Effective teamwork isn’t just about how well you perform your part. It’s also about how well you support your team or other members in a way that boosts the entire team’s performance to reach the desired outcome.

Non-Professional Experience Matters For Your Resume

Those that are newer to the workforce, or entry-level, need these foundational skills learned to apply to a variety of positions. So don’t worry – you most likely have teamwork skills even if you’ve never had an official coworker. Practical experience and knowledge is formed routinely, even if these hard-earned skills didn’t come from W2 employment. It’s important for people to acknowledge their teamwork skills on their resume.

Forage talked to Jennifer Preston, HR and recruiting consultant at Flex HR, who encourages students to look closer at their non-professional experience to pick out critical transferable skills they’ve gained from working on other teams. Even a summer job that might not seem relevant to the position you’re applying to can be positioned the right way.

For example, let’s say you were a lifeguard at a local pool over the summer. “A lifeguard has had to work with their colleagues to ensure shifts are covered, communicate their scheduling conflicts with their superiors and others, and ensure that they communicate effectively when issues arise,” Preston says. “This individual has now gained various solid skills, including leadership, communication, and flexibility working with others.

So, when including teamwork skills to your resume, be sure to elaborate how you have applied these skills to your experience. Include action verbs with others such as communicated, collaborated, led, assisted, facilitated, supported, etc.

What Teamwork Skills Employers Are Looking For

In the workplace, teamwork skills can be everything from brainstorming new ideas with a coworker to helping your team choose on a strategy for reaching your monthly goals. These are important skills because they impact innovation, productivity, creativity, and morale, which are all key factors to the best employees within a company. Here are some teamwork skills examples that employers keep an eye out for:

 

 

 

Collaboration

When working on a specific project or task, the teamwork is about the big picture – which employees contributed and took on responsibilities and shared their perspectives. Even if an organization is working remotely, individuals can still demonstrate these collaboration skills through technology platforms.

Communication

Whether verbal or written, exceptional communication skills are imperative for most job positions. Being able to communicate information and insights clearly, and effectively within an organization internally, and externally, is an invaluable skillset to be able to achieve routine tasks and tackle complex challenges.

Leadership

Employers look for self-starters that take direction well, but also go over and beyond what they are being asked to do. Thus, these proactive leadership skills are important to prove an individual is capable of problem solving independently to keep tasks moving forward. You don’t have to have an official leadership title to play out proficient leadership skills.

Adaptability

We obviously all witnessed to some capacity, how quickly most businesses were forced to adapt to various working situations when the Pandemic hit. While working remotely was a drastic change for most, it is inevitable a company or team will undergo change. And so having the capability and flexibility to be able to adapt to those changes is crucial to the workplace as a whole.

Focus On Results

“Results are always more powerful than adjectives,” Jennifer Fishberg, certified professional resume writer, says. “In addition to meaningful details about deadlines met and results produced, look to incorporate examples that show you were able to bring together diverse perspectives or overcome team differences to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.”

Always quantify your teamwork skills when possible. Talk about that that deadline that was hard to reach but you overcame multiple hurdles to get the job completed on time. Or mention how you helped a charity raise 30% more than your original goal or that you achieved over $5,000 more than your original goal for a local fundraising event.

When you are applying for a job, look closely at the description and tweak your resume, or be very specific in your cover letter, to directly acknowledge your experience you can speak to.