Excellent Organizational Skills For Resume | Examples

What exactly does it mean to be called organized? Do you need a kanban board wherever you go? Is it enough to make your bed and carve out time to pursue hobbies? In this article, we’ll look for the greatest organizational skills definition, explain why they’re vital at work, and show you how to include them on your resume. There’s also a list of inspiring sites to help you improve your organized skills.

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What Are Organizational Skills?

Organizational skills are the talents that allow you to stay focused on various tasks while using your time, energy, strength, mental ability, physical space, and so on effectively and efficiently to reach the intended result.

Now – The broad scope of organizational abilities creates an issue.

On the one hand, they are very desirable to employers of all types. Who doesn’t want their staff to be productive and efficient?

On the other – It is really difficult to pinpoint exactly what they are. Is it enough to keep your workspace tidy, create a to-do list, and adhere to deadlines to be considered organized?

What does it mean? Well, we have a whole article explaining what transferable skills are.

In short – If you’re a well-organized person, you will remain well-organized regardless of the job you’ll be doing. It’s one of the soft skills you’ll bring with you to any position. And it’s featured as an important employability skill for any employer.

Why are organizational skills important?

Strong organizational skills are necessary for a variety of reasons, all of which have one common denominator:

They turn you into an efficient and effective employee.

Strong organizational skills are necessary for a variety of reasons, all of which have one common denominator. Employers place a high importance on great organizing skills. You have the necessary hard abilities, but without excellent organizational skills, your productivity plummets. That is why being a top-performing employee requires both hard and soft talents.inator:

Organizational Skills in the Workplace and for a Resume

Collaboration

• Your success may depend on how effectively you can organize your collaboration with others. Plus, it’s just as vital to identify who to collaborate with and on what projects.

Communication

• Disorganized and hectic communication will damage your productivity. You must speak and write in a clear manner to be sure your message is understood. This means your communication skills and active listening skills must be up to par to achieve success in the workplace.

Teamwork

• Organizing work in a group of people is just as essential as selecting the right people to build a team in the first place. If your organizational skills are up to snuff, you’ll be able to put together a team of exceptional talents and achieve synergistic results while boosting your leadership skills.

Delegation

• In fact, your delegation skills are related to your teamwork skills. Well-organized individuals know what they can do themselves, and what they need to delegate to other team members to achieve the best results. It also shows you have a strong set of interpersonal skills.

Planning

• We can easily say that the most important part of a well-organized undertaking happens before anything else even takes place. The ability to plan is arguably the most important attribute of any person who claims to have strong organizational skills.

Prioritizing

• Being able to give priority to your tasks is far more important than checking off items on your to-do lists. If you can identify roadblocks ahead, break complex projects into smaller components and assess their impact on the outcome, you’re building your project management skills and developing strong problem-solving skills when something doesn’t go as planned.

Mental organizational skills

This extends far beyond the ability to think logically and methodically. Mental organizing skills enable you to investigate and analyze events, create documentation, and think strategically, among other things. Your analytical abilities allow you to take a methodical approach to problem solving. Below is a list of some of the most important mental organizational skills:

• Administrative
• Analyzing
• Assessment and evaluation
• Attention to detail
• Conceptual
• Creative thinking
• Critical thinking
• Decision-making
• Documenting
• Identifying problems
• Research
• Strategic thinking

Physical organization

It’s also essential to be able to keep your workspace organized. If you can’t find important papers or office utilities, or if your computer desktop is so cluttered that you can’t remember what wallpaper looks like, your workflow will suffer. Here are a few examples of skills that fall under this category:

• Filing
• Office management
• Record keeping
• Stock inventory

Time management

Time management is an incredibly valuable organizational skill. An uberskill, if you will. The capacity to complete activities on time, schedule them, and meet deadlines is the Holy Grail of great organizational skills. If you can maintain discipline within yourself and your team, your firm will profit from you in every manner.

Work-life balance

Yes, it’s definitely a vital organizational skill. Efficiency at work starts with a good night’s sleep and fresh mind. Organize your mental and physical hygiene so there’s room for work and play. Remember: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Unless you prove it.

On your resume, organizational skills can show through in at least a couple of ways. Some more, some less obvious.

