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6 presentation skills and how to improve them

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What are presentation skills?

The importance of presentation skills, 6 presentation skills examples, how to improve presentation skills.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety

Learn how to captivate an audience with ease

Capturing an audience’s attention takes practice. 

Over time, great presenters learn how to organize their speeches and captivate an audience from start to finish. They spark curiosity, know how to read a room , and understand what their audience needs to walk away feeling like they learned something valuable.

Regardless of your profession, you most likely use presentation skills on a monthly or even weekly basis. Maybe you lead brainstorming sessions or host client calls. 

Developing effective presentation skills makes it easier to contribute ideas with confidence and show others you’re someone to trust. Although speaking in front of a crowd sometimes brings nerves and anxiety , it also sparks new opportunities.

Presentation skills are the qualities and abilities you need to communicate ideas effectively and deliver a compelling speech. They influence how you structure a presentation and how an audience receives it. Understanding body language , creating impactful visual aids, and projecting your voice all fall under this umbrella.

A great presentation depends on more than what you say. It’s about how you say it. Storytelling , stage presence, and voice projection all shape how well you express your ideas and connect with the audience. These skills do take practice, but they’re worth developing — especially if public speaking makes you nervous. 

Engaging a crowd isn’t easy. You may feel anxious to step in front of an audience and have all eyes and ears on you.

But feeling that anxiety doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t worth sharing. Whether you’re giving an inspiring speech or delivering a monthly recap at work, your audience is there to listen to you. Harness that nervous energy and turn it into progress.

Strong presentation skills make it easier to convey your thoughts to audiences of all sizes. They can help you tell a compelling story, convince people of a pitch , or teach a group something entirely new to them. And when it comes to the workplace, the strength of your presentation skills could play a part in getting a promotion or contributing to a new initiative.

To fully understand the impact these skills have on creating a successful presentation, it’s helpful to look at each one individually. Here are six valuable skills you can develop:

1. Active listening

Active listening is an excellent communication skill for any professional to hone. When you have strong active listening skills, you can listen to others effectively and observe their nonverbal cues . This helps you assess whether or not your audience members are engaged in and understand what you’re sharing. 

Great public speakers use active listening to assess the audience’s reactions and adjust their speech if they find it lacks impact. Signs like slouching, negative facial expressions, and roaming eye contact are all signs to watch out for when giving a presentation.

2. Body language

If you’re researching presentation skills, chances are you’ve already watched a few notable speeches like TED Talks or industry seminars. And one thing you probably noticed is that speakers can capture attention with their body language. 

A mixture of eye contact, hand gestures , and purposeful pacing makes a presentation more interesting and engaging. If you stand in one spot and don’t move your body, the audience might zone out.

3. Stage presence

A great stage presence looks different for everyone. A comedian might aim for more movement and excitement, and a conference speaker might focus their energy on the content of their speech. Although neither is better than the other, both understand their strengths and their audience’s needs. 

Developing a stage presence involves finding your own unique communication style . Lean into your strengths, whether that’s adding an injection of humor or asking questions to make it interactive . To give a great presentation, you might even incorporate relevant props or presentation slides.

4. Storytelling

According to Forbes, audiences typically pay attention for about 10 minutes before tuning out . But you can lengthen their attention span by offering a presentation that interests them for longer. Include a narrative they’ll want to listen to, and tell a story as you go along. 

Shaping your content to follow a clear narrative can spark your audience’s curiosity and entice them to pay careful attention. You can use anecdotes from your personal or professional life that take your audience along through relevant moments. If you’re pitching a product, you can start with a problem and lead your audience through the stages of how your product provides a solution.

5. Voice projection

Although this skill may be obvious, you need your audience to hear what you’re saying. This can be challenging if you’re naturally soft-spoken and struggle to project your voice.

Remember to straighten your posture and take deep breaths before speaking, which will help you speak louder and fill the room. If you’re talking into a microphone or participating in a virtual meeting, you can use your regular conversational voice, but you still want to sound confident and self-assured with a strong tone.

If you’re unsure whether everyone can hear you, you can always ask the audience at the beginning of your speech and wait for confirmation. That way, they won’t have to potentially interrupt you later.

Ensuring everyone can hear you also includes your speed and annunciation. It’s easy to speak quickly when nervous, but try to slow down and pronounce every word. Mumbling can make your presentation difficult to understand and pay attention to.

6. Verbal communication 

Although verbal communication involves your projection and tone, it also covers the language and pacing you use to get your point across. This includes where you choose to place pauses in your speech or the tone you use to emphasize important ideas.

If you’re giving a presentation on collaboration in the workplace , you might start your speech by saying, “There’s something every workplace needs to succeed: teamwork.” By placing emphasis on the word “ teamwork ,” you give your audience a hint on what ideas will follow.

To further connect with your audience through diction, pay careful attention to who you’re speaking to. The way you talk to your colleagues might be different from how you speak to a group of superiors, even if you’re discussing the same subject. You might use more humor and a conversational tone for the former and more serious, formal diction for the latter.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to presenting. Maybe you’re confident in your use of body language, but your voice projection needs work. Maybe you’re a great storyteller in small group settings, but need to work on your stage presence in front of larger crowds. 

The first step to improving presentation skills is pinpointing your gaps and determining which qualities to build upon first. Here are four tips for enhancing your presentation skills:

1. Build self-confidence

Confident people know how to speak with authority and share their ideas. Although feeling good about your presentation skills is easier said than done, building confidence is key to helping your audience believe in what you’re saying. Try practicing positive self-talk and continuously researching your topic's ins and outs.

If you don’t feel confident on the inside, fake it until you make it. Stand up straight, project your voice, and try your best to appear engaged and excited. Chances are, the audience doesn’t know you’re unsure of your skills — and they don’t need to.

Another tip is to lean into your slideshow, if you’re using one. Create something colorful and interesting so the audience’s eyes fall there instead of on you. And when you feel proud of your slideshow, you’ll be more eager to share it with others, bringing more energy to your presentation.

2. Watch other presentations

Developing the soft skills necessary for a good presentation can be challenging without seeing them in action. Watch as many as possible to become more familiar with public speaking skills and what makes a great presentation. You could attend events with keynote speakers or view past speeches on similar topics online.

Take a close look at how those presenters use verbal communication and body language to engage their audiences. Grab a notebook and jot down what you enjoyed and your main takeaways. Try to recall the techniques they used to emphasize their main points, whether they used pauses effectively, had interesting visual aids, or told a fascinating story.

3. Get in front of a crowd

You don’t need a large auditorium to practice public speaking. There are dozens of other ways to feel confident and develop good presentation skills.

If you’re a natural comedian, consider joining a small stand-up comedy club. If you’re an avid writer, participate in a public poetry reading. Even music and acting can help you feel more comfortable in front of a crowd.

If you’d rather keep it professional, you can still work on your presentation skills in the office. Challenge yourself to participate at least once in every team meeting, or plan and present a project to become more comfortable vocalizing your ideas. You could also speak to your manager about opportunities that flex your public speaking abilities.

4. Overcome fear

Many people experience feelings of fear before presenting in front of an audience, whether those feelings appear as a few butterflies or more severe anxiety. Try grounding yourself to shift your focus to the present moment. If you’re stuck dwelling on previous experiences that didn’t go well, use those mistakes as learning experiences and focus on what you can improve to do better in the future.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety 

It’s normal to feel nervous when sharing your ideas. In fact, according to a report from the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, public speaking anxiety is prevalent in 15–30% of the general population .

Even though having a fear of public speaking is common, it doesn’t make it easier. You might feel overwhelmed, become stiff, and forget what you were going to say. But although the moment might scare you, there are ways to overcome the fear and put mind over matter.

Use these tactics to reduce your stress when you have to make a presentation:

1. Practice breathing techniques

If you experience anxiety often, you’re probably familiar with breathing techniques for stress relief . Incorporating these exercises into your daily routine can help you stop worrying and regulate anxious feelings. 

Before a big presentation, take a moment alone to practice breathing techniques, ground yourself, and reduce tension. It’s also a good idea to take breaths throughout the presentation to speak slower and calm yourself down .

2. Get organized

The more organized you are, the more prepared you’ll feel. Carefully outline all of the critical information you want to use in your presentation, including your main talking points and visual aids, so you don’t forget anything. Use bullet points and visuals on each slide to remind you of what you want to talk about, and create handheld notes to help you stay on track.

3. Embrace moments of silence

It’s okay to lose your train of thought. It happens to even the most experienced public speakers once in a while. If your mind goes blank, don’t panic. Take a moment to breathe, gather your thoughts, and refer to your notes to see where you left off. You can drink some water or make a quick joke to ease the silence or regain your footing. And it’s okay to say, “Give me a moment while I find my notes.” Chances are, people understand the position you’re in.

4. Practice makes progress

Before presenting, rehearse in front of friends and family members you trust. This gives you the chance to work out any weak spots in your speech and become comfortable communicating out loud. If you want to go the extra mile, ask your makeshift audience to ask a surprise question. This tests your on-the-spot thinking and will prove that you can keep cool when things come up.

Whether you’re new to public speaking or are a seasoned presenter, you’re bound to make a few slip-ups. It happens to everyone. The most important thing is that you try your best, brush things off, and work on improving your skills to do better in your next presentation.

Although your job may require a different level of public speaking than your favorite TED Talk , developing presentation skills is handy in any profession. You can use presentation skills in a wide range of tasks in the workplace, whether you’re sharing your ideas with colleagues, expressing concerns to higher-ups, or pitching strategies to potential clients.

Remember to use active listening to read the room and engage your audience with an interesting narrative. Don’t forget to step outside your comfort zone once in a while and put your skills to practice in front of a crowd. After facing your fears, you’ll feel confident enough to put presentation skills on your resume.

If you’re trying to build your skills and become a better employee overall, try a communications coach with BetterUp. 

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Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

8 tips to improve your public speaking skills

The significance of written communication in the workplace, 9 signs that you’re being pushed out of your job, the 11 tips that will improve your public speaking skills, what is an entrepreneur understanding the different types and examples of entrepreneurship, get smart about your goals at work and start seeing results, goal-setting theory: why it’s important, and how to use it at work, the importance of good speech: 5 tips to be more articulate, empathic listening: what it is and how to use it, how to write a speech that your audience remembers, impression management: developing your self-presentation skills, 30 presentation feedback examples, your guide to what storytelling is and how to be a good storyteller, how to give a good presentation that captivates any audience, 8 clever hooks for presentations (with tips), how to make a presentation interactive and exciting, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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Home Blog Education Presentation Skills 101: A Guide to Presentation Success

Presentation Skills 101: A Guide to Presentation Success

Getting the perfect presentation design is just a step toward a successful presentation. For the experienced user, building presentation skills is the answer to elevating the power of your message and showing expertise on any subject. Still, one can ask: is it the same set of skills, or are they dependable on the type of presentation?

In this article, we will introduce the different types of presentations accompanied by the skillset required to master them. The purpose, as always, is to retain the audience’s interest for a long-lasting and convincing message.

Table of Contents

The Importance of Presentation Skills

Persuasive presentations, instructional presentations, informative presentations, inspirational presentations, basic presentation skills, what are the main difficulties when giving a presentation, recommendations to improve your presentation skills, closing statement.

Effective communication is the answer to reaching business and academic goals. The scenarios in which we can be required to deliver a presentation are as diverse as one can imagine. Still, some core concepts apply to all presentations.

 We define presentation skills as a compendium of soft skills that directly affect your presentation performance and contribute to creating a great presentation. These are not qualities acquired by birth but skills you ought to train and master to delve into professional environments.

You may ask: is it really that evident when a presenter is not prepared? Here are some common signs people can experience during presentations:

• Evasive body language: Not making eye contact with the audience, arms closed tightly to the body, hands in pockets all the time.
• Lack of interest in the presenter’s voice: dull tone, not putting an effort to articulate the topics.
• Doubting when asked to answer a question
• Irksome mood

The list can go on about common presenter mistakes , and most certainly, it will affect the performance of any presented data if the lack of interest by the presenter is blatantly obvious.  Another element to consider is anxiety, and according to research by the National Institute of Mental Health, 73% of the population in the USA is affected by glossophobia , which is the fear of public speaking, judgment, or negative evaluation by other people.

Therefore, presentation skills training is essential for any business professional who wants to achieve effective communication . It will remove the anxiety from presentation performance and help users effectively deliver their message and connect with the audience.

Archetypes of presentations

Persuasive presentations aim to convince the audience – often in short periods – to acquire a product or service, adhere to a cause, or invest in a company. For business entrepreneurs or politicians, persuasive presentations are their tool for the trade.

Unless you aim to be perceived as an imposter, a proper persuasive presentation has the elements of facts, empathy, and logic, balanced under a well-crafted narrative. The central pillar of these presentations is to identify the single factor that gathered your audience: it could be a market need, a social cause, or a revolutionary concept for today’s society. It has to be something with enough power to gather critiques – both good and bad.

That single factor has to be backed up by facts. Research that builds your hypothesis on how to solve that problem. A deep understanding of the target audience’s needs , concerns, and social position regarding the solution your means can offer. When those elements are in place, building a pitch becomes an easy task. 

Graphics can help you introduce information in a compelling format, lowering the need for lengthy presentations. Good presentation skills for persuasive presentations go by the hand of filtering relevant data and creating the visual cues that resonate with what your audience demands.

One powerful example of a persuasive presentation is the technique known as the elevator pitch . You must introduce your idea or product convincingly to the audience in a timeframe between 30 seconds and less than 2 minutes. You have to expose:

• What do you do 
• What’s the problem to solve
• Why is your solution different from others 
• Why should the audience care about your expertise

For that very purpose, using engaging graphics with contrasting colors elevates the potential power of your message. It speaks professionalism, care for details, and out-of-the-box thinking. Knowing how to end a presentation is also critical, as your CTAs should be placed with care.

