🇿🇦 CV guide

Skills for your CV: what to include and examples by role.

Work out which skills genuinely belong on your CV and learn how to describe them clearly for admin, virtual assistant, customer service and appointment setting roles.

See how to write them View remote jobs

Keep only what you could stand behind in a two minute conversation.

Task, not titleDescribe what you did, not just the name of your previous job.

Focused beats longA short list chosen for the role communicates more than a long generic one.

Writing counts more remotelyIn distributed teams, clarity in writing stops being a nice extra.

Honesty firstDo not overstate a tool, language level or number you cannot back up.

The basics

What counts as a skill on a CV

You have the CV open, you have reached the section headed Skills, and there it is: an empty block and no instructions. Most people put down three or four words, something like hard working, communication, team player, and move on.

The problem is almost never that the person has no skills. It is that nobody teaches you how to describe work you have already done.

A skill is something you can demonstrate in practice, whether you picked it up at work, while studying, through practice, or by dealing with real situations. That last part matters. You do not need a job title that matches. You need to be able to stand behind what you have written if someone asks about it in an interview.

Hard skills and soft skills

Hard skills are the ones that can be checked: systems you use, processes you run, languages you speak. Spreadsheets, invoicing, stock control, working in a ticketing system, diary management. Someone could test you on them.

Soft skills show up in how you work: organisation, clarity in writing, working without being chased, keeping your head when a customer does not. They are harder to evidence in a single line, which is exactly why they need a concrete example rather than an adjective.

A useful skills section often includes a mix. A list of only vague soft skills can read as filler, while a list of only tools may miss important ways of working.

Skills, competencies or strengths?

The heading varies. Some CV formats say Skills, others say Competencies, others say Key Strengths, and some combine two of them. There is no single standard. The heading usually matters less than the content underneath it.

What goes underneath it is what counts. If your CV already has a heading, leave it and put your attention into the content.

Starting point

What skills to include on your CV

Use these as a starting point, and keep only what you genuinely do.

Organisation and admin

Diary and calendar management
Filing and record keeping, including version control
Processing orders, invoices and data capture
Preparing reports from information held in different places
Tracking deadlines and deciding what needs attention first
Writing down how a recurring task is done
Supplier contact and follow-up

Communication and customer service

Handling customers by phone, email and chat
Clear, plain written communication
Logging queries and complaints in a system
Dealing with complaints and difficult conversations
Explaining products, policies and conditions
Listening properly to work out what the person actually needs

Computer and digital skills

Google Workspace (Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets)
Microsoft Office, particularly Excel
Spreadsheets using lookups, filters and pivot tables
Task tools such as Trello, Asana, Notion or ClickUp
Slack or Microsoft Teams
Video calls on Zoom or Google Meet
CRM and helpdesk systems
Accurate typing at a reasonable speed

Personal and interpersonal skills

Working independently without constant supervision
Attention to detail
Meeting deadlines reliably
Picking up new systems and processes quickly
Discretion with confidential information
Managing your own time

Languages

South Africa is multilingual and this section is worth getting right rather than padding.

List the languages you actually work in, and be accurate about the level. There is a real difference between a language you can hold a customer conversation in and one you studied at school. If a role involves supporting customers in a particular language, that is worth stating plainly.

If you are applying to a company outside South Africa, describe your English level honestly rather than optimistically. Overstating it can become obvious once the language is used during the selection process.

The right list for the role

Skills by type of remote role

The general list gets you started. What changes how your CV reads is choosing the right list for the role in front of you.

Virtual assistant

The work is direct support to one or several people: protecting their diary, sorting out what is scattered, and closing off things without needing to be reminded.

Diary management, including across different time zones
Inbox triage and drafting routine replies
Scheduling and rescheduling meetings, including resolving clashes
Preparing and formatting documents
Research and summarising into something usable
Travel and appointment coordination
Clear written communication

If that sounds like the work you already do, it is worth looking at what virtual assistant roles involve.

Admin and operations support

Here the focus is the process: keeping records right, keeping the flow moving, and not letting anything drop.

Processing orders, invoices and purchase orders
Records management and filing systems
Tracking spreadsheets with formulas
Preparing regular reports
Supplier contact and delivery follow-up
Keeping CRM records current
Following and updating standard procedures

Customer service and support

If you come from retail, a call centre, reception or a helpdesk, you may already have several relevant skills. In remote support, the channel and the way work is documented may change.

Ticket handling and deciding what to deal with first
Defusing complaints and difficult conversations
Working across phone, email and chat, and knowing how they differ
Logging each interaction accurately
Applying product and policy knowledge under time pressure
Controlling tone in writing, without a voice to soften it
Judgement about when to escalate and when to resolve it yourself

That last one can be especially useful in customer service roles where the team is remote. If you already have an interview booked, the guide to customer service interview questions covers how to talk about that experience.

Appointment setting

Outbound contact by phone and email
Following up consistently rather than once
Accurate note and record keeping
Handling objections without becoming pushy
Diary coordination across several people
Working through a contact list or call plan

More on what appointment setting roles involve day to day.

From list to sentence

How to write your skills so they mean something.

The difference is not the vocabulary. It is that the stronger version gives the person reading it something to ask you about.

✓With relevant work history, one option is to place skills after it.

