Highlighting Key Strengths on Your CV: A Guide

Key Differences Between Strengths and Skills

Unlike skills, which can be learned and developed, strengths are closer to natural, inherent characteristics that define your personality and working style. While you can work to develop your strengths, they tend to be things that come naturally to you. Understanding your strengths can help you to plot a suitable career path, identifying jobs that match your qualities, learning patterns and personality. They can also help you to settle into new jobs, build relationships with colleagues and become a valuable employee who contributes towards success for the organisation.

Skills are also critical to your job applications, but in a different way to strengths. Skills refer to technical abilities and transferable skills that are specifically relevant to the job. These are often listed in the job description to help you understand the types of abilities you’ll need to carry out the role. You list skills on your CV in the skills section. Strengths tend to be listed separately, or mentioned throughout your CV.

While skills are things you can learn, develop and build on during your career, they can also become stale and even lost over time. On the other hand, strengths tend to be things that stay with you throughout your career, and often last a lifetime.

Understanding Strengths for a CV

Listing your strengths on your CV is essential because it helps to create a more complete picture of you as a candidate and what you’ll bring to an organisation. Your strengths provide a strong indication to employers about how well suited you are to the role and how well you’re likely to fit into the organisation. They speak to your ability to work in a team, organise your time, build relationships and deliver success for a company.

In many ways, the strengths you possess are just as important as your relevant work experience and key skills, because without having the strengths the employer is looking for, you won’t fit the role. Your strengths are also unique to you. While many candidates may follow a similar career path or gather the same experience as you, nobody else can offer the same strengths. This is why it’s essential to gain an understanding of your strengths, so you can showcase them effectively on your CV.

Top Strengths to Highlight on Your CV

Take a look at these key strengths for your CV, that can improve your chances of job application success:

Leadership: while management skills can be taught, leadership is more inherent. Leadership involves the ability to inspire others to reach their full potential and to create a vision that others want to follow.

Self-motivation: being self-motivated can help you towards positive achievements in almost any role. Employers will be encouraged that you won’t need constant monitoring to make sure you remain productive.

Communication: good communication is the key to success in various jobs that involve working with other people or serving customers. Verbal and written communication, as well as strong listening skills, can set you up for success.

Problem-solving: your ability to assess challenges and find new and creative ways to overcome them is valuable in many settings. Problem-solving ability helps with resilience, productivity and adaptability. 

Honesty/integrity: holding high standards of honesty and integrity in your working life will help to create a positive impression with employers. Think about situations in your career where your honesty has led to positive, and unexpected outcomes.

Dedication/work ethic: there’s no substitute for a strong work ethic. Employers will be encouraged that you’re willing to go the extra mile to ensure success.

Teamwork: almost every job requires an element of teamwork. Showing teamwork as a strength will encourage employers that you’ll fit into the team successfully and contribute towards shared goals and objectives.

Creativity: having a creative mindset isn’t just necessary for creative roles. You can use your creativity in almost any setting, whether developing new ideas, devising new ways of working or producing creative content.

Flexibility/versatility: with the rapid advance of technology and changing ways of working, the ability to show flexibility and versatility is extremely valuable. These strengths show employers that you’ll thrive regardless of setting and circumstance.

Decision-making: the ability to be decisive is a highly desirable trait in business and most other professional settings. Indecisive people can be far less productive, so try to show you can make the right decision when it matters.

While many candidates may follow a similar career path or gather the same experience as you, nobody else can offer the same strengths.

Demonstrating Strengths in a CV

Follow these tips to help you showcase strengths on your CV for maximum effect:

Crafting a Strong CV Objective

Your CV objective or summary is the first place to showcase your strengths. This section is essential to creating a positive first impression with the reader. Aim to explain who you are, what you want to achieve and what value you offer to the organisation, referring to one or two of your greatest strengths that can set you apart from other candidates.

Demonstrating Strengths in Work Experience

Use the bullet points under each job entry in your work experience CV section to show how your strengths have contributed towards successes in your career. Use examples of projects and activities that required you to utilise your strengths and led to positive outcomes for the organisation. Back up your points with evidence, including performance metrics, figures, feedback and other quantifiable results to prove how your strengths can be an asset for the employer.

Showcasing Strengths in the Education Section

Your CV education section gives you further opportunity to showcase your strengths. This section can be particularly relevant if you’re a recent graduate, or you’re lacking work experience and choose to use a functional CV format. The types of strengths to list in your education section could be related to your commitment to learning and development, or showcasing your ability to collaborate, research a subject or carry out analytical tasks.

Listing Strengths in the Skills Section

Depending on the structure and layout of your CV, you may wish to list your strengths in your skills section. Rather than appearing in your list of hard skills alongside things such as computer skills and other technical abilities required for the job, it’s usually best to add your strengths in your soft skills list. This will place them alongside other personal skills. They should sit comfortably in this section, as they tend to match transferable skills that you can bring to any role.

Identifying Your Unique Strengths

To make the most of your strengths and harness them to positive effect in your job applications, you’ll need to truly understand them. This means spending some time identifying what they are and how they’ve contributed towards success, both for yourself and your employer. 

One way to understand your personal strengths is to spend a period of self-reflection. This involves reflecting on what’s gone well in your career, what hasn’t gone so well and how your personality qualities contributed to these successes and challenges. Think about achievements in previous jobs, and the skills and strengths you needed to show to bring about success.

Another way to identify your key strengths is to review feedback and appraisals from previous jobs. Your colleagues and managers may have a greater insight into your personal qualities and strengths than you do, as they work with you on an everyday basis and learn how to get the best from you. Constructive feedback can be one of the most powerful ways to better understand your strengths.

One alternative way to understand your strengths, and the assets you can bring to your next role, is to undertake a personality profiling test. These can draw out your natural strengths and help you to understand why you perform some tasks and roles better, or more easily, than others.

Key Takeaways for Making the Most of Strengths on Your CV

Your strengths are a key asset for your job applications, so make sure you highlight them on your CV. Think about previous successes and working environments, and how you helped the project or organisation to thrive. Review CV examples to better understand the strengths required for the role, and make sure you’re a good fit before applying. Using professional CV templates like those offered by CVwizard can help your applications stand out from the crowd. Sign up today to access a wealth of tools and resources to create a winning CV.