10 Hard skills examples for your 2024 resume

Hard skills are often the most sought-after skills by recruiters and by managers to upskill their teams. Without proper hard skills training, your team won’t be able to correctly perform their duties and responsibilities in the organization. That’s why it’s important to identify which ones are relevant to your team or your learners.

What are hard skills?

Hard skills are specific, teachable abilities or knowledge sets that are easily quantifiable and measurable. These skills are typically acquired through education, training programs, or on-the-job experience. Hard skills examples for customer service and various industries are integral for business success.

They’re essential for performing technical and job-specific tasks and roles. More often than not, hard skills are explicitly stated in job descriptions. You can even include examples of hard skills for resume building. But while hard skills are crucial, it's also important to complement them with soft skills.

Hard skills vs. Soft skills

As mentioned earlier, hard skills examples include technical proficiencies like programming or language proficiency. On the other hand, soft skills, are personal attributes and communication abilities that contribute to effective collaboration and workplace harmony. They’re also known as interpersonal skills.

Soft skills are less tangible and more challenging to measure, but they’re still crucial for overall professional success. While hard skills are needed for performing specific tasks, soft skills play a vital role in promoting effective teamwork, communication, and adaptability across various roles and industries.

So, both hard and soft skills are integral components of a well-rounded skill set.

SC Training (formerly EdApp) has come up with a list of 10 hard skills examples that may be relevant to your workers:

1. Microsoft Excel

Having Excel skills has been commonly attributed to people in the finance and accounting industries since Excel mostly has to do with numbers. However, it’s not only limited to those industries today. Now, it is one of the most sought-after hard skills examples in most new-hire prospects, since data now plays a larger role in how organizations operate.

Excel provides users with the ability to calculate, organize, and evaluate quantitative and qualitative data, allowing managers and senior staff to have the information they need to make important decisions that can affect the company. You can create databases based on customer information, and graphs to better visualize demographics, and even code some basic programs and games. Additionally, it allows you to better:

• Visualize, manipulate, and evaluate the data.
• Provide more data and insights on company workflow, project efficiency, and even inventory levels and usage.
• Design spreadsheets that better organize data and provide a better picture of crucial information
• Track data on different departments and operations

If you’re looking for a Microsoft Excel course for your team, SC Training (formerly EdApp) has a free (up to 10 users) editable Excel course just for you.

2. Digital Marketing 

In a world where everything is digital, marketing must go with the flow. Digital marketing is one of today’s trendiest hard skills examples, with many high-paying opportunities accessible to qualified applicants.

eMarketer reports that digital overtook TV ad spending in 2015-2020. Companies can no longer ignore the shift from traditional to digital and social media marketing strategies. Traditional marketing is slower, more expensive, and less successful than digital marketing, while digital marketing is the opposite. It’s faster, cheaper, and more effective than the marketing strategies we’ve been using since the 90s. An email or social media campaign can connect a marketing message to a targeted subset of consumers for a fraction of the cost of a TV ad or print campaign.

These advances in digital marketing have highlighted the need for the appropriate hard skills. Some examples of digital marketing skills include content marketing, lead nurturing, email marketing, and inbound marketing among others.

SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s microlearning course on digital marketing can help your team understand the basics and importance of digital marketing in today’s day and age. This course also gives you a brief overview of important digital marketing skills and concepts often used in this field.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another hard skill example that’s at the forefront of today’s marketing world. This can be considered the most sought-after digital marketing skill because of the benefits it brings while being cost-friendly.

Good SEO skills optimize your visibility online organically with no ad cost. This means that the more people see your website, the more your online traffic increases, and the better your chances are to provide your product or service to a greater number of people – again, with no advertising cost. Implementing effective local SEO strategies can also help you connect with potential customers in your specific geographic area.

To learn more about SEO, SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s mobile learning friendly course equips learners with a primer on the benefits of SEO for startups and a 5-point SEO action plan they can use as a guide when strategizing.

4. News Writing

Journalists are nothing without one of their most important examples of hard skills to have, news writing skills. This hard skill example informs and entertains readers and listeners. News stories give people information about events happening both in their communities and around the world and therefore play an essential role in shaping their viewpoints and general ideas.

Even if you’re not in the journalism field, training yourself in news writing is still beneficial to you and your learners. News writing is a skill that enhances your research capabilities and how to verify the information. Additionally, improving this hard skill can also teach you how to be a better storyteller.