Therefore, let’s resume the requirements of persuasive presentations in terms of good presentation skills:

• Identifying problems and needs
• Elaborating “the hook” (the element that grabs the audience’s attention)
• Knowing how to “tie” your audience (introducing a piece of information related to the hook that causes an emotional impact)
• Broad knowledge of body language and hand gestures to quickly convey your message
• Being prepared to argue a defense of your point of view
• Handling rejection
• Having a proactive attitude to convert opportunities into new projects
• Using humor, surprise, or personal anecdotes as elements to sympathize with the audience
• Having confidence
• Be able to summarize facts and information in visually appealing ways

You can learn more about persuasive presentation techniques by clicking here .

In the case of instructional presentations, we ought to differentiate two distinctive types:

• Lecture Presentations : Presentations being held at universities or any other educative institution. Those presentations cover, topic by topic, and the contents of a syllabus and are created by the team of teachers in charge of the course.
• Training Presentations : These presentations take place during in-company training sessions and usually comprise a good amount of content that is resumed into easy-to-take solutions. They are aimed to coach employees over certain topics relevant to their work performance. The 70-20-10 Model is frequently used to address these training situations.

Lecture presentations appeal to the gradual introduction of complex concepts, following a structure set in the course’s syllabus. These presentations often have a similar aesthetic as a group of professors or researchers created to share their knowledge about a topic. Personal experience does tell that course presentations often rely on factual data, adequately documented, and on the theoretical side.

An example of a presentation that lies under this concept is a Syllabus Presentation, used by the teaching team to introduce the subject to new students, evaluation methods, concepts to be learned, and expectations to pass the course.

On the other hand, training presentations are slide decks designed to meet an organization’s specific needs in the formal education of their personnel. Commonly known as “continuous education,” plenty of companies invest resources in coaching their employees to achieve higher performance results. These presentations have the trademark of being concise since their idea is to introduce the concepts that shall be applied in practice sessions. 

Ideally, the training presentations are introduced with little text and easy-to-recognize visual cues. Since the idea is to summarize as much as possible, these are visually appealing for the audience. They must be dynamic enough to allow the presenter to convey the message.

Those key takeaways remind employees when they revisit their learning resources and allow them to ruminate on questions that fellow workers raise. 

To sum up this point, building presentation skills for instructional presentations requires:

• Ability to put complex concepts into simpler words
• Patience and a constant learning mindset
• Voice training to deliver lengthy speeches without being too dense
• Ability to summarize points and note the key takeaways
• Empathizing with the audience to understand their challenges in the learning process

The informative presentations take place in business situations, such as when to present project reports from different departments to the management. Another potential usage of these presentations is in SCRUM or other Agile methodologies, when a sprint is completed, to discuss the advance of the project with the Product Owner.

As they are presentations heavily dependent on data insights, it’s common to see the usage of infographics and charts to express usually dense data in simpler terms and easy to remember. 

Informative presentations don’t just fall into the business category. Ph.D. Dissertation and Thesis presentations are topics that belong to the informative presentations category as they condense countless research hours into manageable reports for the academic jury. 

Since these informational presentations can be perceived as lengthy and data-filled, it is important to learn the following professional presentation skills:

• Attention to detail
• Be able to explain complex information in simpler terms
• Creative thinking
• Powerful diction
• Working on pauses and transitions
• Pacing the presentation, so not too much information is divulged per slide

The leading inspirational platform, TEDx, comes to mind when talking about inspirational presentations. This presentation format has the peculiarity of maximizing the engagement with the audience to divulge a message, and due to that, it has specific requirements any presenter must meet.

This presentation format usually involves a speaker on a stage, either sitting or better standing, in which the presenter engages with the audience with a storytelling format about a life experience, a job done that provided a remarkable improvement for society, etc.

Empathizing with the audience is the key ingredient for these inspirational presentations. Still, creativity is what shapes the outcome of your performance as people are constantly looking for different experiences – not the same recipe rephrased with personal touches. The human factor is what matters here, way above data and research. What has your experience to offer to others? How can it motivate another human being to pursue a similar path or discover their true calling?

To achieve success in terms of communication skills presentation, these inspirational presentations have the following requirements:

• Focus on the audience (engage, consider their interests, and make them a part of your story)
• Putting ego aside
• Creative communication skills
• Storytelling skills
• Body language knowledge to apply the correct gestures to accompany your story
• Voice training
• Using powerful words

After discussing the different kinds of presentations we can come across at any stage of our lives, a group of presentation skills is standard in any type of presentation. See below what makes a good presentation and which skills you must count on to succeed as a presenter.

Punctuality

Punctuality is a crucial aspect of giving an effective presentation. Nothing says more about respect for your audience and the organization you represent than delivering the presentation on time . Arriving last minute puts pressure on the tech team behind audiovisuals, as they don’t have enough preparation to test microphones, stage lights, and projector settings, which can lead to a less powerful presentation Even when discussing presentations hosted in small rooms for a reduced audience, testing the equipment becomes essential for an effective presentation.

A solution for this is to arrive at least 30 minutes early. Ideally, one hour is a sweet spot since the AV crew has time to check the gear and requirements for your presentation. Another benefit of this, for example, in inspirational presentations, is measuring the previous presenter’s impact on the audience. This gives insights about how to resonate with the public, and their interest, and how to accommodate your presentation for maximum impact.

Body Language

Our bodies can make emotions transparent for others, even when we are unaware of such a fact. Proper training for body language skills reduces performance anxiety, giving the audience a sense of expertise about the presented topic. 

Give your presentation and the audience the respect they deserve by watching over these potential mistakes:

• Turning your back to the audience for extended periods : It’s okay to do so when introducing an important piece of information or explaining a graph, but it is considered rude to give your back to the audience constantly.
• Fidgeting : We are all nervous in the presence of strangers, even more, if we are the center of attention for that moment. Instead of playing with your hair or making weird hand gestures, take a deep breath to center yourself before the presentation and remember that everything you could do to prepare is already done. Trust your instincts and give your best.
• Intense eye contact : Have you watched a video where the presenter stared at the camera the entire time? That’s the feeling you transmit to spectators through intense eye contact. It’s a practice often used by politicians to persuade.
• Swearing : This is a no-brainer. Even when you see influencers swearing on camera or in podcasts or live presentations, it is considered an informal and lousy practice for business and academic situations. If you have a habit to break when it comes to this point, find the humor in these situations and replace your swear words with funny alternatives (if the presentation allows for it). 

Voice Tone plays a crucial role in delivering effective presentations and knowing how to give a good presentation. Your voice is a powerful tool for exposing your ideas and feelings . Your voice can articulate the message you are telling, briefing the audience if you feel excited about what you are sharing or, in contrast, if you feel the presentation is a burden you ought to complete.

Remember, passion is a primary ingredient in convincing people. Therefore, transmitting such passion with a vibrant voice may help gather potential business partners’ interest.  

But what if you feel sick prior to the presentation? If, by chance, your throat is sore minutes before setting foot on the stage, try this: when introducing yourself, mention that you are feeling a bit under the weather. This resonates with the audience to pay more attention to your efforts. In case you don’t feel comfortable about that, ask the organizers for a cup of tea, as it will settle your throat and relax your nerves.

Tech Skills

Believe it or not, people still feel challenged by technology these days. Maybe that’s the reason why presentation giants like Tony Robbins opt not to use PowerPoint presentations . The reality is that there are plenty of elements involved in a presentation that can go wrong from the tech side:

• A PDF not opening
• Saving your presentation in a too-recent PowerPoint version
• A computer not booting up
• Mac laptops and their never-ending compatibility nightmare
• Not knowing how to change between slides
• Not knowing how to use a laser pointer
• Internet not working
• Audio not working

We can come up with a pretty long list of potential tech pitfalls, and yet more than half of them fall in presenters not being knowledgeable about technology.

If computers aren’t your thing, let the organization know about this beforehand. There is always a crew member available to help presenters switch between slides or configure the presentation for streaming. This takes the pressure off your shoulders, allowing you to concentrate on the content to present. Remember, even Bill Gates can get a BSOD during a presentation .

Presentations, while valuable for conveying information and ideas, can be daunting for many individuals. Here are some common difficulties people encounter when giving presentations:

Public Speaking Anxiety

Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, affects a significant portion of the population. This anxiety can lead to nervousness, trembling, and forgetfulness during a presentation.

Lack of Confidence

Many presenters struggle with self-doubt, fearing that they may not be knowledgeable or skilled enough to engage their audience effectively.

Content Organization

Organizing information in a coherent and engaging manner can be challenging. Presenters often grapple with how to structure their content to make it easily digestible for the audience. Artificial Intelligence can help us significantly reduce the content arrangement time when you work with tools like our AI Presentation Maker (made for presenters by experts in presentation design). 

Audience Engagement

Keeping the audience’s attention and interest throughout the presentation can be difficult. Distractions, disengaged attendees, or lack of interaction can pose challenges.

Technical Issues

Technology glitches, such as malfunctioning equipment, incompatible file formats, or poor internet connectivity, can disrupt presentations and increase stress.

Time Management

Striking the right balance between providing enough information and staying within time limits is a common challenge. Going over or under the allotted time can affect the effectiveness of the presentation.

Handling Questions and Challenges

Responding to unexpected questions, criticism, or challenges from the audience can be difficult, especially when presenters are unprepared or lack confidence in their subject matter.

Visual Aids and Technology

Creating and effectively using visual aids like slides or multimedia can be a struggle for some presenters. Technical competence is essential in this aspect.

Language and Articulation

Poor language skills or unclear articulation can hinder effective communication. Presenters may worry about stumbling over words or failing to convey their message clearly.

Maintaining appropriate and confident body language can be challenging. Avoiding nervous habits, maintaining eye contact, and using gestures effectively requires practice.

Overcoming Impersonal Delivery

In virtual presentations, maintaining a personal connection with the audience can be difficult. The absence of face-to-face interaction can make it challenging to engage and read the audience.

Cultural and Diversity Awareness

Presenting to diverse audiences requires sensitivity to cultural differences and varying levels of familiarity with the topic.

In this section, we gathered some tips on how to improve presentation skills that can certainly make an impact if applied to your presentation skills. We believe these skills can be cultivated to transform into habits for your work routine.

Tip #1: Build a narrative

One memorable way to guarantee presentation success is by writing a story of all the points you desire to cover. This statement is based on the logic behind storytelling and its power to connect with people .

Don’t waste time memorizing slides or reading your presentation to the audience. It feels unnatural, and any question that diverts from the topic in discussion certainly puts you in jeopardy or, worse, exposes you as a fraud in the eyes of the audience. And before you ask, it is really evident when a presenter has a memorized speech. 

Build and rehearse the presentation as if telling a story to a group of interested people. Lower the language barrier by avoiding complex terms that maybe even you aren’t fully aware of their meaning. Consider the ramifications of that story, what it could lead to, and which are the opportunities to explore. Then, visualize yourself giving the presentation in a natural way.

Applying this technique makes the presentation feel like second nature to you. It broadens the spectrum in which you can show expertise over a topic or even build the basis for new interesting points of view about the project.

Tip #2: Don’t talk for more than 3 minutes per slide

It is a common practice of presenters to bombard the audience with facts and information whilst retaining the same slide on the screen. Why can this happen? It could be because the presenter condensed the talk into very few slides and preferred to talk. The reality is that your spectators won’t retain the information you are giving unless you give visual cues to help that process. 

Opt to prepare more slides and pace your speech to match the topics shown on each slide. Don’t spend more than 3 minutes per slide unless you have to introduce a complex piece of data. Use visual cues to direct the spectators about what you talk about, and summarize the principal concepts discussed at the end of each section.

Tip #3: Practice meditation daily

Anxiety is the number one enemy of professional presenters. It slowly builds without you being aware of your doubts and can hinder your performance in multiple ways: making you feel paralyzed, fidgeting, making you forget language skills or concepts, affecting your health, etc.

Meditation is an ancient practice taken from Buddhist teachings that train your mind to be here in the present. We often see the concepts of meditation and mindfulness as synonyms, whereas you should be aware that meditation is a practice that sets the blocks to reach a state of mindfulness. For presenters, being in the here and now is essential to retain focus, but meditation techniques also teach us to control our breathing and be in touch with our body signals when stress builds up. 

The customary practice of meditation has an impact on imagination and creativity but also helps to build patience – a skill much needed for connecting with your audience in instructional presentations.

Having the proper set of presentation skills can be quite subjective. It goes beyond presentation tips and deepens into how flexible we can be in our ability to communicate ideas.

Different presentations and different audiences shape the outcome of our efforts. Therefore, having a basic understanding of how to connect, raise awareness, and empathize with people can be key ingredients for your career as a presenter. A word of advice: success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes dedication and patience to build communication skills . Don’t condition your work to believe you will be ready “someday”; it’s best to practice and experience failure as part of the learning process.

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21 Ways To Improve Your Presentation Skills

Published: April 07, 2023

You know the feeling of sitting through a boring presentation. A text distracts you. A noise outside pulls your gaze. Your dog begs for attention. By the time the presentation ends, you question why you needed to sit and listen in the first place.

Effective presentation skills can stop you from boring an audience to oblivion. Delivering strong presentations can help you stand out as a leader, showcase your expertise, and build confidence.

Table of contents:

• Presentation skills definition
• Importance of presentation skills
• How to improve presentation skills
• Effective presentation skills
• Presentation skills for executives

Presentation Skills Definition

Presentation skills include anything you need to create and deliver clear, effective presentations to an audience. This includes creating a compelling set of slides , ensuring the information flows, and keeping your audience engaged.