✓There is no universal number: a short list chosen for the role beats a long generic one.

✓Take the job advert, find what it keeps returning to, and write a line you can evidence.

Where the section usually sits

With a short work history, placing skills nearer the top can make sense. The order should make the most relevant information easy to find. Layout and document structure are covered in the CV template guide.

How many skills to list

There is no universal number that fits every CV. What actually helps is focus: a block of thirty items tends to read as though it was copied from somewhere.

The 5 key skills question

There is no universal set of five. Take the job advert, find the things it keeps coming back to, and make sure the most relevant ones have a matching line you can evidence.

Before and after

Why "good communication" says nothing

A word on its own carries no information. Compare:

BEFORE

Good communication

AFTER

Handling customer queries by phone and email, with each one logged and followed up until it is closed

BEFORE

Organised

AFTER

Managing diaries and inboxes, and deciding what needs attention first

BEFORE

Computer literate

AFTER

Google Workspace (Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets) in daily use

BEFORE

Microsoft Excel

AFTER

Spreadsheets using lookups, filters and pivot tables for stock and order tracking

BEFORE

Hard working

AFTER

Wrote the cash-up checklist that the rest of the shift team started using

BEFORE

Team player

AFTER

Coordinating between the stockroom and the front of house to sort out order queries

The difference is not the vocabulary. It is that the second version gives the person reading it something to ask you about. One caution on these examples: they are there to show the shape, not to be copied. Write your own using work you have actually done, because anything you put on a CV should survive a follow-up question.

You may have more than you think

If you have limited formal experience

Plenty of work counts even when it never came with a job title or a payslip. You may already have relevant experience in:

Retail. Stock control, cash-ups, handling several customers at once, dealing with complaints.
Call centre work. Systems use, logging every contact, holding your tone under pressure.
Security. Shift handovers, incident reports, following procedure exactly.
Reception. Booking and confirming, capturing details accurately, being the link between people who are not speaking directly.
A small or family business. Orders, suppliers, basic bookkeeping tasks, customer contact.
Informal or piece work. Managing your own time, dealing with customers directly, delivering without anyone supervising you.
Study. Group work at a distance, meeting deadlines without being chased, research and summarising.
Volunteering. Organising activities, coordinating people, written communication.

Not all of it will transfer, and it is worth being honest with yourself about which parts do. But the overlap is usually wider than people assume, and the way to find it is to describe the task rather than the title.

If this is your starting point, it is worth looking at remote jobs with no experience to see what those roles ask for.

Also preparing for an interview?Turn the same experience into a clear spoken answer with the guide to "tell us about yourself".

Read the interview guide

Distributed teams

Skills that may matter more in remote and distributed teams

This varies from employer to employer, so treat it as a general pattern rather than a checklist. Where a team is spread across different places, a few skills tend to carry more weight:

Written communication. More of the work happens in writing, so clarity stops being a nice extra.
Organising your own time. Nobody is walking past your desk.
Managing tasks independently. Deciding what to do next without being told each time.
Documentation. Writing things down so that someone else can pick them up.
Collaboration tools. Slack, Teams, Trello, Notion and similar, because that is where the work is coordinated.

Separate from those, some roles have working conditions attached: a reliable connection, suitable equipment, and a quiet enough place for calls where the job requires it. Those are practical requirements rather than skills, so they do not belong in your skills section. If a role asks about them, mention them in your application or your covering message instead.

For more on how this kind of hiring tends to work, there is a guide to working for US companies.

Avoid these

Common mistakes

Listing adjectives instead of things you can do. "Dynamic" and "hard working" are not skills.
Using the same list for every application. Adjust the section so the most relevant skills for that role are easy to see.
Writing something you could not back up in a two minute conversation.
Putting "MS Office" without saying what you do in it.
Repeating what is already in your work history. Use the section to add, not to echo.
Leaving out tools you genuinely use. If Slack, Zoom, Trello or similar tools are part of your experience, they can be easy to omit.
Padding the list to look impressive. A long list of vague items is weaker than a short list of specific ones.

Ready to put this into practice?Rework your skills section, then see what remote jobs are open right now.

View remote jobs

Frequently asked questions

Worth knowing before you rewrite the list.

Straight answers to common questions about the skills section of a CV.

What skills should I put on my CV?+

Tools you use, processes you run and ways of working you can evidence, chosen for the role you are applying for. Each one written concretely enough that it could turn into an interview question.

How many skills should I list?+

There is no fixed number. A focused list built around the specific role is more useful than a long general one. Keep the items that genuinely help someone understand what you can do for that role.

What are the 5 key skills for a CV?+

There is no universal set of five. If you want a short list, take the job advert, pick out the three or four things it keeps returning to, add any system it names that you have actually used, and write a line for each that you can stand behind.

What is the difference between hard and soft skills?+

Hard skills can be tested: a system, a spreadsheet, a language. Soft skills show in how you work, so they need a concrete example rather than an adjective.

Can I list skills I am still learning?+

Yes, as long as you say so. "Excel, intermediate, currently learning pivot tables" is honest and shows you are working on it. What does not work is presenting something as settled when it is not.

Ready?

Make the list match the role.

Keep the skills you can prove and make the most relevant ones easy to find for each application.

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