The resume skills that get jobseekers hired 

Job seekers are facing what economists are calling a “low-hire, low-fire” economy. The U.S. hiring rate has fallen to its lowest level since April 2020, while job applications rose 31% in a year against just 7% growth in openings. For job seekers, the sharp competition means their resume, and the skills section on it, has seconds to stand out against a growing stack.  

Artificial intelligence (AI) screening and interview tools now filter candidates before a human ever sees them, and hiring has shifted towards skills over job titles and degrees, with SHRM research finding that 79% of HR professionals rate skills assessments as more important than traditional hiring criteria. The skills section of a resume, once an afterthought, is now doing the leg work. But which skills are most likely to lead to a job?

Our report analyzed a sample of 9,700 resumes, matching each against a LinkedIn-derived employment dataset to see who landed a new role, and which skills were present on their resume when they did. Just 15.8%, roughly one resume in six, led to a new job. Our report then found the 24 most common skills across those resumes, ranking them by how often the people listing them got hired, revealing which skills beat the one in six benchmark. 

When ranking the 24 most common resume skills are ranked, it’s clear to see that candidates who included technical and analytical skills on their resumes were more likely to land a job. By comparison, the generic skills that appear most often across resumes were the least likely to lead to one.  

• Job seekers with at least one technical or analytical skill on their resume were hired 20.1% of the time, compared to just 14.2% of those listing only soft skills  

• Candidates with technical skills are roughly 42% more likely to land a job  

• Tableau is the skill most likely to lead to a hire, with a quarter (25.1%) of job seekers listing it going on to get hired  

Rank	Skill	Share who were hired	Share of resumes with skill
1	Tableau	25.1%	3.2%
2	Data analysis	22.9%	5.4%
3	Python	22.1%	9.1%
4	SQL	21.4%	10.2%
5	Adaptability	20.9%	4.4%
6	Git	20.9%	5.6%
7	Java	20.8%	4.7%
8	Docker	20.6%	3.2%
9	Power BI	19.7%	3.6%
10	Excel	18.6%	9.1%
11	Sales	18.3%	5.4%
12	JavaScript	17.6%	5.2%
13	Leadership	16.9%	12.3%
14	Project management	16.8%	8.5%
15	Strategic planning	16.4%	2.8%
16	Teamwork	16.2%	12.6%
17	Process improvement	15.9%	3.7%
18	Regulatory compliance	15.6%	2.8%
19	Communication	15.3%	16.4%
20	Time management	14%	7.9%
21	Problem solving	13.6%	11%
22	Attention to detail	13.2%	5.5%
23	Customer service	12.6%	11.3%
24	Critical thinking	12.1%	2.6%

Interestingly, only one soft skill broke ranks. More than 1 in 5 (20.9%) job seekers who listed adaptability went on to land a job, putting it shoulder to shoulder with technical skills like Git and Java. In a job market where AI is shifting role responsibilities, adaptability is one soft skill employers have a concrete reason to look for. It signals a candidate who can take on new tools and ways of working as their role shifts around them. 

The uncomfortable truth for many job seekers, is that the most common occurring skills they’re including on resumes are unlikely to be the ones that get them hired. “Communication” is the single most common skill of all, appearing on roughly one in six resumes (16.4%), yet just 15.3% of the job seekers listing it went on to land a job.  

• All of the most-listed skills (communication, teamwork, leadership, customer service and problem-solving) led to a job at or below the 15.8% average rate 

• Customer service (12.6%) and critical thinking (12.1%) were among the worst-performing skills measured  

The data doesn’t suggest communication and teamwork don’t matter at work, only that they carry little weight on a resume. With each of the five most common skills appearing on more than one in ten resumes, they do little to separate one candidate from the next. The technical skills at the tp of the table are far rarer, with none appearing on more than 10.2% of resumes, and each points to specific, verifiable work. 

The natural assumption is that this is a tech story, and that skills such as Python only matter if you’re applying to tech jobs. However, of the 18 skills with enough data to test, job seekers with a technical skill were hired more often than those with only soft skills in 9 of 11 industries.  

• In healthcare, 15.6% of job seekers listing SQL landed a job, compared to an 11.1% across the sector  

• In finance, job seekers listing SQL were hired 26% of the time against a 20% sector average, and in government 20.3% against 15.4%

Interestingly, payoff for including technical skills on your resume is biggest in the industries least associated with them, whereas in the technology sector itself skill barely registers, because employers there expect one. 

Industry	Hired with a technical skill	Hired with soft skills only
Education	31%	11%
Real estate & communication	23%	9%
Hospitality & food service	24%	13%
Nonprofit	29%	19%
Finance & insurance	24%	16%
Healthcare	15%	10%
Manufacturing	16%	12%
Professional services	22%	18%
Government	17%	16%
Retail & e-commerce	13%	14%
Technology	19%	21%

One skill, however, does depend on the field you’re working in: teamwork. In hospitality and food service, 23.5% of job seekers citing teamwork landed a job, well above the 13.9% sector average, with the same pattern in education and nonprofit. In manufacturing, just 8.2% did against a 14% average. Teamwork is a meaningful skill in service, but not as useful in other industries. 

Employers have made their appetite for AI skills clear. Microsoft and LinkedIn’s Work Trend Index found that 66% of leaders would not hire someone without AI skills, and 71% would rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than an experienced one without. However, job seekers don’t seem to have caught up, as only 3% of resumes name any AI-related skill at all.  

• Job seekers listing any AI skill were hired 21.3% of the time, compared to 15.4% of those without one, making them 1.4 times more likely to land a job  

• TensorFlow was the single strongest skill measured anywhere in the research, with nearly 3 in 10 (29.6%) job seekers listing it landing a job, almost double the average 

AI skill	Share who were hired	Share of resumes with skill
TensorFlow	29.6%	0.9%
Machine Learning	22.8%	1.2%
PyTorch	22.1%	0.8%
Generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Copilot, prompt engineering)	21.5%	3.1%
AI/ML engineering (family)	20.6%	3.6%
Scikit-learn	20.2%	0.8%
“Artificial intelligence” (generic)	20%	0.6%
No AI skill on resume	15.4%	93.4%

The payoff for including AI skills on your resume is not reserved for machine-learning specialists. Candidates whose roles have never called for engineering tools like TensorFlow, but who listed everyday generative-AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot or prompt engineering, were hired 21.5% of the time.

The report finds that a skills section works best with the most unique skills. Aspiring workers should audit their skills section for generic claims and replace them with concrete, checkable ones. Job seekers naming a specific tool, method or platform were hired 1.2 to 1.6 times more often than average.  

For HR and talent teams, the same data is a reminder of what employees leaving your organization are walking into. Job seekers who lead with generic skills are measurably less likely to land, which is exactly the gap that structured outplacement support closes, from resume positioning through to placement. And for the people who stay, career development that builds concrete, verifiable skills is now demonstrably tied to employability, not just performance. 

This report is a resume analysis of data from Careerminds and its career-services brands, conducted in May 2026. A sample of 58,433 resumes was matched against a LinkedIn derived employment dataset and 9,700 had enough follow-up history to observe an outcome. A hire was counted as the first new position starting after the resume was submitted, giving a 15.8% base rate and a median time-to-hire of 64 days.  
 
Skills were taken from each resume skills section and grouped into 24 canonical skills. Hiring rates are only reported for groups of 50 or more resumes, and the “share of resumes with skill” figures show each skill’s share of the 9,700 followed resumes.