The Best Organizational Skills for Your Resume [with Examples]

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Good organizational skills, including prioritization, delegation, time management, adaptability, multi-tasking, project and resource management, and decision-making, are in high demand across all industries in 2025.

These soft skills demonstrate your capacity to adapt to changing priorities and drive your team’s success through structured approaches.

So, let’s discuss some key organizational skills, what they are, why they are important, and how to write a strong resume with organizational skills.

We’ll also outline where to include them when writing your resume and how to improve these skills if you want to upskill.

What Are Organizational Skills?

Organizational skills are the soft skills that allow you to organize your time, tasks, and projects. They relate to the ability to plan, prioritize, and manage every aspect of your work. They are essential in a variety of work environments, from the office to the classroom and beyond. 

Which organizational skills are important for professional success?

Strong organizational capabilities include time management, strategic planning, project coordination, resource allocation, clear information sharing, stakeholder management, and documentation practices.

There are a lot of specific skills that fall under the umbrella of organizational skills, and it’s important to have as many as you can. In a later section, we will discuss ten of these skills in detail.

Well-developed organizational skills directly contribute to enhanced productivity, reduced stress levels, and career advancement opportunities.

Why Are Organizational Skills Important?

Your organizational skills are important for employers because they demonstrate that you’re responsible and dedicated—qualities that will make you a great addition to any team.

• 💡 Our expert says

  

  Organizational skills are fundamental to career success because they signal reliability and accountability to employers.

  They showcase professional maturity and dedication and demonstrate strategic thinking capabilities.

As a job applicant, you must prove how well-organized you are when writing your resume—and not just by listing off random accomplishments like “conducted research on Company X” or “helped launch product Y.”  

To maximize impact, incorporate specific examples rather than generic statements and demonstrate progression in responsibilities.

You want to show that you are an effective employee who can get things done before a deadline and work well with others.

Using a resume template can help you nicely enter your organizational skills in your skill section and past job descriptions, while our AI assistant can help you highlight these skills effectively with its personalized suggestions.

Understanding which skills you are already good at and which you are not is essential. Once you’ve determined your strengths and weaknesses, you can work to improve on them.

Continuous improvement in organizational skills involves regular self-assessment of current capabilities, implementing improvement strategies, and adopting new organizational tools and methods.

Examples of Organizational Skills in the Workplace

Organizational skills can be divided into 2 categories: internal and external. Internal organizational skills are skills that come from someone’s self. In other words, they have to do with being intrinsically motivated, keeping calm, and being able to analyze a situation.

Internal organizational skills have more to do with managing subtasks and elements within your sphere.

External organizational skills are those that involve other people or resources, such as scheduling or logistics.

Below, you will find the top 10 internal and external organizational skills examples that you will most likely need to include in your resume to impress a job recruiter or employer.

1. Prioritization

Prioritization involves identifying the most important tasks and focusing on them. How can you do this? What makes a task more or less important?

To-do lists are a great way to practice prioritization. Write down everything you need to accomplish in a given time, then re-write the list, categorizing the tasks in order of urgency and importance.

• 💡 Our expert’s advice

  

  Another example of a prioritization tool is the Eisenhower Matrix. It categorizes tasks into four quadrants based on urgency and importance. Time boxing lets you allocate specific time slots to tasks based on their priority.

Urgent tasks are time-sensitive and have a deadline. Important tasks must be accomplished or offer the greatest returns. Often, other necessary tasks hinge on completing an important task first.

Try making several different lists and giving each its own order of priority. For example, what you need to get done today might differ from what you need to get done this week, month, or year. A personal priorities list will differ from one you make on the job.

Comparing these lists can offer valuable insights into what matters and what can wait.

Here are a few tips for maintaining maximum focus on high-priority tasks:

• Create an environment conducive to focused work.
• Use visual cues to highlight or color-code high-priority items. 
• Break down large tasks into manageable steps. 

Prioritization is intimately connected with time management, which we will discuss later.

2. Delegation

Delegation is the act of assigning tasks to other members of your team. To do so, you must get to know the strengths and weaknesses of each team member.