Here’s a closer look at three ways in which you can give prominence to your organizational skills on a resume:

Organizational Skills on Resume—Layout

Before any recruiter reads a single word on your CV, they will take a quick glance at it.

A fraction of a second is enough to form a first impression.

So make sure your resume is well-organized and grabs the recruiter’s attention for a longer while.

Here’s how:

• Go for the reverse-chronological resume format. It brings your experience and key achievements to the front. If you’re a career changer or you’re writing your first resume, read our guide on how to choose resume format.
• Choose simple and readable fonts. They don’t just look good but are compliant with the ATS software.
• Write simple headings. They’ll help the recruiter identify different resume sections quickly.
• Put white space to good use and avoid clutter on your resume. You want to come across as organized. Clutter is your enemy.
• Be concise. If you can fit your resume on a single page, do it. You may want to experiment with font sizes, numbers of columns, etc. Our resume builder makes it really easy.
• Begin your resume with a summary or career objective. Read our guide on how to write a resume summary, or how to write a resume objective.
• Then add experience and education. Learn how to describe your work experience on a resume and how to nail the education section.
• Include a key skills section to make sure they really stand out.

Remember

A well-organized resume layout will serve as hard evidence of your organizational skills.

Organizational Skills on Resume—Job Description

In resume writing, there’s only one rule.

Relevance.

That’s why it’s not enough to pick the best template for your resume.

You must identify the organizational skills the employer is looking for, and show them you’ve got what they need.

Administrative Assistant—Organizational Skills (Job Description)

• Inventories, receives, and shelves routine supplies.
• Reviews invoices/packing slips to ensure shipment is correct.
• Schedules rooms, meetings and/or tours.
• Performs routine, simple filing and non-critical copying. Collates documents, distributes mail.
• Refers calls, greets visitors, and gives standard information in response to phone or in-person inquiries.
• Performs simple data entry into single screen.

This job description comes from a listing for the position of an administrative assistant who must have excellent organizational skills.

All the planning and organizational skills that the employer requires are highlighted in yellow.

Now

The trick is to prepare the experience section of your resume on the basis of the job posting.

This is how you could describe your organizational skills in your resume job description:

• Managed a busy 50+ employee office.
• Devised and implemented a tracking system that inventoried and kept track of routine supplies.
• Reviewed 100+ invoices and packing slips weekly to ensure all shipments are correct.
• Scheduled 10+ conference rooms, organized meetings and company events. Introduced a shared calendar
• system to coordinate office logistics.

See how it works?

A job description like this does three things:

• It targets relevant organizational skills, specified by the employer.
• It describes your organizational skills in terms of achievements.
• It is ATS friendly because it uses the phrasing from the job ad.

Organizational Skills to Put on Resume—Key Skills Section

If you take another look at the job description above and take out the very essence of it, you’ll end up with a list that looks more or less like this:

• Attention to detail
• Documenting
• Office management
• Planning
• Record keeping
• Stock inventory

To give more prominence to these organizational skills, put them in a separate key skills section.

This way they’ll not just truly stand out on your resume, but will be entirely justified by what you’ve put in the experience sections.

To sum up

There are at least three ways in which you can display your strong organizational skills on a resume:

• By laying out your resume in a well-organized and easily-navigable manner.
• By identifying the organizational skills the employer listed in the job ad, and working them into your resume
• job description.
• By giving them extra prominence in the key skills section.

Organizational Skills—Interview Questions

Once your resume lands you the long-awaited job interview— You need to be ready to answer interview question about your organizational skills.

What to expect?

Have you heard of the so-called behavioral interview questions?

These are questions that refer to particular situations from your past work experience and whose aim is to learn how you coped with or behaved in that situation.

For example:

• Tell me about a time when you were involved in a stressful situation at work and how you handled it.
• Tell me about a situation when you succeeded in achieving a goal.
• Give me an example of a goal you failed to achieve.

Now

In order to nail your answer, it’s best to stick to the so-called STAR structure. STAR is an acronym which stands for:

• Situation
• Task
• Action
• Result

A excellent solution includes all four elements:

You explain a case in which you were assigned a specific task relating to the interviewer’s question. Then you explain what actions you did to deal with the task and discuss the outcomes.

