How to Showcase Time Management Skills on Your Resume

Why time management skills matter 

The ability to prioritize, organize, and execute tasks efficiently is essential to both employees and companies. 

Organizations need workers with strong time management skills to effectively meet deadlines, manage workloads, and collaborate with others. For example, a successful content team can only enjoy productivity when every member is on time – the writer must deliver articles to the editor on their schedule, and the editor must submit the finished piece to the chief editor on their schedule.

Time management skills benefit employees, too. The ability to complete your tasks quickly and efficiently improves your focus and reduces your stress levels. It lets people maintain a healthy work-life balance and finish work on time, without pressuring themselves.

This valuable skill also impacts your personal life, helping you finish housework like laundry and doing the dishes so you can keep a clean house while still having time to yourself. Time management also helps you get ready in the morning so you can arrive at work fresh and ready for a full day.

Key time management skills to highlight 

Time management is an umbrella term encompassing a series of soft skills that boost productivity and help you organize your work. Knowing which skills sit under this umbrella help you laser-focus your resume and provide in-depth examples for employers, helping show your relevance to a role.

Here are the main time management skills to highlight:

• Prioritization: The ability to understand which tasks are more important than others and complete them in a logical order.
• Scheduling: Planning future tasks and creating an effective schedule is an essential management skill that helps organize multiple projects and mitigate risks like delays. 
• Time-blocking: This skill involves sectioning your day into blocks where you devote your energy to a specific task, preventing multitasking and improving focus.
• Delegation: Assigning duties to other workers when you don’t have the capacity or someone else has the required skills.
• Goal setting: Determining goals for your work week maintains your focus and helps you plan your time for each day.
• Deadline management: Completing tasks on or before their due dates shows respect for your colleagues and ensures a smooth workflow.
• Focus: Maintaining focus helps you get duties done efficiently without giving in to distractions like conversations with colleagues or surfing the internet.
• Organization: Both physical and virtual organization help manage your time, such as keeping a planner or journal and managing an online work calendar.
• Adaptability: Agility helps professionals stay on top of tasks even as they shift. Using critical thinking to complete your responsibilities despite roadblocks helps workflow continue smoothly.

Incorporating time management skills in resumes

There are many ways to incorporate time management skills in resumes. 

The first and most apparent is the Skills section. We recommend you include five to 10 skills here, usually with more hard skills than soft skills. When you list time management skills here, be sure to list specific names like the ones provided above rather than simply saying Time Management.

Be creative and weave your time management expertise throughout your resume, like subtly mentioning it in your resume summary. Here’s an example:

Handling a large volume of daily calls shows you’re efficient and productive with your time, which means you’re saying you have the skills without being blunt.

Using metrics helps reinforce your claims. This gives employers a tangible outcome and adds weight to your statements. Here’s a quick example comparing typical responsibilities and quantified achievements with metrics:

• Standard responsibilities: “Managed projects with tight deadlines.”
• Quantified achievement: “Managed 4 project deadlines with 100% accuracy.”

Using a flexible resume template is the best way to get innovative with your resume. Browse our professional resume templates and add your time management skills in a unique way.

Tailor time management skills for different applications 

It sounds nice to make one “ultimate” resume and send it out to every company, but it isn’t effective. Ensure you tailor your resume specifically for each application to ensure they’re targeted and display your relevance to the hiring manager.

Comb through the job description thoroughly to discover what the employer is looking for and incorporate the skills and qualifications in your application. For example, a job description might ask for a manager with excellent communication skills who can talk to their team and delegate tasks quickly.

You can build your resume around this information and display your time management skills by crafting work entries like this one:

This takes the guesswork out so the hiring manager can immediately see your connection to this role. From a quick glance, they can see why you applied and that you have the required skills.

This tactic also helps you craft an ATS resume. Applicant tracking systems (ATS) scan resumes for specific keywords that are usually in the job description, so incorporating these terms throughout your application ensures your resume passes the platform and lands in the hiring manager’s inbox.

For more examples of how to tailor your resume, browse our resume samples and get inspired.

Showcase projects and achievements related to time management 

We always recommend Show, don’t tell. Demonstrate your time management skills by describing your work experiences and projects, and hiring managers will naturally see your skills.

For example, describe how you spearheaded the implementation of a new customer relationship management system and enhanced team efficiency. You can take this even further by describing how productivity was lagging before the new system or how much better things were afterward.

We recommend you use the STAR method here. This is a framework useful for both resumes and job interviews where you discuss the Situation, Task, Action, and Result, helping you set the scene and properly showcase your achievements. Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Situation: Detail the situation and convey the right feeling to put the recruiter in your shoes.
• Task: Discuss the issue at hand and what you needed to solve or accomplish.
• Action: Describe the actions you took to solve the problem and which skills you used.
• Result: Present the outcome of the situation and the impact your accomplishment had.

The STAR method is a powerful way to show hiring managers your time management skills and meaningfully convey your qualifications.

“Ensure you tailor your resume specifically for each application to ensure they’re targeted and display your relevance to the hiring manager.”

Display your productivity with a time management skills resume

Time management is a broad term that covers many essential skills. Employers seek these skills in every employee for different reasons, and you must convey them to impress hiring managers and land that interview. Just follow our tips:

• Specify which time management skills you have, including planning, adaptability, and delegation
• Incorporate time management creatively, such as in your resume summary and work experience section
• Tailor resumes for each application to ensure each one is relevant
• Showcase your time management skills by using the STAR method

Ready to put these tips to use? Take advantage of CVwizard’s resume builder to craft a professional time management resume today.