Delegating tasks appropriately allows you to better utilize your own time and puts less stress on yourself by letting others handle parts of your workload. It also helps optimize the workload and productivity of the whole team.

Delegation is about empowering team members with the authority and resources to complete their assignments. By demonstrating trust in their abilities, leaders foster a culture of ownership and accountability.

Combine your delegation and prioritization skills by making sure the most urgent or important tasks get done first–whether you choose to do them yourself or assign them to others.

3. Time management

Time management involves effectively planning and controlling your time—both in general and that which is spent on specific tasks. 

Again, refer back to your priorities. You will likely need to dedicate more time to higher-priority tasks or be willing to adjust your allotted times to prioritize urgent tasks. This will enable you to finish your tasks on time and ensure they are completed correctly.

How do you know if you are using your time wisely? Ask yourself:

• Do I regularly meet my assigned deadlines?
• Do I procrastinate?

Having a good work-life balance is an aspect of time management that is critical to your success in all aspects of your life. It is also an essential organizational skill.

It’s great to be focused on your work, but you need to know when to take a break and enjoy your personal life and downtime. Doing so will enable you to think more clearly and work more efficiently.

4. Adaptability

Adaptability means being willing and able to adjust your plans and strategies when faced with changes or unexpected situations.

To find out whether you’re adaptable, think back to how you’ve handled the skills listed above:

• Were you able to switch your schedule around in order to complete an urgent task on time?
• If the company’s goals shifted, were you able to let go of a formerly high-priority task and adopt a new one?
• Have you been willing to entrust new team members with important tasks?

Great leaders see change as a chance to grow and improve, not as something scary. They look for new experiences and challenges, helping their teams get better all the time.

These leaders stay strong by staying positive, handling stress well, and quickly recovering from problems. This helps them get through tough times and encourages their teams to do the same.

If so, you’ve proven yourself adaptable; demonstrate it on your resume. Here is an example of how to show adaptability as a key organizational skill:

• Led a team through a major process change, increasing efficiency by 30% and reducing errors by 20% within six months.
• Implemented a new workflow in response to industry shifts, improving project completion speed by 25% and boosting customer satisfaction scores by 15%.

You can demonstrate the results you achieved by writing bullet points like the above, or by following the STAR method, which outlines all the key details a recruiter wants to see.

5. Multitasking

Multitasking is the ability to manage more than one task simultaneously without sacrificing the quality of your work. For example, you might be working on two or more distinct projects while also fielding emails and attending meetings.

Keep in mind, however, what multitasking is not—it does not mean splitting your attention between two tasks at the same time.

Doing so will increase the mistakes you make. Instead, think of multitasking as focusing on one task at a time, but giving attention to multiple individual tasks during the same hour, day, week, or quarter.

When switching between tasks, take a moment to mentally close one activity before moving to the next.

• 💡 Our expert’s advice

  

  A few effective multitasking strategies include:

  • Prioritization: Identify and focus on high-priority tasks while managing lower-priority responsibilities in the background.
  • Time Blocking: Allocate specific time periods for different tasks, allowing for focused work on each responsibility without constant interruption.
  • Batch Similar Tasks: Group similar activities together to minimize the cognitive cost of switching between different types of tasks.
  • Leverage Downtime: Use periods of low cognitive demand (e.g., waiting for a meeting to start) to address simple tasks like responding to emails or organizing your to-do list.

6. Project management

Planning is an essential element of project management. It means setting goals and outlining the steps needed to achieve them.

You could use a framework like SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) to make sure your goals have measurable benchmarks and obtainable objectives.

The methods you could use for planning are endless. There are checklists as we discussed above, as well as project timelines and project management tools and software, which we will discuss in more detail below. 

Preparing contingency plans is also an important aspect of planning. The specifics will differ depending on where you work and what you do, but you might consider making a site safety plan or an information security plan (ISP), which is used to protect data from cyber threats.

7. Resource management

Resource management means using your team, tools, and time efficiently in order to meet the goals you set during project management. 

There are multiple facets to resource management. Allocate your budget wisely to manage your financial resources. Inventory your supplies to manage physical resources. Schedule your team and divide their workload to manage time and human resources.