In the case of interview questions to determine your organizing skills, you could expect something like this:

“Tell me about a situation when your planning skills and attention to detail made a difference.”

Here’s the promised good news.

The interview questions to measure your organizational abilities will be based on your resume.

So, provided you followed the instructions described in the previous section:

You will know exactly what to expect.

Because your resume showcases your planning skills and attention to detail, among other things, anticipate that the recruiter will be particularly interested in these organizing abilities.

Now:

The only thing you need to do is relate these skills to the accomplishments in your job description and structure your response using the STAR approach.

Your response might describe how your attention to detail and strong focus enabled you to review 100+ invoices and packing slips weekly to ensure that all shipments were accurate.

You can describe your procedure and tell the recruiter what steps you use to complete the assignment efficiently. Perhaps there was a time when this task was very challenging to complete? How did you manage to get it right? What did you learn from your failures?

In terms of planning skills, consider how the implementation of a shared calendar system assisted you in coordinating office logistics.

Tell the recruiter about the challenges you had before and how the calendar helped you deal with them.

Remember:

The interview questions to test your organizational skills will not be random. They will be based on your resume and the requirements for the position.

How to Improve Organizational Skills:

If someone says that you can’t gain organizing skills, they either lie or don’t know what they’re talking about. After all, we aren’t discussing talents. We’re discussing skills.

Skills are also learnable. The first step is to recognize the need to improve your organizational skills.

But, We may fairly assume you have passed this step.

Watch TED Talks centred around developing organisational skills

• Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator

Tim Urban, a self-proclaimed master procrastinator, realized that life is too short to put things off. And came up with a brilliant approach to get organized.

• How to Gain Control of Your Free Time

Laura Vanderkam is a time-management expert. In her talk, she will teach you how to “build the lives we want in the time we’ve got.”

want in the time we’ve got.”

• How to Manage Your Time More Effectively (According to Machines)

This short TED Lesson casts an entirely new perspective on scheduling. If you want to become the master of your time, this one is just for you.

• How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings

As the title suggests, David Grady will show you a couple of ways in which you can make your meetings more effective.

• Time Management: How to Write a To-Do List & Know Where Your Time Goes

Gina Trapani, author of “Upgrade Your Life,” will show you how to put simple to-do lists to good use to take better control of your time.

• Forget Multitasking, Try Monotasking

As a Product Designer, Paolo Cardini must work effectively and efficiently. In his talk, Paolo questions the value of multitasking, to encourage monotasking, that is doing one thing at a time.

Read books on organizational skills

Time Management & Organizational Skills for Students

• This book is not just about improving high school students’ time management and organizational skills, it’s for their parents as well.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

• This classic book by David Allen will help you get organized and get rid of stress.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

• Another classic. Stephen R. Covey teaches you how to maximize your effectiveness and efficiency.

Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World

• Well, if you want to get a grip on yourself and make sure your organizational skills are second to none, learn how to do it from a former Navy SEAL. General McRaven’s military experience can be universally applied to a lot of non-military contexts.

Join some online classes

If you’re seriously serious about honing your organizational skills, you might want to consider taking one of the online courses:

• Get Things Done: How To Organize Your Life And Take Action
• Master Organization: Your Digital & Physical Stuff Organized
• Improve Your Organizational Skills
• Developing Better Organizational Skills Course
• Organizational Skills Training Course

Try organizational skills apps

• Tasks—this basic app will help you create and manage your to-do lists
• Google Calendar—the simplest way to keep track of your time
• Evernote—a versatile note-taking app. Its premium version offers some powerful features, such as Chrome integration or website clipping
• Google Keep—a simple note-taking app
• Todoist—this time-management app will help you get a grip on your daily or weekly goals
• Trello—a Kanban board on steroids with a lot of extra functionalities. It gives you an overview of what’s been done, what’s being worked on, and who’s doing what

Key Takeaways

Here’s a quick recap of what you need to know about organizational skills:

• Your organizational skills help you stay effective and efficient—both professionally and personally.
• Organizational skills are among the most desired skill sets by the employers.
• You can display your organizational skills on your resume in many different ways.
• If you get your resume right, you can easily prepare for your organizational skills interview questions and answers.
• There are many resources (online, books, apps, etc.) that can help you improve your organizational skills.