Interpersonal Skills For a CV: Top Skills with Tips

What Are Interpersonal Skills?

Interpersonal skills reflect your ability to communicate, interact and form relationships with other people. These skills can have a big impact on the quality of communication in a workplace. Teams with strong interpersonal skills typically collaborate more effectively and efficiently. Interpersonal skills affect team dynamics, with stronger working relationships helping to build trust, familiarity and interdependence between team members. Relationship building skills can also play a significant role in your interactions with customers and clients. They impact the first impression you create with others, the relationships you build and, ultimately, the likelihood of making a sale.

Top Interpersonal Skills to Include in Your CV

As with most soft skills, simply listing a general, vague skill like ‘interpersonal skills’ on your CV probably won’t be enough to impress an employer and make you stand out from the crowd. If the job description calls for strong interpersonal skills, you’ll want to show various types of related skills throughout your CV, along with examples of how you’ve used them to positive effect in your career to date. Take a look below at some of the most valuable interpersonal skills to add to your CV:

Communication skills

Communication skills include both verbal and written communication. Depending on your job, one or both types of communication skill may be important. If you speak to customers, deliver presentations or make lots of phone calls in your job, verbal communication skills are essential. If you write reports, create content or deliver administrative work, including writing letters and emails, written communication is vital.

Here are examples of how to reference verbal and written communication skills in a CV:

Teamwork and collaboration

Almost all jobs require some form of contact with colleagues. As such, the ability to collaborate and work as part of a team is an essential workplace skill. Strong collaboration skills are even more critical in remote or hybrid work environments, where everyday contact with your colleagues is limited.

Take a look at this example of teamwork skills for a CV:

Active listening

Listening skills are just as important as verbal communication skills. When it comes to forming and maintaining strong working relationships, your ability to take on information, understand and take action accordingly, is vital to team cohesion and success. Active listening involves fully engaging with a speaker, asking follow-up questions and summarising their points back to them, to show you understand.

A CV example entry for active listening skills for a CV might look like this:

Adaptability

A quality that’s growing in importance in the rapidly changing world of work, adaptability is often just as important as your hard skills. This skill demonstrates your ability to respond to external circumstances and challenges, and remain productive. This is a critical skill to possess in environments where you’re collaborating closely as a team, as it showcases your understanding and consideration of others.

Here’s an example of a CV bullet point highlighting adaptability:

‘Adjusted seamlessly to a remote-first working policy, maintaining line-management responsibility for a team of five, conducting regular video check-ins and catch-ups to increase staff survey engagement scores from 3.8 to 4.2 out of 5.’

Conflict resolution

Conflict resolution skills showcase a sensitivity and an ability to manage people, while maintaining team harmony. They include elements of active listening, problem-solving, communication, negotiation, emotional intelligence and collaboration. As such, if you can successfully showcase conflict resolution skills on a CV, you’ll also be proving the strength of your interpersonal skills.

Take a look below at an example CV entry for conflict resolution:

Where to Showcase Interpersonal Skills in Your CV

For most job applications, the key place to show your interpersonal skills is your work experience section. This will show employers how you’ve used these skills in your career to date. However, if interpersonal skills are particularly vital to the job, you’ll want to showcase them throughout your CV and cover letter. Follow these tips for mentioning interpersonal skills throughout your CV:

CV summary

If you consider interpersonal skills to be one of your strongest assets, you may want to mention them up front in your CV summary or personal statement. Use synonyms for interpersonal skills to show your communication skills, relationship building, collaboration skills or whatever else is most essential to the job description. For example:

‘A strong collaborator with a track record of building productive, engaged teams and reducing staffing attrition rates.’

Work experience

The key section for most CVs, your work experience section is where you show prospective employers how your skills have led to positive outcomes and achievements in your career to date. Utilise the STAR method to show the impact of your interpersonal skills. Describe the context of the ‘situation’, outline the ‘task’ or challenge you faced, explain the ‘action’ you took and share the ‘result’ or outcome of your intervention. For example:

‘Developed cross-functional relationships by leading weekly strategy sessions with sales, product, and creative teams, resulting in a 30% increase in alignment on campaign goals and a 20% improvement in project turnaround time.’

Skills section

Your skills section provides the opportunity to list a summary of your key skills, so employers can quickly and easily understand what you would bring to the role. Make sure your list reflects the job description, and be careful not to overload the list with too many skills, or with skills that aren’t directly relevant to the role. If interpersonal skills are high on the list of priorities for the employer, include several soft skills that showcase your ability to work closely with others.