Speakers with strong presentation skills can perform the following tasks:

• Bring together different sources of information to form a compelling narrative
• Hook audiences with a strong beginning and end
• Ensure audiences engage with their content through questions or surveys
• Understand what their audience wants and needs from their presentation

Importance of Presentation Skills

At some point in your career, you will present something. You might pitch a startup to a group of investors or show your research findings to your manager at work. Those in leading or executive roles often deliver presentations on a weekly or monthly basis.

Improving your presentation skills betters different aspects of your working life, including the following:

Communication: Improving your presentation skills can make you a better communicator with your co-workers and friends.

Confidence: 75% of people fear public speaking. By working on your presentation skills, you can gain confidence when speaking in front of a crowd.

Creativity: You learn to understand how to use imagery and examples to engage an audience.

Management: Presentations involve pulling together information to form a succinct summary, helping you build project and time management skills.

How To Improve Presentation Skills

1. create an outline.

Before designing slides and writing a script, outline your presentation. Start with your introduction, segue into key points you want to make, and finish with a conclusion.

2. Practice, Practice, Practice

Almost 8 in 10 professionals practice their presentations for at least an hour. So, practice your presentation in the mirror or to a close friend.

3. Start With a Hook

When presenting, grab your audience with a hook. Consider starting with a surprising statistic or a thoughtful question before diving into the core information.

4. Stay Focused on Your Topic

You might want to cover everything under the sun, but information overload can overwhelm your audience. Instead, stay focused on what you want to cover. Aim for key points and avoid including unnecessary details.

5. Remember To Introduce Yourself

At the beginning of the presentation, introduce yourself. Kill any tension in the room by mentioning your name, your role, and any other helpful details. You could even mention a fun fact about yourself, putting the audience at ease.

6. Work on Your Body Language

55% of people look to nonverbal communication when judging a presentation. Straighten your back, minimize unnecessary gestures, and keep your voice confident and calm. Remember to work on these aspects when practicing.

7. Memorize Structure, Not Words

You might feel better knowing exactly what you want to say. But skip the script and stick to memorizing the key points of your presentation. For example, consider picking three to four phrases or insights you want to mention for each part of your presentation rather than line-by-line memorization.

8. Learn Your Audience

Before crafting a killer outline and slide deck, research your audience. Find out what they likely already know, such as industry jargon, and where they might need additional information. Remember: You're presenting for them, not you.

9. Reframe Your Anxiety as Excitement

A study conducted byHarvard Business School demonstrates that reframing your anxiety as excitement can improve performance. For example, by saying simple phrases out loud, such as “I’m excited,” you then adopt an opportunity-oriented mentality.

10. Get Comfortable With the Setting

If you plan to present in person, explore the room. Find where you’re going to stand and deliver your presentation. Practice looking into the seats. By decreasing the number of unknowns, you can clear your head and focus on the job.

11. Get Familiar With Technology

Presenting online has unique challenges, such as microphone problems and background noise. Before a Zoom presentation, ensure your microphone works, clean up your background, test your slides, and consider any background noise.

12. Think Positively

Optimistic workers enjoy faster promotions and happier lives. By reminding yourself of the positives — for example, your manager found your last presentation impressive — you can shake off nerves and find joy in the process.

13. Tell a Story

To engage your audience, weave storytelling into your presentation — more than 5 in 10 people believe stories hold their focus during a presentation. Consider ways to connect different parts of your slides into a compelling narrative.

14. Prepare for Questions

At the end of your presentation, your audience will likely have questions. Brainstorm different questions and potential answers so you’re prepared.

15. Maintain Eye Contact

Eye contact signals honesty. When possible, maintain eye contact with your audience. For in-person presentations, pay attention to each audience member. For online ones, stare at your camera lens as you deliver.

16. Condense Your Presentation

After you finish the first draft of your outline, think about ways to condense it. Short and sweet often keeps people interested instead of checking their phones.

17. Use Videos

Keep your audience’s attention by incorporating video clips when relevant. For example, videos can help demonstrate examples or explain difficult concepts.

18. Engage With Your Audience

Almost 8 in 10 professionals view presentations as boring. Turn the tide by engaging with your audience. Encourage audience participation by asking questions or conducting a live survey.

19. Present Slowly and Pause Frequently

When you get nervous, you talk faster. To combat this, remember to slow yourself down when practicing. Place deep pauses throughout your presentation, especially when transitioning between slides, as it gives you time to breathe and your audience time to absorb.

20. Start and End With a Summary

A summary at the start of a presentation can pique your audience’s interest. One at the end brings everything together, highlighting key points your audience should take with them.

21. Ask for Feedback

You will never deliver the perfect presentation, so ask for feedback. Talk to your managers about where you could improve. Consider surveying your audience for an unbiased look into your presentation skills.

Effective Presentation Skills

Effective presentation skills include communicating clearly, presenting with structure, and engaging with the audience.

As an example, say a content manager is presenting a quarterly review to their team. They start off with a summary. Their introduction mentions an unprecedented 233% growth in organic traffic — numbers their team has not seen in years. Immediately, the presenter grabs their team’s attention. Now, everyone wants to know how they achieved that in one quarter.

Alternatively, think of an entrepreneur delivering their pitch to a group of investors. They start with a question: How many of you struggle to stay awake at work? They then segue into an exciting product designed to improve the sleep quality of working professionals. Their presentation includes videos demonstrating the science behind sleep and surprising statistics about the demand for their product.

Both examples demonstrate effective presentation skills. They incorporate strong attention grabbers, summaries, and attempts to engage the audience.

Think back to strong presentations you viewed as an audience member. Ask yourself: What made them so memorable, and how can I incorporate those elements into my presentations?

Presentation Skills for Executives

Presentations take up a significant portion of an executive’s workload. Executives regularly showcase key company initiatives, team changes, quarterly and annual reviews, and more. Improving your presentation skills as a leader can help with different parts of your job, such as:

Trust: Delivering great, effective presentations can build trust between you and your team.

Confidence: Most people dread presentations — so a strong presenter projects the confidence needed by a leader.

Emotional intelligence: A great presentation taps into the audience’s perspectives, helping executives improve their emotional intelligence .

Expertise: Presentations help executives display their subject-matter expertise, making employees safe in their hands.

Delegation: At times, executives might need to pull information from different sources for a presentation — improving their ability to delegate as managers.

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Powerful and Effective Presentation Skills: More in Demand Now Than Ever

When we talk with our L&D colleagues from around the globe, we often hear that presentation skills training is one of the top opportunities they’re looking to provide their learners. And this holds true whether their learners are individual contributors, people managers, or senior leaders. This is not surprising.

Effective communications skills are a powerful career activator, and most of us are called upon to communicate in some type of formal presentation mode at some point along the way.

For instance, you might be asked to brief management on market research results, walk your team through a new process, lay out the new budget, or explain a new product to a client or prospect. Or you may want to build support for a new idea, bring a new employee into the fold, or even just present your achievements to your manager during your performance review.

And now, with so many employees working from home or in hybrid mode, and business travel in decline, there’s a growing need to find new ways to make effective presentations when the audience may be fully virtual or a combination of in person and remote attendees.

Whether you’re making a standup presentation to a large live audience, or a sit-down one-on-one, whether you’re delivering your presentation face to face or virtually, solid presentation skills matter.

Even the most seasoned and accomplished presenters may need to fine-tune or update their skills. Expectations have changed over the last decade or so. Yesterday’s PowerPoint which primarily relied on bulleted points, broken up by the occasional clip-art image, won’t cut it with today’s audience.

The digital revolution has revolutionized the way people want to receive information. People expect presentations that are more visually interesting. They expect to see data, metrics that support assertions. And now, with so many previously in-person meetings occurring virtually, there’s an entirely new level of technical preparedness required.

The leadership development tools and the individual learning opportunities you’re providing should include presentation skills training that covers both the evergreen fundamentals and the up-to-date capabilities that can make or break a presentation.

So, just what should be included in solid presentation skills training? Here’s what I think.

The fundamentals will always apply When it comes to making a powerful and effective presentation, the fundamentals will always apply. You need to understand your objective. Is it strictly to convey information, so that your audience’s knowledge is increased? Is it to persuade your audience to take some action? Is it to convince people to support your idea? Once you understand what your objective is, you need to define your central message. There may be a lot of things you want to share with your audience during your presentation, but find – and stick with – the core, the most important point you want them to walk away with. And make sure that your message is clear and compelling.

You also need to tailor your presentation to your audience. Who are they and what might they be expecting? Say you’re giving a product pitch to a client. A technical team may be interested in a lot of nitty-gritty product detail. The business side will no doubt be more interested in what returns they can expect on their investment.

Another consideration is the setting: is this a formal presentation to a large audience with questions reserved for the end, or a presentation in a smaller setting where there’s the possibility for conversation throughout? Is your presentation virtual or in-person? To be delivered individually or as a group? What time of the day will you be speaking? Will there be others speaking before you and might that impact how your message will be received?

Once these fundamentals are established, you’re in building mode. What are the specific points you want to share that will help you best meet your objective and get across your core message? Now figure out how to convey those points in the clearest, most straightforward, and succinct way. This doesn’t mean that your presentation has to be a series of clipped bullet points. No one wants to sit through a presentation in which the presenter reads through what’s on the slide. You can get your points across using stories, fact, diagrams, videos, props, and other types of media.

Visual design matters While you don’t want to clutter up your presentation with too many visual elements that don’t serve your objective and can be distracting, using a variety of visual formats to convey your core message will make your presentation more memorable than slides filled with text. A couple of tips: avoid images that are cliched and overdone. Be careful not to mix up too many different types of images. If you’re using photos, stick with photos. If you’re using drawn images, keep the style consistent. When data are presented, stay consistent with colors and fonts from one type of chart to the next. Keep things clear and simple, using data to support key points without overwhelming your audience with too much information. And don’t assume that your audience is composed of statisticians (unless, of course, it is).

When presenting qualitative data, brief videos provide a way to engage your audience and create emotional connection and impact. Word clouds are another way to get qualitative data across.

Practice makes perfect You’ve pulled together a perfect presentation. But it likely won’t be perfect unless it’s well delivered. So don’t forget to practice your presentation ahead of time. Pro tip: record yourself as you practice out loud. This will force you to think through what you’re going to say for each element of your presentation. And watching your recording will help you identify your mistakes—such as fidgeting, using too many fillers (such as “umm,” or “like”), or speaking too fast.

A key element of your preparation should involve anticipating any technical difficulties. If you’ve embedded videos, make sure they work. If you’re presenting virtually, make sure that the lighting is good, and that your speaker and camera are working. Whether presenting in person or virtually, get there early enough to work out any technical glitches before your presentation is scheduled to begin. Few things are a bigger audience turn-off than sitting there watching the presenter struggle with the delivery mechanisms!

Finally, be kind to yourself. Despite thorough preparation and practice, sometimes, things go wrong, and you need to recover in the moment, adapt, and carry on. It’s unlikely that you’ll have caused any lasting damage and the important thing is to learn from your experience, so your next presentation is stronger.

How are you providing presentation skills training for your learners?

Manika Gandhi is Senior Learning Design Manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at [email protected] .

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12 Ways to Improve Your Presentation Skills [for Work & Life]

According to research by the National Institute of Mental Health, around 75% of people list public speaking as their number one fear , even higher than their fear of death! 

At the same time, though, presentation skills are among the most in-demand skills for just about any job out there . 

Want to get over your fear of public speaking, improve your presentation skills, and give your career a huge boost?

You’re in the right place! This article is here to tell you everything you need to know about presentation skills from A to Z: 

• 9 Types of Presentations and Delivery Methods
• 12 Steps to Giving Better Presentations
• 5 Ways to Improve Your Presentation Skills

How to Add Your Presentation Skills to Your Resume

And more! Let’s dive in. 

What Are Presentation Skills?

Presentation skills are soft skills that allow you to present information clearly in front of an audience.

As such, these skills come in handy in all kinds of situations, including:

• Work. For example, giving a presentation in front of your team, pitching a new idea, etc.
• School or university. E.g., giving an oral presentation about a subject or presenting a master's thesis.
• Personal life. E.g. giving a speech at your best friend’s wedding or a toast at a restaurant.

No matter the situation, people with strong presentation skills typically possess the following skills:

• Body language
• Public speaking
• Communication skills
• Emotional intelligence

Why Are Presentation Skills Important?

But, what exactly makes presentation skills so important in basically every life area? 

Here are their most noteworthy benefits: 

• Increased employability. Presentation skills come in handy for many positions across all industries. 70% of respondents in a Prezi study said that presentation skills are critical for career success. As such, presentation skills are transferable skills that can instantly make you more employable.
• Higher academic performance. In the US, most university classes involve a presentation assignment or two. As such, being good at presenting is essential if you want to succeed academically.
• Effective networking. Having great presentation skills translates into great communication skills, which, in turn, helps you get better at professional networking .
• Improved confidence. Being able to speak in front of an audience can be a serious confidence booster, easily translating to other areas in life.

9 Types of Presentation and Delivery Methods

There are several types of presentations out there. 

Some presentations are meant to inspire the audience (such as motivational talks), while others are simply meant to instruct or inform (HR giving a presentation about company policies to new employees). 

Here are the five most common types of presentations, explained: 

• Persuasive presentations are meant to persuade the audience to make a decision, support a cause, side with a particular argument, and so on. A salesman pitching a product to a potential customer is an example of a persuasive presentation.
• Informative presentations aim to inform the audience about a topic, procedure, product, benefit, etc. An example of an informative presentation is a weatherman reading the weather report on TV.
• Inspirational presentations are meant to inspire the audience and potentially boost their confidence or morale. In a business setting, inspirational presentations are meant to motivate employees to perform better or get through tough times. In day-to-day life, on the other hand, an inspirational presentation could be trying to motivate a friend to do better at school.
• Educational presentations , just like the name implies, aim to educate the audience. Professors giving a lecture or tour guides speaking to museum visitors are examples of educational presentations.
• Instructional presentations are about instructing or guiding the audience on a set of guidelines, a new policy, a certain law, etc. An example of an instructional presentation is a flight attendant instructing passengers on what to do in case of an emergency.

