Growing your leadership ability is a resume green flag just as much as successfully leading a team.

Example: Stepped in to lead the customer service team during a manager’s leave, maintaining 95% on-time response rates.

Part 2: Managing yourself

Understand your skills and strengths, and your team will get a more well-rounded, resilient version of you.

Growth mindset

With a growth mindset, you believe you can always develop and systematically step out of your comfort zone. For example, you might ask your manager for specialized training, learn continuously about other teams' work, or pitch yourself for leadership opportunities.

Example: Increased proposal success rate by 20% by gathering client feedback and refining pitch techniques.

Pro Tip: David Fano explains that you can showcase your growth mindset in interviews by asking questions like "What growth paths exist here?" and "How do you measure success beyond hours?"

Self motivation

Digging into self motivation reserves is underrated but extremely valuable to high-performance teams. This skill helps you "keep calm and carry on" through difficult problems and long, complex projects without external supervision. 

Example: Spearheaded a challenging client campaign despite ambiguous instructions, launching on schedule and exceeding engagement targets by 20%.

Resume myth📌: "They'll think I'm not a team player if I say I'm self-motivated."

Nope, it just depends on how you frame it. Your entire resume tells a story, so if you highlight both self-motivation and collaboration in different roles or achievements, you're striking a balance.

Reliability

Reliability is both a habit and a personal trait. You must show up consistently, maintain performance despite challenges, and display integrity across your thinking and decisions. While reliability is most visible in how you handle your responsibilities and relationships at work, you can plant signals in your resume. For example, highlight long-term achievements or times you went above and beyond role expectations. 

Example: Supervised weekend shifts for six consecutive months, resolving urgent issues and minimizing downtime.

Resilience

Employers increasingly prioritize mental, physical, and emotional resilience, especially with around six in 10 Americans struggling with burnout at work. You can build and demonstrate resilience by setting realistic targets, breaking down complex tasks, and focusing on strategic goals.

Example: Stayed solution-focused through high-pressure product recalls, coordinating rapid response plans that preserved client trust.

Part 3: Building relationships

Robots aren't taking over workplaces just yet. Hiring managers want to see that you can relate to others respectfully and constructively.

Communication

When you communicate well, you share information both verbally and non-verbally in ways that are targeted to specific people and situations. You want to show, for instance, that you do your "homework" before communicating, that you're structured, clear, and persuasive, and that you adapt based on reactions and feedback. 

David Fano advises making sure you back this up with stats and results in your Work Experience section:

Weak: "Excellent communication skills"

Strong: "Simplified complex technical concepts into executive briefings, securing $2M budget approval in one presentation"

Conflict resolution

Professional (and even personal) disagreements are a fixture of modern workplaces. And knowing how to solve them sensitively, rationally, and fairly is a huge plus for employers. This especially applies to knowledge economy jobs, like those in marketing or software engineering.

Example: Addressed friction between senior and junior staff by setting up a mentorship framework that improved retention and engagement.

Cultural awareness

Diverse teams deliver stronger business performance while requiring greater cultural awareness from staff members. This includes avoiding offensive language, respecting different religious beliefs, and making accommodations for individuals where relevant. 

Example: Co-ordinated a global marketing project rollout by gathering regional team inputs and aligning cultural differences in messaging.

Teamwork

Not everyone is a social butterfly, and that's okay. Effective teamwork is about aiming for collective goals, delegating, sharing knowledge, and setting clear expectations. In certain roles, including remote ones, team players also follow collaborative processes and use business software like project management tools.

Example: Partnered with designers, engineers, and marketers to launch a new mobile app feature, attracting 15K users in the first quarter.

Part 4: Executing work

Finally, the employability skills that help get the job done.

Time management

Great time managers accomplish more in less time without sacrificing quality. Prioritizing tasks, estimating duration, and interspersing focus with break time are all part of it. Drop it in your resume by spotlighting simultaneous projects or tight deadlines. 

Example: Managed multiple project streams during a product rollout, mitigating unexpected vendor delays and meeting all deadlines.

Creative thinking

Creative thinkers question conventional methods and ask "Why?" and "What if?" at every opportunity. This soft skill helps shorten innovation cycles (for instance, in product development) and produce better customer outcomes. Drive it home by showing measurable results from ideas you proposed.

Example: Founded an innovation division to solve recurring production issues, resulting in a $5M investment in process design and equipment.

Problem solving

Problem solving is about analyzing cause and effect, evaluating alternatives, and being solution-driven. Smart employers value this approach over "just following orders" because it roots out potential issues and maximizes outcomes for teams and clients. You can signal problem-solving with keywords such as "strategic," "analyzed," and "identified."

Example: Analyzed declining sales patterns and proposed targeted promotions that boosted annual revenue by $120K.

Decision-making

Making fast, effective decisions is particularly useful in managerial and client-facing roles, where business stakes are high. Contextualize ‌this skill by adding constraints (like limited instructions or time), methods (like data analysis), and outcomes (such as cost savings).

Example: Made real-time operational decisions during a system outage, restoring services within two hours and minimizing client disruption.

How to make employability skills pop on your resume 

You're in luck! Compared with some other role-specific skills, like software development or financial planning, employability skills needn't take up too many words on your resume. Rather, the trick is to place them strategically across sections and job-related bullet points, and pair them with concrete responsibilities and results.

Here's how to weave them into your Summary, Work Experience, and Skills sections.

Summary

The Summary section tells readers (and applicant tracking systems) what you've done and where you're headed. Select two or three relevant employability skills from your experience that also match the job description's requirements—say, communication and leadership. Then, add them in with context. For instance, explain methods, activities, or outcomes related to the skills.

Example: Adaptable marketing specialist who thrives in fast-changing digital environments, having led three cross-platform campaigns that exceeded engagement targets by 25%.

Work experience

The Work Experience section is where you prove and quantify your employability skills. Prioritize providing detail over “buzzword dumping” by using Teal's proven bullet point structure.

Formula: Success Verb + Noun + Metric [+Strategy] + Outcome

Example: Led vendor negotiations, saving $80K annually and enhancing contract terms for better service delivery.

You should also:

• Showcase the job's most important employability skills at the top of the bullet point list
• Mix employability skills with other role-specific soft and hard skills, in a natural and succinct way
• Use the job description's language where possible (for instance, "collaboration" over "teamwork") to make your resume more ATS-friendly.

"My biggest focus at that time was [...] how I was articulating each achievement based on the role. That was my favorite [Teal] feature at the start. I liked having 50 different achievements for one role, and I could just click which one I wanted to use based on what I was applying for."

- Oshen Davidson, Growth Marketing Manager and Teal user

Skills

Your Skills section should spotlight 5-8 skills that are relevant to the job description, including soft, hard, and employability skills. Nail down the job-specific skills first, since they may already include employability skills. For a Retail Assistant job posting, these could be "customer service," "time management," and "point-of-service (POS)." 

Leave a couple of skill slots for any employability skills you haven't already covered. In this example, you've covered "time management," so add other essential ones like "communication" and "reliability."

Put your employability skills on (virtual) paper

Employability skills are one of many moving parts in a polished resume. But that doesn't have to mean extra time or stress. A quick way to put your employability skills to paper—along with achievements, qualifications, and more—is by using an AI-powered tool like Teal

You can use Teal's Resume Builder to create your master resume, identify job description keywords, and generate bullet points based on your employability skills. Then, using the Job Application Tracker, check which resume versions (and specific skills) tapped the most callbacks. 

Finally, you can use the Resume Builder to revisit and refresh your resume periodically as you develop your employability skills.

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