The human resources aspect of resource management is to assess team members’ skills and assign tasks accordingly, balance workloads to prevent burnout, and maintain productivity. 

Finally, lean into technology and tools, which we will further discuss later.

8. Decision-making

Good decision-making means analyzing the available options and selecting the best course of action. You can do this by weighing the pros and cons of a situation, doing research, and consulting others for advice. 

You should always strive to make timely decisions well in advance of a deadline rather than making emotionally charged last-minute decisions.

As you gain more work experience, continuous improvement happens by reviewing and evaluating the outcomes of past decisions. You learn from both successes and failures to refine your decision-making skills. 

It’s also important to stay informed about industry trends and best practices to enhance decision quality.

9. Record keeping

Maintaining accurate and well-organized records of your data, documents, or other aspects of your work is essential to getting things done and communicating with others.

For example, you might use a physical or cloud-based filing system to save documents and share them with others. You might also use a spreadsheet to organize client information, observations, financial information, timekeeping, or other data.

Accurate record-keeping is vital for several reasons, ensuring businesses remain compliant with legal and tax requirements and avoiding penalties and legal issues.

Keep in mind that some companies have strict document retention policies, and these may even be required by law. Accurate record-keeping will be a hugely important skill for such positions.

10. Tech tools for organization

While organization is generally a soft skill, we decided to throw in one hard skill that, when mastered, can make all the other aspects of organization much easier. Tech savviness involves being able to use digital tools to manage and organize your tasks.

There is an abundance of online tools you can use to stay organized. Familiarize yourself with the most common, including Microsoft Office, Asana, Slack, and Trello. It is always a plus on your resume when you can already use the collaboration or productivity software favored by the company.

To be able to package all of this in the skill section of your resume may be challenging. Next, we’ll look at some resume examples to get an idea of how to do it.

How To Highlight Organizational Skills on a Resume

What do you do if the job posting tells you that they are looking for someone who has strong organizational skills?

First, examine the posting for potential resume keywords. These could include any of the organizational skills we discussed above. Make a list, and circle those that you know you have exhibited in the past.

Next, as you begin to write your resume, you’ll want to make it as relevant as possible. You want to show the hiring manager that you can handle the job’s responsibilities successfully by proving you’ve done something similar in the past.

Match the keywords from the job description with your own experiences and abilities. 

Below are the 4 most important sections you can use to highlight organizational skills, along with organizational skills examples.

Summary

The resume summary consists of one or two sentences at the top of the resume highlighting your most important experiences, skills, and qualifications. It lets employers know quickly if you’re a good fit and what you bring to the table.

Begin your resume with a powerful summary statement that highlights your key organizational strengths.

You can highlight organizational skills in your summary by mentioning key topics like project management, meeting deadlines, or maintaining workflows.

For example, a data analyst might highlight organizational skills in their resume summary in this way: 

Detail-oriented Data Analyst proficient in collecting, cleaning, and structuring large datasets, managing multiple projects, and optimizing workflows for data-driven decision making.

Skills section

Make a neatly listed skills section near the top of your resume. This list should include organizational and other key skills found in the job posting. You can use bullets to organize your list, making it easy to read.

When you list your organizational skills, they can be put in a list that looks something like this:

• Office management
• Planning
• Attention to detail
• Scheduling
• Workflow optimization
• Assigning tasks
• Task prioritization

Experience section

Then, turn your attention to your work experience section. There you will list 2 or 3 bullet points describing your achievements each job. Look for opportunities to include the keywords and describe the good results.

Demonstrate your organizational skills through specific, measurable achievements when describing your work experience.

Receptionist | Educational Opportunity Center |  January 2022-October 2024

• Coordinated daily schedules for scholarship advisors, managing an average of 15+ appointments per day and ensuring optimal time allocation by prioritizing high-impact student meetings.

• Organized and maintained intake document folders for over 200 clients, collecting income documentation and implementing a Microsoft Excel tracking system that improved retrieval efficiency by 30% and reduced errors in physical filing.

Education section

Beneath your degree, you can use bulleted descriptions similar to those in your Work Experience section. 