On the same note, there are also 4 common ways presentations are delivered: 

• Extemporaneous presentations. These presentations are planned, but you deliver them without preparation.
• Manuscript presentations are presentations you deliver based on a script or notes.
• Impromptu presentations aren’t planned but rather delivered on the spot.
• Memorized presentations are those you learn by heart from start to finish.

11 Tips on How to Give Better Presentations

Looking to improve your presentation skills?

There’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that, with enough practice, you can get really good at delivering presentations.

The bad news, though, is that just like any other soft skill, in order to get good at delivering presentations, you’ll have to practice a lot.

To help get you started, below, we’re going to cover 12 of our best tips on how to improve your presentation skills, starting with:

#1. Prepare your presentation in advance

Impromptu presentations don’t happen that often in real life. Most times, you’ll have enough time to prepare for your presentation. 

Needless to say, you should use that time to your advantage. Don’t just make mental notes of what you’ll say during your presentation and call it a day, but actually plan it out from start to finish. 

When preparing your presentation in advance, make sure to consider the following points:

• What type of presentation are you making?
• What is your speech delivery method?
• How are you going to grab the audience’s attention from the get-go?
• What are the main points you need to cover?
• What is the best way to make the conclusion memorable?
• How much time do you have at your disposal?
• What visual aids and multimedia can you use?
• What does the audience expect to see/hear?

#2. Practice as much as possible

Just like with any other soft skill, the best way to hone your presentation skills is to practice as much as possible.

Some ways you can practice your presentation skills are:

• In front of a mirror or in front of your friends and family.
• Watch TED talks to get inspired and learn what good presentation skills look like.
• Read books on communication, presentation, and public speaking.
• Take extensive notes of what you need to improve. 
• Record and time yourself when doing presentations.
• Hire a public speaking coach on Fiverr or another platform.
• Take a public speaking course at your local community college.

The more you practice, the better your presentation skills are going to get.

Also, when practicing, make sure to pay attention to your tonality, body language, and whether you’re using a lot of crutch words .

#3. Exercise

Yes, really.

Exercise can help improve your presentation skills!

Some ways it does so are:

• It boosts the levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline, all of which are known to improve your mood and regulate your anxiety. 
• It improves your ability to focus and pay attention, benefits which can last for up to two hours after your workout .
• It strengthens and protects your memory, making it easy to recall words. 

Now, when it comes to how much you should exercise, that can differ from one person to the next.

We say - find a golden mean that works best for you. If you’re not big on exercising, you can always start small with something casual like biking to work or playing a sport once or twice a week. 

#4. Arrive early

By arriving early for your presentation, you can deal with any possible setbacks (e.g. mic not working, USB failure, wardrobe malfunction, etc). 

This will give you plenty of time to start your presentation on your terms, instead of running around trying to fix things at the last minute. 

Not to mention, in certain situations arriving early can also help you to prepare mentally and emotionally for the upcoming presentation. 

Obviously, a casual presentation in front of coworkers won’t require much emotional preparation. But if you have to, say, pitch a marketing idea to your clients or address a room full of strangers, getting to exchange some words with them before the presentation could break the ice and make it easier to engage with them later on. 

#5. Know your audience

You should always keep your audience in mind when making (and delivering) a presentation. 

At the end of the day, if your message is not tailored to its audience, chances are, it’s going to fall flat.

If your audience is a group of 50-somethings, high-level executives, chances are they won’t get your Rick and Morty references or appreciate any attempts to keep the presentation light, casual, and humorous. 

Instead, stick to talking about facts and figures without any joking around, use straightforward language, and avoid over-the-top body language while delivering the presentation. 

If on the other hand, you’re delivering a presentation to your class of 20-somethings, then you’re a lot more likely to make an impact if you joke around, make references, and make the presentation more casual.

In short, if you want your presentation to carry as much impact as possible, make sure to think about who you’re presenting to. 

#6. Use Relaxation Techniques

Even the most seasoned public speakers experience some level of anxiety before giving a presentation.

To make sure nerves and anxiety don’t throw you off your A-game, you can take advantage of relaxation techniques. 

One of the simplest (and most effective) ways to relax before a presentation is to breathe.  

When we say breathing, though, we don’t mean the automatic in-and-out we do to stay alive. We mean taking deep, relaxing breaths from your stomach while being mindful of what you’re doing. 

Here’s how breathing mindfully before your presentation can help you give a better presentation: 

• Calms your nerves
• Reduces stress 
• Helps with anxiety 

To practice mindful breathing, focus on breathing from your stomach and push your stomach out each time you inhale. When you’re inhaling and exhaling, count to at least three for each breath. 

Keep doing this and you’ll soon start feeling more relaxed. 

#7. Acknowledge That You’re Nervous

People appreciate honesty. 

If you go on stage feeling extremely nervous, use this neat little trick:

Instead of trying to play it cool, simply acknowledge that you’re feeling nervous by straight-up saying it.

Chances are, a very large chunk of your audience feels exactly the same way about public speaking, and you’ll build up some rapport just like that!

This same exact tip even applies to job interviews. You can simply tell the recruiters that you’re feeling nervous and need a minute - that’s totally acceptable!

Unless you’re applying for a job in sales, the job interviewer is not going to be evaluating you on how good you are at passing interviews.

#8. Tell stories

Storytelling is a powerful presentation tool. According to the Guardian, 63% of presentation attendees remember stories , while only 5% remember statistics.

That’s because a good story can take the audience on a journey, intrigue them, inspire them, and motivate them. In turn, they’re much more likely to remember your presentation.

There are several ways you can go about incorporating stories into your presentation. 

One is to tie your own stories, along with what you experienced, learned, or observed, to make your argument more impactful and relatable. Alternatively, you can also create a story for the sake of the presentation that can be just as impactful in driving your point across. 

Keep in mind, though, that not every presentation requires storytelling. If your presentation is packed with data and stats showing how you managed to improve profits by 20% in the last quarter, for example, then you don’t really need to include a story in there to make it impactful. 

#9. Be humorous

This one’s quite self-explanatory; as much as you can, be humorous during your presentation. It helps ease tension, get the attention of everyone in the room, and connect with them more effectively. 

Now, some people are born with humor. If you’re one of them, cracking a joke here and there should come very naturally to you. 

Otherwise, you can practice your presentation in front of your friends and family and prepare your jokes in advance. If your mock audience laughs at your jokes, chances are, so will your real audience!

#10. Use visual aids and media

Using visuals and other media forms (e.g. music, videos, infographics, etc.), can make your presentation significantly more engaging, memorable, and striking. 

Say, for example, that your presentation consists entirely of numbers and data. You can use data visualization (e.g. charts, graphs, and maps), to make the data stick with your audience better. 

Or, if you’re a lecturer at a university, you’ll want to use as many pictures, videos, and even music to help your students remember the information you’re transmitting. 

Some of the most popular ways to make your presentations as visual as possible involve using:

• Whiteboards
• Presentation applications 

#11. Engage the audience

To give a truly memorable presentation, engage your audience as much as possible. 

Instead of speaking to your audience, try to speak with your audience.

What we mean by this is that you should be very proactive in getting your audience involved in your presentation. Ask questions, get them to share stories, and so on. 

Some examples of how you can effectively engage an audience are: 

• Asking a random audience member to share their experience on a topic.
• Doing a count of hands (e.g. “Has anyone done X? Can I see a count of hands?” or “Which one of you guys likes Y? Raise your hands.” )
• Do an on-the-spot poll (e.g. “How many of you guys do X?” or “how many of you guys think Y?” )
• Making time for a Q&A at the end of your presentation. 

6 Ways to Improve Your Presentation Skills

Just like any other skill, presentation skills can be learned and improved. So, if you’re looking to improve your presentation skills, follow the tips below: 

• Take every public speaking opportunity you get. The best way to learn presentation skills is by doing it. So, take every opportunity you get. E.g. volunteer to present a project, say a toast at your friend's wedding, etc.
• Check these TED talks. Is there anything TED talks haven’t covered? Check out these talks that can teach you how to give awesome presentations: “ Giving Presentations Worth Listening To ”, “ the secret structure of great talks ,” and “ the science of stage fright (and how to overcome it) ”. 
• Take public speaking classes. Udemy, Coursera, and LinkedIn all have great public speaking courses. Or, even better, take a class at your local college. This way, you’ll get a lot more practice than by taking an online class. 
• Attend other presentations. This one’s pretty self-explanatory. The more presentations you attend, the more you can learn from others’ successes or failures. 
• Grow your confidence. Speak in front of friends and family, film yourself, and accept constructive criticism. Soon enough, you’ll be confident enough to give excellent presentations!
• Ask for feedback. How can you improve your presentation skills if you don’t know where you’re lacking? After your presentation, ask one or two members of your audience for personal, one-on-one feedback on how you did. 

If you want to show a potential employer that you’ve got presentation skills, you’ll need to highlight them on your resume.

And in this section, we’ll teach you just how to do that!

Before you do that, though, make sure to grab one of our free resume templates!

#1. List Your Presentation Skills Under Your Soft Skills 

The first and most obvious place to list your presentation skills is under your skills section . 

This part is pretty straightforward. Your skills section should be divided into “soft skills” and “hard skills” and look something like this: 

Simply add “Presentation Skills” under the “Soft Skills” section, and you’re good to go.

#2. Mention Your Presentation Skills in Your Resume Summary 

If presentation skills are super important for the role you’re applying for, you can also include them in your resume summary : 

In a nutshell, the resume summary is a short paragraph on top of your resume that typically mentions: 

• Your title and years of experience 
• Your most noteworthy achievements
• Your top skills and qualifications

Done right, this section should highlight all your strong points right from the get-go and get the hiring manager to go through the rest of your resume in more detail. 

Here’s an example of a resume summary that effectively mentions the candidate’s presentation skills: 

• Sales professional with 7 years of experience in sales presentations and lead generation. Excellent public speaking skills. Track record of converting prospects into loyal customers.

#3. Prove Presentation Skills Through Your Work Experience 

Lastly (and most importantly), you should use your work experience section to prove that you’ve got the presentation skills you mentioned in your skills section.

Here’s exactly how you can do that: 

• Keep your work experience section relevant. List recent and relevant positions. Omit outdated and irrelevant ones. For example, if you’re applying for a customer service position, you can mention the time you worked, say, as a receptionist. Your teen job mowing lawns, on the other hand? Not as important. 
• Focus on achievements instead of responsibilities. Instead of telling the hiring manager what they already know (your responsibilities), focus on showing them how you made an impact with your achievements. A way to do that is to write down a couple of achievements for every presentation skill that you include under your soft skills. 
• Make your achievements quantifiable . Adding numbers to your achievements makes them significantly more impressive. “Delivered a presentation that closed a 6-figure client” is a lot more powerful than “Delivered client presentations,” right?
• Use action verbs and power words. Presentation skills are also about how you present yourself in your resume. Avoid dry and unimaginative language and go for these action verbs and power words instead.

Key Takeaways 

And that’s about all you need to know to improve your presentation skills!

Before you go, though, here’s a quick recap of everything we covered in this article:

• Presentation skills are soft skills that allow you to present information clearly and convey your message effectively. 
• Some important presentation skills include public speaking, communication, persuasion, creativity, humor, and emotional intelligence. 
• Presentation skills can increase your employability, improve your academic performance, make it easier to network, and help you grow professionally. 
• Some steps you can take to give better presentations are to prepare in advance, practice as much as possible, exercise regularly, be humorous, use visual aids and multimedia, engage the audience, and accept that you’re nervous. 
• To improve your presentation skills, watch videos that teach you how to give great presentations, attend public speaking classes and other presentations, and grow your confidence. 
• List your presentation skills under your skills section, mention them in your resume summary, and prove them with your achievements in the work experience section.

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• Presentation Skills
• Skills & Tools

Presentation skills can be defined as a set of abilities that enable an individual to: interact with the audience; transmit the messages with clarity; engage the audience in the presentation; and interpret and understand the mindsets of the listeners. These skills refine the way you put forward your messages and enhance your persuasive powers.

The present era places great emphasis on good presentation skills. This is because they play an important role in convincing the clients and customers. Internally, management with good presentation skills is better able to communicate the mission and vision of the organization to the employees.

Importance of Presentation Skills

Interaction with others is a routine job of businesses in today’s world. The importance of good presentation skills is established on the basis of following points:

• They help an individual in enhancing his own growth opportunities. In addition, it also grooms the personality of the presenter and elevates his levels of confidence.
• In case of striking deals and gaining clients, it is essential for the business professionals to understand the audience. Good presentation skills enable an individual to mold his message according to the traits of the audience. This increases the probability of successful transmission of messages.
• Lastly, business professionals have to arrange seminars and give presentations almost every day. Having good presentation skills not only increases an individual’s chances of success, but also enable him to add greatly to the organization.

How to Improve Presentation Skills

Development of good presentation skills requires efforts and hard work. To improve your presentation skills, you must:

• Research the Audience before Presenting: This will enable you to better understand the traits of the audience. You can then develop messages that can be better understood by your target audience. For instance, in case of an analytical audience, you can add more facts and figures in your presentation.
• Structure your Presentation Effectively: The best way to do this is to start with telling the audience, in the introduction, what you are going to present. Follow this by presenting the idea, and finish off the presentation by repeating the main points.
• Do a lot of Practice: Rehearse but do not go for memorizing the presentation. Rehearsals reduce your anxiety and enable you to look confident on the presentation day. Make sure you practice out loud, as it enables you to identify and eliminate errors more efficiently. Do not memorize anything as it will make your presentation look mechanical. This can reduce the degree of audience engagement.
• Take a Workshop: Most medium and large businesses allow their employees to take employee development courses and workshops, as well-trained employees are essential to the success of any company. You can use that opportunity to take a workshop on professional presentation skills such as those offered by Langevin Learning Services , which are useful for all business professionals, from employees to business trainers and managers.

