Most Essential Data Entry Skills To Put On Your Resume

Cablenews24 reports that according to Forbes, data entry professionals, and word processors and typists are ranked among the fastest declining occupations in 2024, plummeting by 38% and 25% respectively, according to data by the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The answer is yes—but not in the way you might have imagined. Although data entry jobs are disappearing per se, the skills needed for them are essential foundations for most white-collar jobs. Additionally, some of the data-focused jobs that have emerged as in-demand in the past couple of years, such as data scientists and data analysts, require skills that, if included within your resume, would set you apart from other candidates and improve your chances of landing your desired role.

For example, adding a technical skill such as Python or Tableau to your resume demonstrates to employers that you are committed to ongoing professional development, as these go beyond the everyday typing skills that office workers are all familiar with.

This also increases the likelihood of your employer putting you forward for promotions, transferring to a new department or role for career progression, or even, in some instances, creating an entirely new position for you, relevant to the skills you have gained.

Data Entry Skills To Include On Your Resume

So, the question is, what data entry skills which are relevant and needed by employers today, should you put on your resume?

Out of all the skills in demand within the workforce today and especially amongst white-collar professionals, communication and presentation skills are one of the most essential. In fact, LinkedIn listed communication skills as being the number one needed skill in the workplace in its In-Demand Skills 2024 report.

Especially if you are aspiring towards leadership or management roles, you should highlight your ability to communicate information clearly and concisely, convey critical data and liaise effectively with stakeholders at multiple organizational levels, and also include any experience delivering reports and presentations in meetings.

Any experience you have in remote working will also prove advantageous because you can use this to demonstrate your skills in collaborating and sharing data with teams and clients using remote collaboration software.

Another critical data entry skill to include in your resume is your familiarity and expertise level with CRM software. It could be a software that is industry-specific, (for example, Oracle Hospitality OPERA for hotels), or it could be Salesforce or another CRM. Gaining appropriate certifications in these software tools (for example, Salesforce Administrator) can boost your resume and you can add these to your skills and/or certificates section.

Data analysis is one of the most in-demand skills of 2024, being ranked as the number one most-needed technical skill by Springboard in their 2024 State of The Workforce Skills Gap report. Analytics was also included in LinkedIn’s round-up of in-demand skills for this year.

Whether you work or desire to work directly in data analytics or not, it helps to have this listed on your resume, as data analysis skills can be an asset in several roles, such as:

Whether your organization uses Google Sheets or Excel, having an advanced knowledge of Excel can be helpful to your career and align you with more job opportunities of listed on your resume. You can also include any advanced training or Microsoft Excel certifications you have received in your resume’s certifications section as well.

With advanced Excel skills, you can take tables of data from a CRM and analyze them, create tables or other visual representations for report-writing and presentation purposes, and undertake analysis to recognize patterns, trends, and themes.

Finally, adding critical thinking is another must-have skill to add to your resume. After all, being able to manage and input data is not enough if you don’t know how to act on your analysis. Forming conclusions and making data-backed decisions from the array of data you have available, takes data entry skills to an entirely new level, and enables you to not only make sense of the data, but actually put it to good use and transform business operations—a skill needed in leadership and management roles.

If you can do all three—arrange and enter data, compare and analyze it, and form conclusions based on the data findings presented—you will be an asset to any employer. Including the above five skills on your resume, alongside examples of them in practice, will help you to secure your dream job.