In theory, matching skills to job openings should be easy. Hiring teams take the time to write out exactly what they’re looking for in a new hire. And since you can see that posting before you ever send them your resume, you can match your skills to their needs. It’s like they give you a blueprint to follow!

But it’s not quite that simple. It can be hard to understand how the skills you already have will apply to the job you’re applying for. 

Table of Contents

1. Start with a Skills Analysis
2. Match Your Skills to the Job Posting
3. What If You Don’t Have All the Skills and Employer Wants?

Start with a Skills Analysis

The best place to start is to figure out what skills you have. 

Skills are different from past job responsibilities. A task or responsibility for a restaurant’s assistant manager could be making schedules. But the associated skills could be proficiency with scheduling software, attention to detail, or project management. 

As you can easily see, these skills aren’t limited to creating schedules. They will be useful in many future roles. And it’s skills that can be repurposed into the new role that will help you win the interview. 

To do a skills analysis, start with a list of all of the tasks you’re currently responsible for. Then, break each one down into their component skills. What competencies do you possess that aid in your current success?

Here’s a list of possible skills to help you get started:

• Planning/organizing
• Computer proficiency
• Coding or software development
• Customer service
• Art or graphic design
• Customer service
• Project management
• Public speaking
• Finance or accounting
• Writing or editing
• Written communication
• Delegation
• Sales or marketing

Match Your Skills to the Job Posting

Some applicants list all of their work skills on their resumes and cover letters, expecting the hiring manager to sift through and pull out the relevant pieces of information. Instead, you should only present the skills that the job posting asks for or that are clearly related to the position. Make the work easier on the person reading your resume. 

For example: if you’re applying for a position as a FOH manager after working in the kitchen for years, your skills with a spatula aren’t as relevant. But you will have other skills that will be applicable to the new job. Maybe you were responsible for updating 86’d items in the POS, so you have some technical understanding of how those systems work. Or perhaps you helped out as expediter on occasion, so you are intimately familiar with the connection between FOH and BOH and you’ll recognize proper plating. 

Spend your limited resume real estate on the skills that match up to the job’s requirements, instead of padding it with skills that won’t be relevant to the job. 

What If You Don’t Have All the Skills and Employer Wants?

Think of a job posting as a wish list. If you have everything on it, that’s great! But most hiring managers know that it’s unlikely to find every skill in one candidate. 

Don’t let a few missing skills prevent you from throwing your hat into the ring. One survey showed that resumes that display 50% to 60% of a job’s required skills are nearly as likely to get an interview as those that list 100% of the skills. 

So be honest about what skills you do and don’t possess, but don’t hesitate to apply if you’re short of a few. Maybe those skills you don’t have were on the “wish list” but not the “required list.”