What Key Skills Should You Include On Your Resume For A Career In Tech?

Far from the nerdy 90s high school stereotype, nowadays the tech sector is home to some of the most successful kids on the block. With trillion-dollar tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon at the forefront of global innovation, opportunities to get into anything from AI to video game design seem endless. 

It’s therefore no wonder that tech is one of the most popular industries for business school grads. According to a 2024 GMAC survey, a significant 45% of millennial and 36% of Gen Z prospective b-school students are interested in working in the sector, placing it in the three most sought-after fields. 

However, given the dynamic nature of the tech space, it can be hard to know exactly what the best tech skills to include on your resume are. Every day it seems like new developments are made in areas such as coding and machine learning, while even experts are conflicted on what the most useful tech skills will be in the next ten years. 

So, what are the essential tech skills for resume success?

Essential tech skills for resume success

1. Creativity

The driving force behind all invention, creativity is the spark that ignites reality with imagination. The ability to generate exciting new ideas is prized above all else in the tech industry, which brought us smartphones, talking watches, and AI beer brewers.   

You don’t have to constantly come up with bathtub ‘eureka’ moments either. While often thought of as an elusive concept, the ability to think creatively is a skill that can be taught. That’s why it’s a focus on many business degree programs. 

Business schools often offer core and elective modules on creative problem-solving and creative thinking, encouraging students to harness their innate ability to think outside of the box. 

Highlighting your ability to think outside of the box and showing your creativity skills on your resume will tell employers that you know how to find different workarounds to problems.

Yara Slim is a TikTok strategic planner and an HEC Paris Master in Marketing graduate. Given the versatility of TikTok's content, a large part of her role revolves around utilizing the creativity skills she picked up during her degree to advise brands on how to succeed on the platform. 

"I inspire brands and agencies on how to make more content that's more aligned with the platform. TikTok is quite specific in terms of content; it's much more authentic and creative," Yara says.

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2. Innovation

So, you’ve got the ideas—but how are you going to use them? Being able to channel creativity into direct change is the ultimate raison d’etre of the entire technology industry, which is why it’s a good idea to demonstrate your ability to innovate within your resume.

Hiring managers aren’t expecting you to have invented teleportation or hovercars in your previous job (though if you have, definitely mention it) but it’s still important to write about unique ideas you have implemented in the past that can demonstrate to employers why you would be a good fit for a field that relies on ingenuity. 

Plus, thinking outside the box can be as simple as staying on the lookout for fresh ideas. 

"I constantly carry around a notebook. Every time I see something cool that a company is doing, like how the New York Times is showing their subscriptions, or how they're showing their paywall, I snip it up and put it in my notebook. This allows me to act and feel like our users," says Karan Saini, an Adobe growth product manager and MBA graduate from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.

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3. Technical skills

The exact technical skills an employer is looking for will depend on the specific role, but there are a few important tech skills for resume writing that are broadly in demand across the technology sector. 

According to the 2024 GMAC Corporate Recruiters Survey, the top skills business employers look for are IT, data analysis, AI, and problem-solving—most of which can be found within b-school program curriculums.  

"Data analytical skills is something that is pretty much table stakes for most product manager roles, as well as your ability to source information. So usually that looks like SQL query for product managers, but there's also other versions of it that you might need to leverage," says Wilson Darko, a Microsoft product manager with an MBA from Columbia Business School.

4. Agility

With evolutions taking place all the time, being part of the tech space remains like standing at the edge of an unexplored frontier. The possibilities seem endless—but so do the risks. That’s why if you want to navigate this exciting sector, the ability to think quickly on your feet is paramount for survival. 

According to a GMAC survey, 55% of technology employers say they value business school grads because they can handle the challenges of technological disruption.

A good way to develop your industry agility is to consider taking a business school program. Not only will you make useful contacts, but you will learn key skills such as resilience and critical thinking which can enable you to work around whatever obstacles get thrown your way. 

Jan Malte is an ESMT Berlin Master in Innovative Management grad who works as a cloud solutions architect at Microsoft. He highlights agility as one of the most important traits a tech worker can have: "The fast pace of the tech industry requires you to continuously adapt. You get hooked on the constant change to the point that it's like a drug."

5. Teamwork

While Hollywood movies such as The Social Network may have popularized the idea of tech industry leaders being asocial geniuses, the truth is that knowing how to work with other people is a crucial part of the job. 

Not only will your colleagues be helping develop the same projects as you, but oftentimes tech roles require you to communicate and collaborate with clients. It’s for this reason that completing a graduate business degree that develops people skills, such as an MBA, can be helpful in elevating your tech career. 

"You don't have to be super eloquent. Good communication is about having a structure and being able to convey the message you need to convey," says Javier Rodriquez Del Campo, a senior product manager at Amazon and Harvard MBA grad.

He also adds that being friendly and empathetic towards coworkers is a must, particularly if you want to influence decision-making or share your ideas with others.