A graduate student asks—

Should we have a separate skills section in the resume to tick off the key terms from the job posting or should we try to include all of that in the research experience?

In general, there are advantages to having your skills represented under your research (or work) experience when possible. By describing how you used a skill and what you accomplished with it, you give the employer a better idea of your level of proficiency, and you naturally show a timeframe for your experience with the skill. Some skills lend themselves more naturally to a separate skills section, however. For example, language, coding, and software skills can often be listed most conveniently in a separate skills section. I recommend never listing skills like communication or leadership in a separate skills section, because you won’t be providing the context that makes it believable.

If your resume does have a separate skills section, it is ok to have your skills represented in both the skills section and in bullets under your research and work experience; you don’t necessarily need to choose one or the other. Ultimately, it is important to make sure that an employer can find all of your skills that match what they’ve asked for in the posting. Your resume has limited space, so you may need to include some things in a skills section just for formatting, but you should err on the side of including them under the experience where you used them, if possible.

-David Blancha, Assistant Director, Career Development Team for Researchers