Improve Your Resume By Adding 10 Top Personal Traits

During the recruitment process, employers want to know about both your professional and your personal attributes. This helps them determine if you’re a good fit for the company’s culture. Oftentimes, personal attributes are just as important as the qualifications and skills on your resume. By presenting your abilities in a thoughtful manner, you can note how you’ve helped grow other organizations while explaining your role in the process.

In this article, we explore 10 of the best personal traits to include on your resume.

The importance of personal traits on your resume

Personal traits are important because they define your human, personal and individual sides. They add value to your professional qualifications and other merits. By mentioning your personal traits on your resume, you can successfully convey why and how you can be an asset to the organization. Here are 10 personal traits that are good to include on your resume:

1. Honest

This is one of the most vital traits hiring managers look for. Being honest implies that you’re committed to telling the truth no matter the circumstance. It also displays the fact that you’re not comfortable deceiving your coworkers solely to gain a competitive advantage. This quality demonstrates that you as a person who reliable and trustworthy. Companies want to know that their employees can be trusted with various tasks and information. Future employers will appreciate your display of honesty in the hiring process.

2. Accountable

This self–declaration can convince your next employer that you believe in the ownership of work and that you hold yourself responsible for your successes and failures in the workplace. Overcoming these challenges and taking ownership allows you to set a standard for how you approach your tasks. When writing your resume, you can highlight the types of challenges, events or tasks that generated beneficial results for your previous places of employment.

3. Diligent and organized

Higher demands from employers mean higher expectations from employees to generate successful qualitative and quantitative results. You may have to stretch your limits in order to negotiate challenging tasks at work, but balancing time management and organization with diligence is vital to the scheduled completion of your tasks. By demonstrating this personal trait, you show that you care about the quality of your work no matter the lengths you had to go to or obstacles you might have faced along the way.

4. Ethical and loyal

Businesses are guided by good governance and ethical best practices. Noting that you are ethically minded will convey your alignment with the employer’s corporate philosophy in addition to showing your resilience in times of adversity. Additionally, employers look for people who can be trusted with confidential matters and sensitive information. If you’re in a situation where you need to communicate discreet information, you’re expected to uphold a sense of loyalty and not compromise the company’s interests. Thus, earning the trust to work on these tasks is something valuable to note on your resume without giving away proprietary information. 

5. Punctual

Demonstrate to recruiters that you value the importance of time management. On your resume, think of instances in your previous place of employment where punctuality made a difference and how it benefited the company. For example, if you completed all department’s deliverables on time, make note of that. In this instance, without your punctuality, the company’s success would have faltered during that timeframe.

Related: Time Management Skills: Definition and Examples

6. Flexible

Illustrating this personal trait highlights your ability to successfully adapt to change when asked or needed. In positions where you need to meet deadlines, this means moving things around in your work schedule to fit the current needs. Throughout your career, the expectations or requirements of your current role may change—this is a normal part of the working world. Showing how you’ve handled these changes in the past with goodwill and a positive attitude will bode well with future employers.

7. Team player

Several positions will require you to work as part of a team. Highlighting that you are an effective communicator and work well within a group of people are great attributes to include on your resume. Knowing your ability to work effectively and efficiently within a team is key with so many personalities in the workplace. You’re bound to encounter people with varying work styles, as well. It’s important to show future employers that you’re a capable team player should the need to collaborate arise.

Related: 6 Qualities That Make a Great Team Player

8. Technologically competent

Technology, tools and techniques are constantly evolving and businesses are becoming more and more technologically competent. It is important to mention that you have the needed competencies to succeed at your job in this ever-changing technological landscape. If you’re applying for a job that requires a certain set of skills and experience, make sure you have them. Oftentimes this will refer to a set of programs and your competence with each. If you’re a graphic designer, list the latest design software you’ve been using and your skill level with each, for example.

9. Creative

Creativity forms the base of new ways of thinking and approaching solutions from unconventional angles. It is a crucial trait to meet various company objectives such as making user–friendly products, increasing their cost-effectiveness and durability, enhancing employee skills and enhancing performance and productivity. Regardless of the position you’re applying for, innovation and imaginative power will boost your job prospects. Creating a portfolio shows how you created a concept, how you designed it and the result. This type of storytelling can be appealing to recruiters looking to expand their company in a certain artistic direction.

10. Problem solver

Employees should be expected to strategically handle any obstacles and challenges that arise. Showcasing your problem-solving abilities is an attractive quality to future employers, no matter your career field. Employers want to see that you’re able to come up with an effective solution to unexpected situations while still maintaining a good result.