Interpersonal and personal skills: what belongs on a resume, and what does not.
Personal skills are how you deal with people: reading a situation, persuading, negotiating, teaching, serving. Personality traits are who you are. A resume has room for the first, shown through what you did, and very little room for the second.
List the interpersonal skills a posting asks for, such as working with customers, persuading, negotiating, teaching or resolving conflict, and prove each in a bullet that names the people and the outcome. Leave out personality labels like 'friendly' or 'bubbly'. Describe what you did with people, and the reader will infer the personality for themselves.
How to present personal skills
- Separate skills from traits. Persuading, negotiating and teaching are skills. 'Outgoing' and 'kind' are traits. Skills go on the resume; traits show up in how you describe your actions.
- Pick the people skills the job uses. Sales leans on persuasion; healthcare on reading people; management on coordination and conflict.
- Find moments with other people. A difficult conversation, a negotiation, a training you ran, a team you helped settle.
- Write the moment as an outcome. Who you dealt with, what you did and what changed.
- Use them in your summary sparingly. One interpersonal strength that fits the role, backed by a bullet.
- Prepare to talk about them. Interviews test people skills directly, so each one you list should come with a story.
Illustrative examples to adapt
Illustrative: every name, employer, school, date and number in these samples is fictional or a bracketed placeholder. Replace each bracket with your own true details; never copy a result you did not achieve.
Conflict resolution bullet
When to use: Roles with customers, patients or teams under pressure.
Settled [type of disagreement] between [who] by [what you did: listening to both sides, proposing a compromise], which [result you can prove: work resumed, complaint withdrawn].
Persuasion bullet
When to use: Sales, fundraising, advocacy or internal change.
Persuaded [audience] to [adopt, buy, approve something] by [the approach you used], resulting in [outcome you can prove].
Teaching bullet
When to use: Any role where you showed others how to do something.
Taught [skill or process] to [number] [learners], using [method], so that [they could do what, by when].
Disclosure: TryHired makes HIRED, a paid job-search program, so we have a conflict of interest when we mention it. Every sample on this page is free to use without buying anything.
Skill or trait?
| Phrase | Skill or trait | What to write instead |
|---|---|---|
| Friendly | Trait | A bullet about the customers or people you helped. |
| Negotiation | Skill | A deal, schedule or agreement you negotiated and its result. |
| Empathetic | Trait | A situation where understanding someone changed the outcome. |
| Training others | Skill | Who you trained, on what, and how quickly they became independent. |
| Patient | Trait | A demanding situation you handled calmly, with the outcome. |
| Conflict resolution | Skill | A disagreement you settled and what happened next. |
How jobs rate interpersonal skills
Data O*NET 31.0 skill importance, 1 to 5. Counts are occupations rated 3.5 or higher; the jobs shown are TryHired career pages with the highest rating for each skill.
| O*NET skill | Occupations rated 3.5 or higher | Jobs on TryHired rated highest (importance) |
|---|---|---|
| Social Perceptiveness | 239 of 910 | Mental Health Counselor (5.0), Psychiatrist (4.8), Clinical Psychologist (4.4) |
| Persuasion | 79 of 910 | Sales Engineer (4.1), Telemarketer (4.1), CEO (4.0) |
| Negotiation | 48 of 910 | Arbitrator (4.6), Purchasing Agent (4.2), CEO (4.1) |
| Instructing | 114 of 910 | Training Specialist (4.4), Elementary School Teacher (4.2), ESL Teacher (4.2) |
| Service Orientation | 163 of 910 | Emergency Medicine Physician (4.1), Healthcare Social Worker (4.1), LPN (4.1) |
| Coordination | 191 of 910 | CEO (4.2), Chef (4.1), HR Manager (4.1) |
These ratings describe what each job asks for. They are not evidence about you: prove a skill with something you did.
The same line, rewritten
Illustrative example with placeholders.
| Version | Example |
|---|---|
| Weak | Friendly, outgoing people person with great interpersonal skills. |
| Strong | Handled [type of difficult conversation] with [who] by [what you did], which [result you can prove: issue settled, relationship kept, sale saved]. |
Why it matters: Traits like 'friendly' cannot be checked and every applicant uses them. The strong bullet shows the interpersonal skill at work, which also shows the trait.
Before you send it
- Every item in your skills list is a skill, not a personality trait.
- Each interpersonal skill is proven by a bullet with people and an outcome.
- Your summary names one people skill that matters for this role.
- You can tell a short story about each skill in an interview.
- No adjectives stand alone in your skills section.
Mistakes to avoid
- Listing personality traits instead of skills.
- Using 'people person' or 'team player' as proof of anything.
- Describing interactions without saying what changed.
- Overstating your role in a negotiation or resolution.
- Ignoring the specific people skills the posting names.
Build yours
Questions people ask
What are personal skills on a resume?
Should I put personality traits on my resume?
What is the difference between interpersonal and soft skills?
How many interpersonal skills should I list?
How this page is built
Written by Maid Dizdarevic, a career coach and 8x LinkedIn Top Voice. Advice is labelled as advice. Every sample uses a fictional person marked '(illustrative)' or a 'Your name' placeholder, and every employer, school, date and result is a bracketed placeholder for your own true details. Skill ratings come from O*NET 31.0: they describe what each occupation asks for, not what any reader has done.
- What a specific employer screens for: always read the posting.
- Your results: we never invent numbers, and you should never copy a result you did not achieve.
- Outcomes: no resume, letter, profile or program can promise an interview or a job.
- TryHired editorial guidance by Maid Dizdarevic, career coach, Nov 4, 2026.
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. TryHired selected, ranked and combined the data; O*NET is not responsible for these pages.