Adopting a microlearning design model, SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s news writing course was structured with 10 mini-lessons that can be completed in as little as five minutes, not hours or days. It combines instructional modules with gamified activities to ensure improved retention and engagement rates. While it’s ready for deployment, you may customize it with SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s drag-and-drop authoring tool, adding your own branding styles and preferences.

5. Power Tool Handling

Workers that are hands-on in the construction, automotive, and manufacturing industries usually handle different types of power tools, cutting tools, and machine tools for different aspects of their jobs. This is why learning how to properly handle power tools is an important hard skill example to have. Apart from being an in-demand skill in the mentioned industries, this skill also helps with reducing risk and accidents in the organization.

If power tools aren’t handled correctly, they can cause both minor and severe injuries, like abrasions, blindness, lacerations, amputations, fractures, or punctures. In the worst-case situation, incorrect handling might potentially result in death.

With SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s free Handling Power Tools course, you can provide your workers with technical training on the general usage of power tools and necessary safety measures. To start training your workers, you can import this course directly from SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s course library. And through the training software, you can edit, rebrand, and deploy it to your workers in just a few easy steps.

6. Chemical Storage and Handling

If you’re in the manufacturing industry, chemical storage and handling is another hard skill you need to have. This occupational safety skill prevents accidents in workplaces that work with hazardous chemicals by allowing you to apply the proper guidelines and practices for handling dangerous chemicals – as well as how to dispose of them. Without proper training for this hard skill, you can increase the risk of developing fatal diseases and/or losing a finger or two.

As a remote work software, SC Training (formerly EdApp) uses mobile learning solutions for the chemical storage and handling course, making it easily accessible for employees who don’t have immediate access to desktops and don’t have time for lengthy training sessions.

7. Stocking

Stocking is an essential hard skill to have in the retail industry. Efficient stocking procedures ensure the products are always available for customer purchase. Though it sounds so simple, managing stocks in a store can grow more complicated as the sales volume and variety of products in the store increase.

In order to achieve the balance of acquiring product stock and cost management, you'll need stocking skills for efficient stock management which is definitely important. Good stocking skills can also reduce the time taken by stock management. This hard skill not only makes you more efficient but also faster with your work.

To learn this skill, you can take SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s stocking course, where you’ll learn the fundamentals of stock management in the retail industry along with the best practices in receiving and offloading delivered stock to your store.

Heavy equipment safety training programs

8. Storing and Handling Products

Like stocking skills, storing and handling skills are hard skills examples that are required in the retail industry. Products, especially food and temperature-sensitive ones, can end up rotting, damaged, or even destroyed when not stored or handled properly. Product packaging can get wrecked and cost more in manufacturing with mishandling. Unnecessary exposure to hazardous products or raw materials can also result in injuries and life-long diseases.

Apart from protecting products and your workers, you’ll also be saving a ton of time when the process of storing and handling products follows uniform standards. You can then focus more on improving other aspects of your operations rather than worrying about finished products.

9. Cleaning and Sanitizing in Hospitality

Hygiene in the hospitality industry is taken with great care and seriousness because of what unhygienic practices can bring. If your kitchen staff doesn’t properly sanitize their hands, they can infect raw food with dangerous bacteria and germs. Dirty bathrooms and dining areas can discourage your customers from returning to you. You can even get flagged by your local health inspector if they receive disturbing reports about your business.

To prevent that from happening, it’s important that your staff is trained with the proper skills in cleaning and sanitizing your hotel or restaurant. This is a hard skill example that may feel like second nature to people in the hospitality industry but is often overlooked for upskilling or reskilling because of it. 

SC Training (formerly EdApp) has a hospitality course that teaches you about the proper practices for cleaning and servicing restrooms, dining areas, and public areas. Being knowledgeable in these areas helps us demonstrate our commitment to good hygiene and a better customer experience.

10. Rigging

In the construction and shipping industries, rigging is a hard skill example that’s required for most of their workers. Knowing how to properly operate a crane or other rigging equipment gives the learner a better edge when it comes to job hunting. Without this, your workers may have a harder time transferring or transporting heavy equipment and loads around. They can also be liable for product and property damage, construction setbacks, and harm to their other co-workers. 

SC Training (formerly EdApp) is a mobile learning management system designed for today’s digital habits, delivering more engaging and effective micro-learning directly to learners at any time and anywhere.

Sign up for hard skill examples courses today.