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Presentation Skills: The Essential Abilities You Need to Deliver Engaging and Impactful Presentations

Delivering a powerful presentation isn’t just about having great content. It’s about how effectively you communicate your ideas, engage your audience, and leave a lasting impact.

Mastering presentation skills is key to succeeding in business meetings, sales pitches, conferences, or any other scenario where you need to deliver information clearly and confidently. Here’s a breakdown of the essential presentation skills that will help you elevate your performance.

1. Effective Communication: The Core of Every Successful Presentation

Clear and concise communication is the foundation of any presentation. Your ability to express ideas in a way that’s easily understood and remembered is what differentiates a good presenter from a great one.

Simplifying complex ideas and presenting them in a structured, logical flow.

How to Develop it:

Practice speaking clearly and at a moderate pace. Use straightforward language and avoid jargon unless your audience is familiar with it.

2. Storytelling: Engage and Captivate Your Audience

Humans are wired to respond to stories. Incorporating storytelling into your presentations helps you connect with your audience on an emotional level, making your message more relatable and memorable.

Crafting a compelling narrative that aligns with your presentation’s goals.

When structuring your presentation, think about how you can weave real-life examples, anecdotes, or success stories into your content to make it more engaging.

3. Audience Engagement: Keeping Their Attention from Start to Finish

Even the best content won’t matter if your audience loses interest. Strong presentation skills include the ability to keep your audience engaged throughout your talk.

Using techniques like asking questions, incorporating interactive elements, and responding to audience feedback.

During your presentation, periodically check in with your audience. Use polls, ask questions, or invite them to share their thoughts, keeping the session dynamic and interactive.

4. Body Language: Conveying Confidence and Authority

Non-verbal communication plays a crucial role in how your message is received. Your posture, gestures, and facial expressions can either enhance or detract from your message.

Using open body language, maintaining eye contact, and leveraging gestures to emphasize key points.

Practice presenting in front of a mirror or record yourself. Pay attention to your posture, hand movements, and facial expressions. Aim for a confident stance with controlled, purposeful gestures.

5. Adaptability: Adjusting on the Fly

Even the most carefully planned presentations can run into unexpected issues. Being adaptable allows you to handle disruptions, audience questions, or technical glitches with composure.

Thinking on your feet and modifying your approach based on audience reactions or unforeseen circumstances.

Prepare backup plans for potential issues and practice scenarios where things go off-script. Stay flexible and be ready to shift your focus if necessary.

6. Visual Design: Enhancing Your Message with Compelling Visuals

Visual aids, when used correctly, can significantly enhance your presentation. Good presentation skills include designing slides and other visuals that are clear, appealing, and support your message.

Creating slides that highlight key points without overwhelming your audience.

Use tools like Canva or PowerPoint to design clean, minimalist slides. Stick to key visuals and avoid cluttering your presentation with too much text or overly complex graphics.

7. Time Management: Staying On Track and Respecting Your Audience’s Time

Effective time management ensures that you cover all your content without running over or rushing through important points.

Pacing your presentation to fit within the allotted time while delivering all key information.

Rehearse with a timer to refine your pacing. Plan buffer time for questions or discussions, and be prepared to adjust your delivery based on real-time conditions.

8. Handling Questions and Feedback: Navigating Interactions with Ease

Q&A sessions or spontaneous audience questions are common in most presentations. Handling these interactions gracefully is a critical skill.

Listening carefully, responding clearly, and managing difficult or unexpected questions professionally.

Prepare for likely questions in advance. Practice maintaining your composure when addressing challenging or unexpected queries, and always keep your responses respectful and concise.

Mastering these presentation skills takes practice, but they are essential for anyone looking to deliver impactful presentations consistently. Whether you’re presenting to a small group of colleagues or addressing a large audience, honing these skills will help you communicate your ideas effectively, engage your listeners, and leave a lasting positive impression.

Table of contents

The Ultimate Guide to Hard Skills for the Workplace and Your Resume

Your car is making that weird noise again and you want to get it fixed. What are you going to look for in a mechanic? Someone who knows how to diagnose and fix the type of issue you’re facing and has some good reviews showing their past performance, right? You’re not going to leave your car at a computer repair shop, or at a place that only does tire changes, or with a mechanic who says they don’t know what they’re doing but they promise they’re really nice. 

Now apply that to your own job search—employers are looking for people who have the skills to complete the job duties for the role and who can show how they’ve used these skills in the past. These black-and-white, objective skills are known as hard skills, and they’re one of the most important pieces of your background to show off in any job search. 

What are hard skills?

Simply put, hard skills are the specific knowledge or abilities needed to do a job, says Muse career coach Jennifer Smith , founder of Flourish Careers . Hard skills can include knowing how to use specific tools, platforms, or computer programs as well as how to perform certain tasks and processes needed to do your job.

For example, a designer might need to know how to use Photoshop and design infographics; a financial analyst may be expected to know how to use Microsoft Excel as well as analyze, visualize, and present data; and a music teacher might need to know how to play piano and be familiar with certain teaching methods.

Hard skills are often contrasted with soft skills , which are the qualities and abilities that speak to how a person will do their job and relate to others in their workplace, such as strong work ethic, dependability, empathy, creativity, and communication with coworkers and clients. (Read more about the differences between hard and soft skills .)

Most in-demand hard skills for 2023

So what hard skills are the most important? Which will make it easiest for you to get hired? The answers change all the time and are very specific to the job you’re applying for, but as of May 2022, ZipRecruiter identified these 10 hard skills as the most commonly mentioned across all their job descriptions:

• Customer relationship management (CRM) software
• Management skills
• Sales experience
• Software development
• Software engineering
• Computer science
• Basic life support
• Budget management
• Advanced cardiac life support

An important subset of hard skills are technical skills , which are hard skills that require you to use a specific piece of technology or particular technique. According to O*Net , a site from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), these are currently the most in-demand technical skills across all employer job postings:

• Microsoft Office software (Microsoft Excel ranks first, followed by all Office software, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Word)
• Oracle Java
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) software
• SAP software
• Microsoft Azure software
• Microsoft Access
• Atlassian JIRA

If you don’t have any of these in-demand skills, though, that doesn’t mean you’re destined for permanent unemployment. With the exception of Microsoft Word, hard skills are often very specific to your career or job function, so the most in-demand ones at any given time are going to be either very broad (like Microsoft Office or management skills) or reflective of the most in-demand jobs or careers at the time (software development and engineering or healthcare at the moment).

80+ hard skills to add to your resume

Here’s a longer list of hard skills that you might need in your job divided into categories. Note that many skills could fit into more than one category and that this is far from exhaustive. But it should help you get started thinking about what types of hard skills might be relevant for the kind of job you have or want. 

Read More:  The Right Way to Add Skills to Your Resume in 2023 (With 250+ Example Skills)

Data and analytical skills

Data and analytical skills might be the core of your ability to do your job if you’re in a field like research, data science, or financial analysis. Or they might be how you quantify and evaluate your success and plan for the future if you work in marketing, sales, or any other field where processing information is important.

Some examples are:

• Business analysis
• Customer analysis
• Data analysis
• Data engineering
• Data mining
• Data reporting
• Data presentation
• Data visualization
• Financial analysis
• Forecasting
• Market analysis
• Statistical tests
• SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis
• Web analytics

Read More: No, Analytical Skills Aren’t Just for Analysts—Here’s How to Show Yours Off in a Job Search  

Hard communication skills

Communication skills might be the first thing you think of when naming soft skills—maybe because I mentioned them earlier in the article. But communication skills can be hard skills when they’re very specific tasks and/or require a knowledge base to do them, says Muse career coach Emily Liou , founder of Cultivitae . The ability to speak another language is also considered a hard skill, and it’s one of the few skills you might consider listing no matter what job you apply for.

Some examples of hard communication skills are:

• Academic writing
• Blog writing
• Content writing
• Copywriting
• Editing and proofreading
• Grant writing
• Press Release writing
• Proposal writing
• Research and reporting
• Technical report writing
• Translation
• Transcription

Read More: Why Writing Skills Are Important for Every Job—and How to Improve Yours

Task-oriented skills

These skills describe the tasks you know how to do to fulfill the responsibilities, or perform the function, of your job. Every job requires task-oriented (a.k.a., functional) skills, but which ones you need vary widely.

• A/B testing
• Ability/license to drive a certain type or class of vehicle
• Account management
• Calendaring
• Classroom management
• Conversion rate optimization
• Creating slide decks
• Database administration
• IV insertion
• Lead generation
• Market research
• Recruitment
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media management
• Tax preparation
• User experience (UX) research
• Website design

Methodologies

Methodologies are set processes for completing tasks, or a series of tasks, within a job. If a job description mentions that the organization uses a certain methodology, framework, strategy, style, or other set standards or principles to accomplish tasks, it’s worth noting when you have experience in it, even if it’s not one of the job requirements.

• Account-based marketing (ABM)
• Design sprint
• Inbound marketing
• Inquiry-based learning
• Kinesthetic learning
• Project management or software development methodologies (such as Agile, Kanban, Scrum, or Waterfall)
• Style guides—such as AP (Associated Press), APA (American Psychological Association), Chicago, Merriam-Webster, or USGPO (United States Government Publishing Office)

Programming skills/languages

Programming skills—including coding languages—help you build new pieces of technology. They’re a must for anyone in software or web development and related fields, but can also be useful in jobs where you work with tech. For example, if you use a content management system (CMS), knowing HTML might be useful.

• ADA accessible development
• API development
• Application development and scaling
• Version Control

Programs/tools/software-related skills

This category encompasses the programs and applications you have experience using to accomplish tasks or any part of your job (including communicating with colleagues).  Some examples are:

• Accounting software (such as Sage 50 Accounting or QuickBooks)
• Adobe Creative Cloud (After Effects, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop)
• CMSs (such as WordPress, Drupal, or Squarespace)
• Customer relationship management (CRM) software (such as Salesforce, HubSpot, or NetSuite)
• Data software (such as Looker, QlikView, or Tableau)
• Google Analytics or Search Console
• Google Workspace (Docs, Drive, Forms, Meet, Sheets, Slides)
• Learning management systems (such as Blackboard, Canvas, or Google Classroom)
• Microsoft365 (Excel, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams, Word)
• Project management and collaboration software (such as Airtable, Asana, Jira, or Trello)
• Social media platforms (such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, or Twitter)
• Video and remote meeting software (such as Zoom, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, or Microsoft Teams)

How to put hard skills on your resume

The goal of your resume is simple: to show potential employers that you’re the right person for a job. And to be the right person, you have to have the right hard skills and show them off on your resume.

1. Choose which hard skills to highlight.

First, you need to figure out which hard skills are most important for a given role. You should always tailor your resume for each job application and emphasize the relevant experiences and abilities for that position. The ultimate source of truth here is always the job description. So give it a very close read. 

“Generally speaking, when analyzing a job description, you will have a sense of what technical skills or domain knowledge is required or preferred in the role,” Liou says. As you read through the job posting, you should highlight any technologies, tasks, or methodologies you come across. They often appear as “required” or “preferred” skills, qualifications, or experience, but you should also note any hard skills you’d need to perform the job duties or responsibilities listed.

If you want additional ideas, you can also talk with or research the LinkedIn profiles of people who have done the job you want and see which hard skills they mention, Smith says. This is especially valuable if you can find people who have held the position you want at the company you want to work for.

When listing software or other technologies, whatever the company mentions in the job description or is widely used in your field is most helpful. But you can also list similar software to show that you have a basis to learn a tool you’ll need. For example, if a company uses Trello for project management and you have experience with Airtable, you can include Airtable on your resume. 

If a program has a wide variety of uses, consider highlighting the specific tasks you can do within it. For example, if a job listing mentions building pivot tables in Excel as a job duty, simply writing “Microsoft Excel” on your resume isn’t enough.

Once you have the list of hard skills a company is looking for when hiring for a given job, note which ones you have: These are the hard skills that you should highlight on your resume. But be honest with yourself. If you can’t talk about how you’ve used a skill and/or how you learned it, you probably shouldn’t list it.

2. Add your hard skills to a skills section. 

Putting your hard skills in a skills section will ensure they’re easily seen by anyone reading your resume. You might place your skills section at the bottom of the page or you might put it before your work experience, depending on your situation. If you’re an entry-level candidate or you’re changing careers, for example, leading with your skills might make it more clear how you’re qualified for the job in question. And in some fields—like product management —skills sections are more often placed at the top of the page.

Most people use a chronological format in which you simply list your skills in your skills section without explanation, though you might consider dividing your skills into categories like “design” or “writing” to make them easier to read.

Here’s an example of how a skills section might look for someone applying for an in-house accounting and payroll position:

• Accounting skills: Budget analysis, cash flow analysis, tax preparation, payroll management, invoice processing
• Technical skills: ADP Workforce Now, QuickBooks, Oracle ERP, Salesforce, Microsoft Excel (VLOOKUP, pivot tables, formulas)
• Language skills: Native Spanish speaker (written and verbal)

3. Show how you’ve used your hard skills.

W ork your hard skills into the bullet points that describe your past experiences—previous jobs, volunteer positions , activities , projects , and more—and highlight the outcomes, Smith says. You should also quantify the use and results of your skills by incorporating numbers whenever possible.