Volunteering and extracurricular activities

If you’re struggling to showcase relevant interpersonal skills from your work experience, you might wish to use optional sections, such as volunteering experience or extracurricular activities. Only include these sections if they can show employers you have the necessary skills for the job. Activities that demonstrate your interpersonal skills may include volunteering for community organisations, participation in team sports, organising events or mentoring peers. With each section, add bullet points in the same style as your work experience section, to show how you’ve used your interpersonal skills.

"If the job description calls for strong interpersonal skills, you’ll want to show various types of related skills throughout your CV."

Tips for Tailoring Interpersonal Skills to the Job Description

To make a strong impression with your job application, you’ll need to tailor your skills to match the job description. When it comes to interpersonal skills, pay attention to the keywords in the job description related to communication, collaboration and working relationships, and make sure your CV includes these. If you’re having trouble identifying the soft skill keywords in the job description, you could paste the job description into an AI assistant or chatbot, such as ChatGPT, and ask it to highlight the most relevant keywords. This will help you understand exactly what the employer is looking for.

Another way to inform the interpersonal skills you include in your CV is to become more familiar with the company and its values. Review the company website and take note of any core values or principles referenced there. This can also help you understand how to pitch your CV and cover letter, and reference the right personal qualities on your CV.

Take a look at this example excerpt from a job advert, with an example of how to mirror the keywords and language back to the employer:

Job advert excerpt:

CV bullet point example:

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Listing Interpersonal Skills on a CV

Avoid these common mistakes to ensure you make the best possible impact when listing interpersonal skills on your CV:

• Listing skills without context or proof: providing a list of skills, but not evidencing them with examples of how you’ve used them in your work, or in other areas of your life, is unlikely to convince employers that you’ve got what it takes for the job.
• Using generic phrases and keywords: adding vague or over-used phrases and keywords to a CV can reduce its impact. Avoid simply referring to ‘interpersonal skills’, but instead provide detailed examples of how various skills have helped you in your professional relationships.
• Not tailoring your interpersonal skills to the job description: for every job, some interpersonal skills will be more important than others. Be sure to tailor your CV to emphasise the most essential skills for the role.
• Misplacing interpersonal skills in your CV: to stand out from other candidates, you’ll want to spread references to your interpersonal skills throughout your CV. Simply listing interpersonal skills in your skills section will fail to make a strong impression on recruiters and hiring managers.

Optimising your CV for UK employers

Before you send your CV to a UK employer, use this checklist to make sure you’re giving yourself the best possible chance of success:

• Have you tailored your interpersonal skills to the job description? Tailoring your skills will make your application more relevant.
• Are your skill examples supported by evidence and results? Showing how your skills led to positive outcomes proves the impact you’ve made.
• Have you varied your vocabulary to avoid repetition of skills? Highlighting various types of interpersonal skills will show the employer the diversity of your skill set.
• Is your CV as concise as possible? Remaining concise and to-the-point will help the employer to quickly scan and evaluate your CV.
• Have you clearly labelled each section of your CV? Clearly labelled CV sections make your application more likely to pass the ATS stage.
• Is your CV free of spelling and grammar errors? Spelling errors can seriously undermine your chances of success.
• Are you using a clear, professional font? A readable serif or sans serif font, between sizes 10 and 12, makes your CV more accessible.
• Are your margins and line spacing enhancing the readability of your CV? A clear CV template with a subtle design and a professional layout will provide a more engaging read for the employer.
• Does your cover letter showcase your strongest skills and best achievements? Draw attention to your best qualities in your cover letter. For tips on how to write a strong cover letter, see Jobseeker’s cover letter articles.
• Does your cover letter template match your CV template? Use a cover letter template that matches your CV design, for a consistent look and feel that conveys professionalism to the employer.

Key Takeaways for Adding Interpersonal Skill to Your CV

Interpersonal skills can be some of the most impactful skills to add to your CV. Tailor the interpersonal skills you mention, and use synonyms that showcase your ability to work closely with others and form productive working relationships. Stand out by showing how your interpersonal skills have led to successful outcomes in previous jobs. You can also stand out from other candidates by using a professional CV design from Jobseeker. Sign up today to access CV articles and tools for a successful application.