Conceptual Skills You Should Highlight on Your Resume

4 min read. Updated on April 21, 2022

Ken Chase (TR)

Conceptual skills are vital to helping you stand out from the crowd

To remain relevant in today's ever-evolving economy, workers need to ensure that they have the skills employers need. In fact, job candidates with outdated or unbalanced skill sets may struggle to land the jobs they need to advance their careers. To avoid that challenge, it is vital to focus on developing a balanced skill set and ensuring that you successfully highlight those skills in your resume.

While most employees already understand the need to showcase their technical and interpersonal skills to employers, many fail to take note of vital conceptual skills. In this post, we will explore key conceptual skills you should highlight on your resume and offer tips to help you properly convey those skills to prospective employers.

What are conceptual skills?

Conceptual skills have been defined as those skills that enable you to understand how elements of an organization work together to solve problems, overcome challenges, and advance a company's goals. They are different from the more commonly known technical and interpersonal skills which most job seekers focus on in their resumes. While technical skills help you get your work done, and interpersonal skills are invaluable for getting along as part of a functioning team, conceptual skills help you to see the big picture and understand how your employer's company truly functions.

These skills were identified by psychologist Robert Katz as the third type of ability in his three-skill approach. The skill model Katz identified was intended to highlight the three skill sets needed for leadership roles, but all three are highly prized by most employers. By ensuring that you include your conceptual skills in your resume, you can increase your potential value to any prospective employer.

How to identify your conceptual skills

Of course, before you can include your own conceptual skills in a resume, you need to be able to identify them. One way to do this is to begin by creating lists of all your major skills. Break them down into three columns, labeled technical, interpersonal, and conceptual. Under each heading, list all the skills that fit those categories.

Your technical skills will include things like keyboarding, computer proficiency, and other abilities that you use to perform your job duties each day.
Under interpersonal skills, list things like verbal and nonverbal communication, active listening, openness to feedback, and similar talents that enable you to work well with others.
For conceptual skills, think about all of the ways in which you are able to envision the big picture at work and understand how everything comes together to make the company function. Some examples of these skills are listed below.

Examples of conceptual skills

Managerial skills like analysis of data and situations
Understanding how to collaborate with others and how that collaboration contributes to the company's mission
Critical thinking based on a review of all available data and all sides of an issue
Problem-solving that uses analysis to develop solutions to problems
Decision-making abilities that include careful planning and decisive execution

How to develop conceptual skills to advance your career

Fortunately, conceptual skills can be developed and enhanced over time. For most people, all this is needed is a commitment to learning and practicing these skills in a real-world setting. To develop your own conceptual abilities, you can:

Watch your managers and high-performing employees as they make and execute decisions. Think about why they are doing what they are doing, to help you develop a better understanding of how their thought processes fit into the bigger picture.
Seek out and read industry news and insights to expand your perspective. Consider how these insights could be applied to your company.
Find a mentor who can help you gain new insight on how key elements in a company work together to make the organization function.
Search for videos and other online materials that you can study to develop these skills.

How to include conceptual skills on your resume (Examples)

Once you have developed and identified your conceptual skills, the next step is to include that information in your resume. The following tips can help.

Begin with your resume summary

The simplest way to begin to incorporate conceptual skill information is to include one or two sentences that describe how you used those skills in previous jobs. This allows you to show your skills rather than simply telling employers that you have them. For example:

Experienced client development strategist who reorganized Company B's client retention program to enhance retention by 18 percent. Developed a new dynamic relationship between departments at A Corp, improving team synergy and boosting productivity by 32 percent over a six-month period.

By including these skills in your summary, you ensure that hiring managers see them right away when they skim your resume.

Include conceptual skills in your work experience section

As you work conceptual skills into your resume, remember to follow that “show, don't tell” strategy. You should include examples of achievements that relied on those skills and use action verbs that add impact to each accomplishment.

Created joint interdepartmental task force, bringing together team members from Comms and Marketing to boost client satisfaction by 49 percent.

Identified need for client onboarding program revision and developed a strategy that reduced onboarding time by 30 percent.

Led team tasked with analyzing social media and overall online presence, resulting in a new strategy to triple online engagement with customers.

Add conceptual abilities to your skills section

Finally, be sure to include your conceptual skills in your skills section. Try to ensure that you include a balance of relevant technical, interpersonal, and conceptual skills that tell a compelling narrative about why you are the right candidate for the job.

Summary

Though they are sometimes neglected in resumes, conceptual skills are highly prized by today's employers. Once you identify the conceptual skills you should highlight in your resume, and include them in a way that highlights your achievements, you can ensure that your resume has the best chance to make that all-important great first impression.