For example, if you wanted to show your experience with SEO and related hard skills, you might write a bullet point like this:

• Updated up to 5 old articles a month per SEO best practices using Google Analytics, Search Console, and SEMrush, resulting in an average UV increase of 25% MoM and approximately 50% of updated articles appearing in the top 5 results for targeted keywords.

You might also list related certifications or online courses and, particularly if you’re early in your career, you could work your hard skills into your education section . 

If a certain hard skill is emphasized in the job description or otherwise seems especially valuable to an employer, you might consider including it in a resume summary or headline as well, Smith says.

4. Don’t forget about the ATS .

As you add hard skills to your resume, keep in mind that it will likely need to pass through an applicant tracking system (ATS) , a program that scans and organizes applications. These systems also make it possible to search large batches of resumes for keywords, and “recruiters will type in specific hard skills to find the best qualified matches,” Liou says. So be sure to phrase your hard skills the same way the job description does—don’t just say you’ve managed social media for a company if they’re looking for someone who’s run a Twitter account, for example.

Whatever field or industry you’re in, hard skills are key to landing your next gig. After all, they show employers that you can actually do the job they’re hiring for.

Hard skills vs. Soft skills

After reading this guide, you will be able to clearly define the hard and soft skills needed for your open positions, resume, and CV.

Ivan Andreev

Demand Generation & Capture Strategist, Valamis

November 27, 2021 · updated August 13, 2024

9 minute read

Julia Kuzmina contributed

When seeking new recruits or considering internal promotions, it’s crucial to identify the specific skills required for each role. Some of these skills are innate, while others may require formal training.

For L&D and HR professionals, it’s essential to outline hard skills in the role specification, detailing the necessary technical competencies.

Equally important are the soft skills, which include interpersonal and emotional intelligence, to be included in the person specification.

Employees can also benefit greatly from this guide. By reading it, you will learn how to clearly distinguish between hard and soft skills. This knowledge will be invaluable for enhancing your resumes and effectively showcasing your top skills.

What are hard skills?

What are soft skills, what’s the difference between hard skills and soft skills, list of hard and soft skills, how to develop hard and soft skills.

Hard skills specific competencies, knowledge, and abilities required to perform particular tasks or roles. These skills can be acquired through education, training, and professional development. Typically technical in nature (though not always), hard skills are easily measurable and objectively assessed.

Evidence of hard skills can be found in educational certificates or demonstrated through practical applications.

For instance, software development necessitates proficiency in programming languages, which is essential for writing computer programs.

The level of expertise in this area is quantifiable through various metrics and assessments.

Similarly, consider the design field. Whether it’s interior design or web design, each specialty requires a unique skill set tailored to specific tasks. Mastery of design principles and tools is crucial and can be distinctly evaluated.

Another example is proficiency in the Microsoft Office Suite. Skills in using tools like Microsoft Word and Excel are often indispensable for many job functions and can be demonstrated through both certification and practical usage.

Thus, each role demands a unique combination of hard skills essential for effective performance. Understanding and developing these skills are fundamental to achieving success in any professional setting.

How to conduct a skills gap analysis and what to do next

Start building your foundation for strategic workforce development.

Soft skills personality traits, social competencies, and abilities essential for performing interpersonal activities and unique tasks. Sometimes referred to as human skills , they are vital for effective interaction and collaboration.human.

Often rooted in inherent personality traits and social abilities, soft skills can also be refined through practice and professional development.

Unlike hard skills, measuring soft skills can be challenging, particularly during the hiring process, due to limited observable information. Personal interactions are key to truly understanding a person’s soft skills.

While various techniques and tests exist to assess these skills, their accuracy can be limited and may not always reflect a person’s true abilities.

Real-life situations are the ultimate test of how effectively someone applies their soft skills.

Certain soft skills are universally desirable for all team members, such as punctuality and effective collaboration. Other skills, such as leadership, communication, strategic thinking, and problem-solving, are crucial for specific roles.

Though soft skills are not accompanied by certifications, they become evident through daily interactions and work experiences.

Natural leaders instinctively take charge and guide others, while reliable team members consistently demonstrate punctuality and proactive communication.

By recognizing and nurturing soft skills, organizations can enhance team dynamics and overall performance, creating a more cohesive and productive work environment.

The primary difference lies in their nature: soft skills are closely tied to an individual’s personality and aren’t always teachable, while hard skills are learned and task-specific.

Soft skills, such as leadership and communication, can be enhanced through training, but there’s often an innate element. Some individuals naturally exhibit strong leadership qualities more than others.

In contrast, hard skills are acquired through education and training. These skills are specific to tasks and easier to teach. Employees can attend courses to learn new hard skills or improve existing ones.

As careers progress, individuals need to adapt and expand their skill sets, especially when moving into leadership roles. They require both the technical knowledge specific to their positions and the interpersonal skills to excel.

It’s important to recognize that your best employees may not excel in both soft and hard skills. While versatility is advantageous, not all roles require proficiency in both areas.

There are many hard and soft skills, so that we will list only a few.

Now that you know the difference between soft and hard skills, it’s time to analyze which ones need to be added to your organization. And what to do next?

How to develop hard skills

For HR and L&D professionals (If you are the one responsible for developing employees’ HARD skills):

• Identify skill gaps : Conduct skill gap analyses to determine the hard skills necessary for various roles within the organization. Use assessments and performance reviews to pinpoint areas for development.
• Design training programs : Develop and implement targeted training programs within your LMS and workshops tailored to the specific needs of your team. Utilize both internal and external resources.
• Encourage certifications : Promote and facilitate access to professional certification programs relevant to your industry. Support employees in obtaining these credentials.
• On-the-job training : Create opportunities for employees to gain practical experience through job rotations, special projects, and cross-training.
• Continuous learning culture : Foster a culture of continuous learning by providing access to educational resources, including online courses and industry conferences.

For employees (if you are the one developing your own HARD skills):

• Self-assessment : Identify the hard skills required for your current role or desired career path. Use self-assessment tools and seek feedback from supervisors.
• Enroll in courses : Take advantage of courses offered by universities, community colleges, or online platforms like Valamis , Coursera, Udemy, or LinkedIn Learning to gain new skills or enhance existing ones.
• Professional training : Attend workshops and seminars to gain hands-on experience and learn from industry experts.
• Certifications : Pursue relevant certifications to validate your expertise and enhance your professional credibility.
• Practical application : Regularly practice new skills in real-world scenarios to build proficiency and confidence.

How to develop soft skills

For HR and L&D professionals (If you are the one responsible for developing employees’ SOFT skills):

• Identify key soft skills : Determine the essential soft skills required for various roles within the organization. Focus on skills such as leadership, communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence .
• Create development programs : Design and implement development programs that include workshops, mentoring, and coaching to enhance employees’ soft skills. Download the career development plan template and use it as a starting point.
• Foster a feedback culture : Encourage a culture of continuous feedback where employees can receive constructive input on their soft skills from peers and supervisors.
• Role-playing and simulations : Incorporate role-playing exercises and simulations into training programs to allow employees to practice and refine their soft skills in a safe environment.
• Networking opportunities : Facilitate networking events and collaborative projects to help employees build and improve their interpersonal skills.

For employees (If you are the one developing your own SOFT skills):

• Self-assessment and feedback : Reflect on your current soft skills and identify areas for improvement. Seek regular feedback from peers, mentors, and supervisors to guide your development.
• Enroll in soft skills courses : Participate in courses and workshops focused on developing soft skills such as communication, leadership, and teamwork. Utilize online platforms, your company’s LMS and local training providers.
• Mentorship and coaching : Engage with a mentor or coach who can provide guidance, model effective soft skills, and offer constructive feedback.
• Practice in real scenarios : Use role-playing exercises and simulations to practice soft skills in a controlled environment, building confidence and improving techniques.
• Networking and collaboration : Actively participate in networking events and collaborative projects to enhance your interpersonal and communication skills.
• Read and learn : Read books, articles, and blogs, listen podcasts on personal development and effective interpersonal skills. Authors like Dale Carnegie and Stephen Covey offer valuable insights.
• Mindfulness and emotional intelligence : Practice mindfulness techniques to improve self-awareness and emotional regulation. Developing emotional intelligence is crucial for effective interpersonal interactions.
• Continuous improvement : Make a conscious effort to improve your soft skills by seeking feedback, reflecting on interactions, and adapting based on the input received.

By consistently working on both hard and soft skills, HR professionals can create a more capable and adaptable workforce, and employees can enhance their overall competence and career prospects.

Further reading:

• You can check our article about employee development methods , we have mentioned what methods work best for different skills sets and particular skills.
• Regarding leadership skills check our leadership development plan guide because it is a unique skill set and it requires specific training.
• One way to map, manage, and track the required skills and skill gaps of your employees is to use a skills matrix .

You might be interested in

Key areas of employee development

Learning and development fundamentals

The meaning of Learning Management System (LMS)

17 Presentation Skills That Every Effective Presenter Must Develop

• Written by HIGH5 Content & Review Team
• August 8, 2024
• Professional skills

It’s no secret that effective presentations can help you get ahead in business. After all, what better way to show off your knowledge and expertise than by delivering a well-crafted presentation? The right presentation skills give you the ability to share your ideas with an audience convincingly and engagingly.

Unfortunately, not everyone is born a natural presenter. If you’re not used to standing up in front of an audience, the prospect of doing so can be daunting. Fortunately, understanding your unique strengths can help you overcome these challenges and improve your presentation skills. The HIGH5 strengths assessment is a powerful tool that can provide valuable insights into your natural abilities, allowing you to leverage your strengths and develop strategies to address areas for improvement.

With the right guidance, there are a few simple things you can do to enhance your presentation skills and become a more confident and effective communicator. In this article, we’ll share some tips on how to do just that, allowing you to deliver an effective presentation. Let’s get right into it.

What are presentation skills?

Presentation skills are the abilities you need to deliver a clear and effective presentation. After all, a good presenter is someone who can communicate their ideas in a way that engages and motivates their audience.

There are many different aspects to presentation skills, from knowing how to structure your talk to using visuals effectively, to dealing with nerves. Developing strong presentation skills will help you to communicate your ideas more effectively and make a positive impression on your audience.

Presentation skills are important because they can help you to communicate your ideas clearly and effectively. A good presentation can make a big impact on your audience and can help to persuade them of your point of view. Presentation skills are also important in other areas of life, such as job interviews, sales pitches, and networking events. Being able to present your ideas clearly and concisely can give you a big advantage over others who are not as confident in their presentation skills.

Importance and benefits of presentation skills

One of the most important reasons to recognize presentation skills is because they are a valuable asset for any profession. Good presentation skills can help you in your career by making it easier to sell your ideas, get promoted, and be successful in business. Identifying your unique strengths through the HIGH5 assessment can provide invaluable insights into your natural communication abilities, allowing you to leverage your strengths and develop targeted strategies to enhance your presentation skills. By understanding your strengths, you can tailor your approach to deliver more impactful and persuasive presentations, increasing your chances of success in any professional setting.

In addition, good presentation skills can also help you in your personal life by making it easier to give speeches, make presentations, and teach classes. In addition, recognizing presentation skills can also help you improve your presentations. If you are not aware of the importance of presentation skills, you may not be using them to their full potential. By taking the time to learn about presentation skills and how to use them effectively, you can make your presentations more effective and persuasive.

Here’s a list of benefits that come with good presentation skills:

• Increased confidence
• The ability to think on your feet
• Improved public speaking skills
• Enhanced written communication skills
• The ability to lead and motivate others
• Enhanced problem-solving abilities
• Improved negotiation skills
• Stronger time management skills
• Greater creativity
• The opportunity to make a positive impact on others

Pro Tip From HIGH5 Take the HIGH5 strengths assessment to gain a deeper understanding of your natural communication style and preferences. Use this knowledge to play to your strengths when preparing and delivering presentations, such as leveraging your creativity for engaging visuals or your analytical skills for structured content.

17 crucial presentation skills

Let’s now explore some practical examples of presentation skills that will help you ace your next big presentation.

Body language

Effective body language, including posture and gestures, enhances your message and engages your audience.

Active listening

Active listening helps you respond appropriately and adjust your presentation based on audience feedback.

Storytelling

Storytelling is a great way to engage your audience and make your points more memorable. And while it might not seem like a traditional presentation skill, it can be extremely effective. If you possess strengths like creativity, communication, or persuasion, you may find it easier to weave captivating stories into your presentations.

The HIGH5 strengths assessment can help you identify these natural storytelling abilities and provide strategies for leveraging them to captivate your audience. So, if you can find ways to weave stories into your presentation, it’ll go a long way in captivating your audience and making your message more impactful.

• Verbal communication

Clear and concise verbal communication ensures your message is understood and retained by your audience.

Voice projection

Projecting your voice confidently ensures that your message is heard clearly by everyone in the room.

Stage presence

Good stage presence involves commanding attention through confident movement and engagement with the audience.

Self-awareness

Being self-aware helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses, allowing for continuous improvement in your presentation skills.

Facial expressions

Using appropriate facial expressions adds emotion and clarity to your spoken words, making your message more impactful.

Avoid filler words

Minimizing filler words like “um” and “uh” helps maintain your credibility and keeps your audience focused on your message.

Choose the right angle for standing

Standing at the right angle, typically facing the audience while occasionally turning to your visuals, keeps the audience engaged and ensures they follow along with your presentation.

Engagement with your audience

Another key presentation skill is the ability to engage with your audience. This means making eye contact, using gestures, and speaking in a way that is relatable and easy to understand.

If you’re just standing there reading off a slide, chances are your audience is going to get bored pretty quickly. But if you can find ways to keep them engaged, they’ll be more likely to listen to what you have to say.