Highlight things like the time-management skills needed for group collaborations or research projects. Don’t forget about any extracurricular clubs or organizations for which you might have organized events or maintained records.

When listing your degree, include relevant coursework to demonstrate your organizational skills. This approach shows potential employers that you’ve developed and applied these skills in an academic setting, making you a strong candidate for professional roles requiring

Your education section might be structured like this:

Bachelor of Science in Biology
Lincoln University, 2022

• Served as historian for the Beekeeper’s Association, maintaining organized records and assisting with event planning.
• Conducted independent research on the spread of the spotted lantern fly, organizing large datasets.

Using a resume builder can help you fine-tune your document. You’ll avoid common formatting mistakes.

Because the online builder will prompt you to enter each piece of information, you won’t be tempted to embellish or misrepresent the information unduly.

The result will be an honest, professional resume that you can stand behind.

What if you are applying to more than one job? Tailor your resume to stand out to each employer by following the above steps.

How To Improve Your Organizational Skills

You may feel your organizational skills are already top-notch. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t get even better. Apart from doing well on your job application, you’ll need to do well once you get the job!

What if you feel organizational skills aren’t your strong suit?

If that’s the case, you can still take the following advice and be able to apply organizational skills at work in the future–and gain valuable skills and experience for your resume.

• 💡 Our expert’s advice

  

  A strategy to further develop your organizational abilities is to embrace technology. You should leverage data tools to streamline your organizational processes. Another strategy is to develop a growth mindset. Assess your organizational systems regularly and identify areas for refinement.

If you are looking to improve your organizational skills, here’s what you can do:

• Use a planner: If you have trouble remembering to do things, or keeping on top of your workday, consider using a planner. This will help you organize your tasks and keep track of what needs to be done and when. You can use a digital planner on your smartphone or a paper planner, pen, or pencil.
• Use a to-do list: Take advantage of the digital age by using a task manager or checklist app on your phone or computer and writing down all the tasks that need to be completed for each day, week, or month in advance! Or, keep a pad of paper nearby to jot down needed tasks. Physically checking off a to-do list can be very satisfying.
• Use an online calendar service: A calendar is an easy way for everyone involved in planning an event or project to know who’s doing what when it comes time for action. Use the calendar’s share feature to collaborate. 
• Watch instructional videos: Find some videos about how others improved their organizational skills over time. On Instagram, @designyourdayz is a great resource.
• Take a class on improving your organizational skills: Look for online classes on Universal Class or Udemy, or local in-person classes at your community center or library. 
• Find someone and get some pointers: Reach out to well-organized colleagues or LinkedIn contacts and ask them what their secret is.

How To Amplify Your Organizational Skills at Work

Once you’ve gotten your organizational skills down pat, don’t stop there! You can continue to practice them at work. It will make you more successful and impress your manager. Here are three ways you can do just that.

Volunteer to project manage

Maybe you’ve never managed a project on your own. If you know a new project is coming up, or if the current manager will soon be leaving the team, why not volunteer to do so?

Don’t be afraid to step up and manage a project. At this point, you’ve already developed the skills you need as part of a team. Now, you can apply them to leading that team. Start with smaller projects to build confidence and experience.

Keep your workspace tidy

Being well-organized in one aspect of your life will help you create habits that carry over to others. One of the most basic areas of organization is your environment.

Whether you work in-office or from a home office, make an effort to keep your workspace tidy. If it is not currently, devote a day or as much time as is needed to cleaning and tidying your desk, cubical, desktop, folders, or the room you are working in.

Then, spend a few moments at the beginning and end of each workday tidying up. This can also help you partition your work life from the rest of your day.

Keep your calendar up to date

Meeting deadlines, attending meetings, and making contacts on time are all essential to being seen as well-organized. Keep your calendar up to date with all deadlines and meetings. Put this information into your calendar as soon as you make an appointment so you won’t forget.

Effective calendar management is crucial for staying on top of commitments and deadlines. Block out time for focused work and breaks, and regularly review and update your calendar to ensure accuracy.

By applying the above tips, you will be able to highlight the organizational skills you currently have to achieve your career goals and continue cultivating them for lifelong career success.

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