Including Time Management Skills on Your Resume

Updated June 17, 20221.3k

Time management skills are extremely important for people in all types of work. How can you show off these skills on your resume?

Time Management Skills

Time management is one of the most important skills that you can have as a worker. Whether you’re working for yourself or working as part of a team, time management skills help you in getting things done and completing important tasks more effectively. Here’s what you need to know about including time management skills on your resume.

What Are Time Management Skills?

Time management skills are, to an extent, just what they sound like: skills that allow you to prioritize different tasks and have enough time for all the specific tasks that you need to do throughout the day. When you’re good at time management skills, you’ll take control of your time, which means that you’ll typically be able to maintain a better work-life balance and manage your task list more effectively. One of the key elements of time management skills is being able to avoid “time wasters,” which are tasks that are not urgent or important and yet suck up a significant amount of your time. These types of actions can lead to procrastination, leaving you with less time for the important things in your life, including your workday as a whole.

The Best Time Management Skills for a Resume

Time management is not just a single skill; it’s actually a whole matrix of skills that you should showcase. Here are a few of the skills that you might want to list on your resume if you’re trying to show off important time management skills:

Multitasking
Avoiding procrastination
Teamwork
Stress management
Work-life balance
Special techniques (Pomodoro technique, Eisenhower matrix)

These are all useful soft skills that you can include on your resume if you’re trying to showcase your time management skills. Additionally, it’s best if you know what you did with those time management skills – have you reduced your stress levels? Do you take more phone calls? Have you prioritized your mental health? Knowing these things makes it easier to determine which skills to include on your resume.

Tips for Showing Off Your Time Management Skills

The most efficient way to show off time management skills is not just to list “Great at time management” on your resume. Instead, provide details on how you’ve implemented time management skills all throughout your job experiences.

If you just state, “Good at time management,” then your hiring manager has no idea whether or not that’s true. Include your time management skills in your resume summary or resume objective, in your job descriptions for previous jobs, and in your cover letter. Finally, remember that you don’t have to include time management skills if you don’t feel like it’s one of the best skills for your resume. There are dozens of soft skills that you might be good at, and if you don’t feel like time management is one of your best skills, then you may want to focus on other soft skills throughout your resume.

FAQ: Time Management Skills

What is the benefit of time management skills?

Time management skills allow you to get more done in the same amount of time every day. Without quality time management skills, you may end up procrastinating throughout the day, getting fewer things done, and disrupting your workflow to check notifications and scroll through time wasting apps. Time management skills allow you to get things done more quickly, allowing you to make the most of the time you have.

How can I develop time management skills?

There are many, many ways you can develop your time management skills. Here are a few options:

Using time management tools is one of the best ways to develop time management skills overall. Time management apps, for example, might put a time limit on the amount of time you can spend on certain social media apps on your phone. This can allow for better time management because you can measure the amount of time you spend on those time wasting apps.

You can also try new time management techniques like the famous Eisenhower Matrix. This divides your tasks into four quadrants ranked by how urgent they are and how important they are. Urgent tasks are tasks that you need to get done quickly, while important tasks are tasks that have large impacts on your life. Urgent, important tasks you do immediately, important, non-urgent tasks you schedule for later, urgent, non-important tasks you delegate, and non-important, non-urgent tasks you don’t do in your workspace.

If you’re trying for effective time management skills, then try out one of these options to see whether it helps you with your goal setting.

What jobs most prominently need time management skills?

Time management skills can be important for many jobs, but jobs, where stressful timelines and quick turnarounds are important are the best ones to include time management in. Additionally, you can check the job description of any given job to see whether time management skills are listed in the description. If they are, then you’ll probably want to prioritize listing these types of skills.

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About The Author

Cindi Cervone Carlson

Cindi Cervone Carlson is a Senior Vice President for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. Cindi is responsible for developing, delivering, and implementing a dynamic, world-class organization dedicated to delivering outplacement consulting, training, support, and executive coaching. Cindi started her career at Challenger as a client who had lost her job. Over the past nine years, she has risen from an entry-level, part-time professional to Senior Vice President.