Good eye contact

One of the best ways to engage with your audience is through eye contact. When you make eye contact with someone, it shows that you’re interested in what they have to say and that you’re engaged in the conversation. It also helps to build trust and rapport. So, if you can find ways to make eye contact with your audience members, it will go a long way in keeping them engaged.

Natural gestures

Another great way to engage with your audience is through natural gestures. Using your hands and arms to gesture can help emphasize points and keep your audience engaged. Just be sure not to go overboard – too much gesturing can be distracting.

The use of visual aids

Visual aids can be a great way to engage your audience and make your points more clear. Using slides, charts, and graphs can help illustrate your ideas and make them easier to understand. Similar to using gestures, just be sure not to overdo it – too many visuals can be overwhelming and confusing.

The ability to handle questions

At some point during your presentation, you’re likely going to get questions from your audience; how you handle those questions can make or break your presentation. If you’re able to answer them confidently and without getting flustered, it’ll show that you know your stuff.

But if you start to get tongue-tied or defensive, it’s going to reflect poorly on you. So, be prepared for questions and try to stay calm when answering them.

An organized structure

Another important presentation skill is having a well-organized structure. This means having an introduction, main body, and conclusion to your presentation. It also means using transitions between sections to help your audience follow along. If your presentation is all over the place, it’s going to be hard for your audience to stay engaged and they’ll quickly tune out.

Last but not least, confidence is one of the most important presentation skills you can have. If you’re not confident in what you’re saying, it’s going to show – and your audience is going to pick up on it. So, even if you’re not feeling 100% sure of yourself, try to project confidence. It’ll make a big difference in how your audience perceives you and your message.

Pro Tip From HIGH5 Use the HIGH5 assessment to understand your unique storytelling style and preferences. Incorporate personal anecdotes, analogies, or case studies that align with your strengths to make your presentations more engaging and memorable.

How to identify presentation skills?

To identify your presentation skills you will need the help of self-assessment tools and feedback from your colleagues or friends. One of the self-assessment tools that we recommend is the HIGH5 strengths test which will help you discover your strengths and talents. From there you can connect your strengths with presentation skills to see which strength boosts your skill.

The second way is also called peer feedback. Ask your colleagues, friends or close family members to give you feedback on your presentation skills. From there you can identify what presentation skills you have and what skills you need to improve.

How to improve presentation skills in the workplace?

The workplace is one of the most important places to hone your presentation skills. After all, in the business world, first impressions are key, and being able to deliver a polished and professional presentation can make all the difference in whether or not you’re successful. Here are a few tips to help you improve your presentation skills in the workplace:

Preparation is key

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s worth repeating. When you’re preparing for a presentation, take the time to do your research and gather all of the necessary information. This will help ensure that your presentation is well-organized and flows smoothly.

Be aware of your body language

Your body language speaks volumes, so it’s important to be aware of what you’re communicating with your nonverbal cues. Make sure you’re standing up straight, making eye contact, and using gestures appropriately. These small tweaks can make a big difference in how your audience perceives you.

Practice, practice and practice

One of the best ways to improve your presentation skills is simply to practice as much as you can. The more you present, the more comfortable you’ll become and the better you’ll be at thinking on your feet and handling questions from the audience.

Seek feedback

After each presentation, take some time to reflect on what went well and what could be improved. Seek feedback from your colleagues or boss, and consider taking the HIGH5 strengths assessment to gain insights into your natural abilities and areas for growth. This will help you learn from your mistakes, leverage your strengths, and continue to improve.

By understanding your unique strengths, you can develop targeted strategies to enhance your presentation skills and make a more significant impact in the workplace. By following these tips, you can start to improve your presentation skills and make a positive impression in the workplace.

Pro Tip From HIGH5 After receiving feedback on your presentation, use the HIGH5 strengths assessment to identify areas where you excelled and areas for improvement. Develop an action plan that leverages your strengths while addressing your weaknesses, such as practicing more storytelling techniques if you have strong communication abilities or focusing on visual aids if you have strong creativity.

How do you highlight presentation skills in a resume and job interview?

Another important skill that is often overlooked is the ability to highlight presentation skills in both a resume and a job interview. This can be the difference between getting the job and not. When you are applying for a job, your resume is often the first thing that potential employers will look at. It is important to make sure that your resume includes any relevant presentation skills that you may have.

You can do this by including any experience you have in public speaking, leading presentations, or teaching courses. If you do not have any experience in these areas, consider listing any other relevant skills that could transfer over into presenting, such as customer service or sales experience.

In addition to your resume, it is also important to be able to highlight your presentation skills during a job interview. This is often done through behavioral interviewing, where you will be asked to describe specific examples of times when you have presented in the past. It is important to be prepared for this type of question and to have a few examples ready to go.

When you are highlighting your presentation skills, it is important to focus on any successes that you have had. This could be anything from getting positive feedback from an audience to successfully teaching a new course. No matter what the specific example is, it is important to focus on how you were able to positively impact the situation. This will show potential employers that you can effectively present information and that you are someone they would want on their team.

How to improve presentation skills in school as a student?

School students often have to present in front of their classmates and teachers, which can be a daunting experience, especially if you don’t feel confident in your abilities. However, understanding your unique strengths can help you approach presentations with greater confidence and effectiveness. The HIGH5 strengths assessment is a valuable tool that can provide insights into your natural abilities, allowing you to leverage your strengths and develop strategies to address areas for improvement. With the right guidance, there are some things you can do to improve your presentation skills while you’re still in school.

Join a club or organization that requires presentations

This will force you to get up in front of people regularly and hone your skills. If no club or organization at your school requires presentations, start one! Give speeches in front of the mirror. Practicing in front of a mirror can help you identify any nervous habits you have (like fidgeting or pacing) and correct them before you have to give a real speech.

Use note cards instead of a script

Reading from a script can make you sound robotic and unauthentic. Note cards will help you stay on track without sounding like you’re reciting memorized lines.

Record yourself giving a presentation

Then, watch the recording back to see how you can improve. This exercise can be painful, but it’s one of the best ways to identify your weaknesses and work on them.

Find a mentor

Ask a teacher or another adult you trust to give you feedback on your presentations. They can offer helpful tips and criticism that will help you improve. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a great presenter in no time!

Pro Tip From HIGH5 As a student, take the HIGH5 strengths assessment to identify your natural communication and leadership abilities. Use this knowledge to play to your strengths when preparing and delivering presentations, such as leveraging your analytical skills for structured content or your creativity for engaging visuals.

Presentation skills FAQ

What are the 7 presentation skills.

The 7 presentation skills are:

• Eye contact

What are the 4 types of presentation skills?

The 4 types of presentation skills are:

• Visual aids
• Non-verbal communication
• Listening skills

What is the rule of presentation?

The rule of presentation is to always keep the audience in mind. This means knowing who your audience is, what they want to hear, and how to best deliver your message so that they will listen and be able to understand it.

What are the 5 presentation skills?

The five essential presentation skills are clear communication, audience engagement, confident delivery, effective use of visuals, and proper body language.

What are 10 qualities of a good presentation?

A good presentation is clear, concise, engaging, well-structured, visually appealing, confident, interactive, relevant, well-paced, and memorable.

Every great presenter must have the majority of presenting skills already learned. It is beneficial for each individual to have some level of presentation skills, to be able to showcase and demonstrate their project, ideas and plans to their friends, family members and colleagues.

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What Are Hard Skills? (112 Examples Included)

Jeff Gillis 0 Comments

By Jeff Gillis

As a job seeker, your hard skills matter. By having the right ones on your resume, you increase your odds of standing out from the sea of other candidates dramatically.

But what are hard skills? And how do you choose the right hard skills for a resume?

If you’ve ever asked those questions, you’re in luck. We have your back. Come with us as we take a journey into the exciting world of hard skills.

What Are Hard Skills?

Before we get into the hard skills examples, let’s focus a bit on what hard skills are.

The hard skills definition is pretty straightforward. In the most basic sense, hard skills are your technical ability. In most cases, they relate to your prowess with equipment, tools, software, and certain formal processes. It’s specialized knowledge that you can apply in a set way.

Generally, hard skills are the foundation of your career. They are the abilities that let you tackle your assigned duties, ensuring you know how to approach common tasks in a way that meets industry standards.

Additionally, hard skills are typically teachable. They are capabilities that you can learn through traditional education, on-the-job training, and other more formal approaches.

Yes, that might feel a little ambiguous. The thing is, once you take a look at the hard skills list, it’ll become abundantly clear; we promise.

How Are Hard Skills Relevant to a Job Search?

Alright, let’s take another quick pit stop. You may be wondering how hard skills are relevant to your job search. Well, we’re going to tell you.

Your hard skills impact your ability to conduct a job search. For example, your research technique determines how easily you can find opportunities that match your capabilities, needs, and preferences, and your resume-writing skills affect the quality of your application.

Additionally, your hard skills will play a role in how successful your job search ultimately is. Hiring managers are looking for specific hard skills when they fill positions. If you don’t have the right degree of prowess, you might not be able to handle the job’s responsibilities. For hiring managers, that would be a big problem.

It’s also important to understand that when people talk about skill gaps, they are usually referring to hard skills. About 80 percent of Americans believe that there’s a skills gap, and around 35 percent say that they’re personally affected by the shortage in some form or fashion. That means that a candidate’s lack of hard skills isn’t just impacting them, but also those working around them and the company as a whole. Wow, right?

So, what hard skills are hiring managers trying to find? Well, that depends a lot on the position they are trying to fill.

Think about it this way; coding is a hard skill. But, while software developer candidates need it, physical therapist candidates don’t. That doesn’t mean coding isn’t valuable in general; it’s just more valuable career-wise to people who work in specific roles.

Now, that doesn’t mean that some hard skills don’t look good on most resumes. For instance, business writing, productivity suites, and collaboration software are relevant in a ton of industries.

The ability to use technologies that support remote work is also widely sought. Even if you aren’t in a tech role, knowing how to use a VPN is valuable in 2022 if you’ll be spending at least part of your time working from home.

How do you figure out which ones will boost your job search? Well, in the vast majority of cases, it’s spelled out in black and white.

Hiring managers usually discuss any required hard skills in the vacancy announcement. In some cases, they add them to a “must-haves” list. In others, they are mentioned in the job description.

If you’re trying to figure out if you have the right hard skills for a position, use the job description as your starting guide. That’ll get you moving down the right path and also gives you a chance to make sure an opportunity is actually a great fit.

But what if you don’t see a lot of hard skills in the job ad? What then?

While most candidates hope that the job add will spell it all out, that doesn’t always happen. But that doesn’t mean you can’t figure out what you should discuss; you’ll just need to do some extra digging.

Start by looking at competitor’s job descriptions for the same positions. See what they ask for, and use that information as a supplement.

You can also explore deep dives into various jobs. The job descriptions you find there talk about what any employer might be looking for, so it’ll give you some more ideas.

So, when do you discuss your hard skills during a job search? Well, it’s best to do it during every part of it. Mention them in your resume, cover letter, and interview. That way, you’ll look like an incredibly strong match.

How to Highlight Hard Skills for Job Searches

Now that you have a solid answer to the question “What are hard skills?” it’s time to talk about how highlighting them during your job search. Luckily, it’s pretty simple.

In most cases, your hard skills play a big role in your professional accomplishments. That means they’ll naturally make an appearance all throughout your cover letter and resume, as well as many of your interview answers.

When it comes to your resume, you want to reference your key technical abilities in the professional summary, skills section, and work history portion.

You can also sprinkle a few into your cover letter, allowing you to craft a compelling narrative that showcases what you have to offer.

When you talk about your hard skills, you need to do more than just say, “I have [hard skill]” more times than not. Outside of your skills section, which is usually a bullet point list, you want to be achievement-focused.

When you connect a hard skill to an accomplishment, you’re showing the hiring manager that your capabilities drive amazing results. It’s a way to give them valuable context about what you can do, showcasing how your skills are real difference-makers.

But how do you pick the right skills to feature? By using the right strategy! If you really want the content of your resume to shine, get to know the Tailoring Method .

With the Tailoring Method, you align your application with the exact job you want to land, making your resume as relevant as possible. It’s a great way to make sure you stand out from other candidates, increasing the odds that you’ll land an interview and, hopefully, the position.

When you craft your resume, should you be focusing on hard skills over soft skills? Not necessarily.

When it comes to hard skills vs. soft skills, both are incredibly important. In fact, 62 percent of hiring managers consider it important to hire for soft and hard skills, not one over the other.

If you’re wondering what soft skills are , we’ve actually taken a deep dive into the topic before. But, if you’re looking for a quick overview, your soft skills are a reflection of your traits, personality, and mindset. Soft skills are still capabilities; they just aren’t overly technical in nature. Instead, they are attributes that help you excel professionally.

By highlighting your hard and soft skills together, you make yourself a stronger candidate. It’s really is that simple.

List of Hard Skills

Alright, do you feel like you have a good grip on hard skills? Or would you like to see a little more? Well, if you’re in the latter group, you’re in luck. By reviewing some hard skills examples, you can get a better idea of what they are, ensuring you cover them properly in your resume.

So, without further ado, here’s a handy-dandy hard skills list, broken down into categories.

Technology skills are a must for tech professionals as well as many people working in other fields. Here are some technology-related hard skills that you may want to include on your resume:

• Data analysis
• Data visualization
• Programming languages
• Productivity software
• Collaboration software
• POS systems
• Systems analysis
• IT security
• Troubleshooting
• Data mining
• Diagnostics

Accounting and Finance

Financial skills aren’t just for finance and accounting professionals. Many roles rely on them, at least on occasion. Here are some skills that fall in this category:

• Bookkeeping
• Reconciliation
• Account auditing
• Profit forecasting
• Mathematics
• Predictive modeling

Industrial and Manufacturing

Many industrial jobs require strong skillsets. Here are some common capabilities that many hiring managers want to find:

• Forklift driving
• Picking and packing
• Inventory management
• Machine operation
• Vehicle repair
• Equipment maintenance
• Mechanical engineering

Advertising and Marketing

Marketing and advertising can be incredibly technical. Here are some must-have hard skills for professionals in this niche:

• Google analytics
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media advertising
• Copywriting
• Email automation
• Sales funnel management
• Campaign management
• Market analysis
• Content creation
• A/B testing
• Graphic design

Human Resources and Personnel Management

The management of people can be harder than many professionals would expect. Without the right hard skills, keeping everyone’s activities aligned isn’t easy. Here are some crucial capabilities that may need to be on your resume:

• Interviewing
• Performance management
• Policy creation
• Disciplinary action
• Training and skill development

Construction

The construction industry relies heavily on specialized hard skills. Here are a few that many hiring managers seek out:

• Engineering
• Heavy equipment
• Blueprint reading

Medicine and Healthcare

The healthcare landscape is incredibly varied, so hiring managers might look for a wide selection of soft skills, depending on the role. If you want a general idea, here are some hard skills for resumes for medical professionals:

• Medical coding
• Medical billing
• Patient records
• Patient vitals
• Massage therapy
• Prescription filling
• Patient histories

Administration and Office

Most jobs require at least a little bit of office work, while others focus on administrative support. Here is a quick hard skills list for capabilities in that vein:

• Report generation
• Presentation creation
• Minute taking
• Business writing

Sales-oriented skills help professionals secure new customers and keep existing customers coming back for more. Here are some hard skills in this niche:

• CRM platforms
• Business communication
• Relationship building
• Product knowledge
• Lead generation
• Lead qualification
• Contracting
• Revenue cycles
• Territory management
• Sales pitches

Foreign Language

The ability to speak or write in a foreign language is a hard skill. If you reference one in your resume, you can leave it general or add a note about your proficiency. Here are a few ways you might present foreign language-related skills on your application:

• Speaking a foreign language
• Writing in and reading a foreign language
• Translation
• Multilingual customer support

Being a manager required a specific set of capabilities. Here are some management hard skills examples.

• Project planning
• Strategy planning
• Performance tracking
• Project lifecycle management
• Financial modeling

Still want more? No problem, we’ve taken a close look at skills to put on a resume before, so check it out if you’re looking for more options.

Putting It All Together

Ultimately, hard skills are usually a foundation of any career. Now that you have the answer to “What are hard skills?” use the information above to your advantage. It’ll help you position yourself as an exceptional candidate, increasing the odds that your job search will yield results.

Thanks for reading!

Co-founder and CTO of TheInterviewGuys.com. Jeff is a featured contributor delivering advice on job search, job interviews and career advancement, having published more than 50 pieces of unique content on the site , with his work being featured in top publications such as INC , ZDnet , MSN and more.

Learn more about The Interview Guys on our About Us page .

About The Author

Jeff gillis.

Co-founder and CTO of TheInterviewGuys.com. Jeff is a featured contributor delivering advice on job search, job interviews and career advancement, having published more than 50 pieces of unique content on the site , with his work being featured in top publications such as INC , ZDnet , MSN and more. Learn more about The Interview Guys on our About Us page .

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The ULTIMATE guide to presentation skills

• Written by: Kieran Chadha
• Categories: Presentation skills
• Comments: 39

Presenting well isn’t a gift you’re born with. It’s true that some people are naturally more charismatic than others, but this doesn’t always make them good presenters. For a lot of people this common misconception can lead to crippling nerves, poor preparation, and lots of money in lost revenue as your sales deck doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. Good presentation skills can absolutely be taught, and even the most nervous, or clueless of presenters can learn how to present like professionals just by following some key advice.

Before we jump into that though, I’ll begin with a disclaimer. When a presentation fizzes and fails like a damp firework on New Year’s Eve, it’s rarely the presenter’s fault. In fact, often the blame sits with the slides. Unless your slides are at least half-decent, it’s pretty hard to make your presentation go off with a bang. Slides should be visual, exciting, and compelling and it’s the presenter’s job to bring them to life. Even with good presentation skills, for most normal people, if your slides are more sad squibs than rainbow rockets, you’ll lose your audience’s attention.

So once you’ve got effective, visual slides then – and only then – is it time to focus on the soft skills that will polish your delivery.

How to use this article

This guide contains lots of helpful tips on how to improve your presentation skills. We’ve divided it into sections so you can work through your preparation chronologically. We’d recommend starting at the beginning, but feel free to click below to jump to your favourite bit.

Before your presentation

A note on presentations nerves

Preparing your content

Pre-empt the worst (and best)

During your presentation

How to master the art of body language

A note for introverts

After your presentation

How to train your team to  present

A note on presentation nerves

We’ve all felt it – that heavy feeling in your stomach waiting for your name to be announced, the pacing up and down in the corridor before the door opens, the slightly sweaty palms as you open up your laptop. Everyone gets presentation nerves. And the truth is, a little extra adrenaline pumping through your veins probably gives your performance a lift. But chronic, debilitating nerves are unpleasant, and are a real issue for many people.

But are avoiding sweaty palms and practicing deep breathing really effective presentation skills?

Yes, because the real problem with nerves is that they might adversely affect your audience. The physical symptoms are distracting – beads of sweat on the forehead, restlessness, and fidgeting are all pretty obvious to a watchful crowd. The audience will notice you are uncomfortable and become distracted from your content. Breathiness – which happens when a presenter takes lots of short, shallow breaths – disrupts the flow of information and makes it difficult for people to follow a narrative. Your nerves also undermine your confidence, and – in turn – your audience’s confidence in you. It’s a tad unfortunate that many of the symptoms associated with nervousness are also associated with guilt, untrustworthiness and deceit. So, while you may have every confidence in the validity of your claims, it might not come across that way.

When it comes to tackling nerves, there is no single infallible method, but preparing your content and then rehearsing properly will you get them under control. Even if you never get nervous (lucky you!) these presentation tips will still help improve your delivery.

Preparedness is your number one ally. Often nerves are the result of feeling uncertain about what lies ahead. You can’t control everything or anticipate what is going to happen, but you can take steps to ensure that your role is locked down and certain.

The key is to practise, and to really know your content inside out. It seems a simple point to make – and it is – but often people confuse ‘knowing their content’ with ‘being able to get through their content’. Here, we’re aiming for the former. You may know your slides, and can present them well start-to-finish, but can you do the same if they’re out of order? Can you pick up where you left off after a 10-minute interruption? Can you keep your narrative going if the slide doesn’t progress? Can you paraphrase the final 10 slides if you run out of time? What if you fall off the stage half-way through your presentation ? If your laptop fails, can you deliver the content without any slides at all?

Most people massively underestimate the amount of time this requires, which is often why they end up feeling so nervous. It’s only with this level of ‘whatever-the-world-throws-at-me’ familiarity that will enable you to push past your presentation nerves. Often people stop rehearsing when they can get through the deck. In truth, your rehearsals only  begin  once you can get through the deck.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, you probably get that you need to know your content well. However, there are a few things outside of your script or notes that you should keep in mind too:

• Learning the clicks. If you know where the clicks are in your presentation, you’ll know what’s coming up next, so you’ll say the right thing and the right time. Connecting chunks of content to certain clicks means those animations or transitions will help trigger your memory. You won’t have to learn a script word for word and you’re less likely to sound like a robot – success!
• Write down the key benefits or advantages of your proposition. Committing these to memory (rather than the history of your organisation or the particular specifications of a product) and using them whenever possible in your presentation, will keep the audience front and centre as you speak.
• Another effective presentation skill is planning for questions to ask or other ways to engage you audience. Think of this as extra content to memorise or note down – planning ahead for these interactions will help your presentation feel both slick and engaging.

“Don’t think about it! It will all be fine!” This is not advice you’ll hear from us. In fact, we want you to think about everything that could possibly go wrong; power failures, laptop glitches, and unreliable projectors are all quite common. But there’s no need to worry or panic because if you think about it ahead of time you can arrive with a fall-back option should the worst happen.

Beyond that, you need to prepare to deal with the most uncertain element of your presentation: your audience .

• What are the most difficult and awkward questions your audience could ask you? It’s worth planning responses that answer them in a positive way.
• What are the most likely objections that could be raised? Come up with ways to overcome them, address them or dismiss them.
• You should pay particular attention to the audience members themselves – who are they? What are their interests? What are their challenges? What will they be expecting from you? What will they want to hear? What won’t they want to hear?

Thinking in these terms helps you plan and prepare effectively and helps remove the dreaded element of uncertainty.

And just in case you thought this was beginning to sound a little pessimistic, your preparedness needs to extend to best-case scenarios as well as worst. Are you prepared for them to sign then and there? Even if it’s a preliminary meeting, do you have prices to hand in case they are swayed by your early slides and don’t need to see any more? What if they are so engrossed, they want you to carry on past your 10-minute allotted time? Or they want to put you in front of the CEO then and there? Remember, as well as going wrong, things might go better than you expect!

You can be as prepared as possible, and think you know all your content, yet your delivery may still need some work. There are plenty of things you can do when rehearsing to improve your delivery technique and boost your confidence.

• Rehearse in situ: When you’re rehearsing your slides, try to make the environment as similar to the event as possible. If you can get into the actual space with the actual equipment – great. You’ll get a better feel for the space and become more comfortable with the physical side of your delivery. If you can’t, hook your laptop up to a screen or projector – whatever you’ll be using on the day – rather than just using your laptop screen.
• Rehearse in front of people: Get them to interrupt, ask questions and act as close to how your real audience will act. Presenting in front of strangers is tough but doing so in front of colleagues is even harder, however, it’s a great way to improve your presentation skills. If you can become comfortable delivering your material in a room of your peers, chances are you’ll be fine on the day. This is also a good opportunity to practise techniques such as pressing the ‘B key’ to take a break from your PowerPoint. This will replace your slides with a blank screen and provide you with an opportunity to go off topic, answer audience questions or stop for a tea break! A short break can also help boost audience attention.
• Rehearse alone: If you’re struggling to find an appropriate space or a willing group of volunteers, fear not. You can still rehearse effectively by yourself. Put your laptop in show mode and click through your slides, speaking your narration out loud. This is really important. You might feel a little foolish, but everyone presents well in their head – doing so out loud is tougher. There’s no point giving yourself an easy ride now and struggling later on. It’s a good idea to stand up, rather than sit at your desk to get a better sense of how it will feel when you’re presenting. You can even practice pointing towards your visuals and engaging with them in the same way you will when you’re in front of an audience.
• Record yourself: Many people recommend rehearsing in front of a mirror. This seems a little strange to us. While you’ll get a good idea of how you look when you present, it’s important to remember the audience will (and should) be looking at the slides as well as at you. Rehearsing without them (and without an appreciation of how you’ll interact with them) seems a bit pointless. A better technique is to rehearse your performance in context – that is, clicking through and interacting with the slides. Why not set up a video camera or your smartphone and record your delivery? Review the recording as if you were an audience member and try to spot the things that didn’t work; be your own critic. If you’re honest (but not too harsh) with yourself, it will work a treat and you’ll get more confident, and less nervous with each delivery.

Back to top

The first piece of advice is to take a breath, physically, mentally and emotionally. It’s very easy to work yourself up into a state before you present. You automatically think of all the things that could go wrong and worry that your presentations skills aren’t up to scratch and the audience will judge you poorly for your performance. Try to drop all that baggage. There is no ‘you and them’, no one is waiting for you to mess up, and no one will judge you if you do. Take ‘business’ out of the equation and remember the crowd in front of you are people too. They’re here to learn from what you have to say, and you both want the presentation to go smoothly.

So, why is body language important? Well, I’m a firm believer that no one means to give out negative signals when they present – no one intentionally looks hostile or lazy; no one means to come across as over familiar or timid. However, the truth is that it can be all too easy to fall into one of these traps. Remember that body language is just one of the vehicles for delivery. Getting the message right, the content, the language, the follow-up, the technology are all big priorities. Yet, body language can have a real impact on your audience, which then has a knock-on effect on how well your audience perceive your message, so it’s a really good presentation skill to get right.

What is good body language?

Because interpreting body language is a highly individual thing, coming up with a list of 1-to-1 substitutions (i.e. this behaviour means this) is impossible. However, there are certain traits that are broadly and universally interpreted in certain ways. What’s interesting is that often the same behaviour can fall on either side of the spectrum, depending on its intensity.

For example: movement . If you move around too much, you look like you’re uncomfortable and nervous – wanting to be anywhere but where you are. Alternatively, if you’re too stationery, your unnatural stillness is disconcerting and too intense.

In this respect, positive body language is about balance – about not being too much one thing, nor too much the other. To put it another way, effective body language is best defined by what it isn’t, rather than by what it is.

With that is mind, it is more helpful to look at some of the behaviours you should avoid, rather than try to write a prescriptive list of behaviours to follow. Striking a balance between extremes of behaviour is often the best route to ironing out any issues you might have with your non-verbal communication. Take a look at the diagram below, which roughly groups together the interpretation of certain behaviours.

Generally, there are two metrics for the impression that presenters give off – enthusiasm and confidence. Too little or too much of either can be perceived negatively.

• Your posture is a key indicator of your mood. Looking too relaxed or comfortable is going to come across poorly. However, being too still and rigid in your posture can make you look nervous or too intense.
• Your arms and hands also play an important role – keeping your arms folded or tucked away in your pockets can come across as being over-familiar and unprofessional, confrontational and aggressive in extreme cases.
• On the other end of the spectrum, overly-expressive and wild gesturing makes you look unfocused, erratic or just too intense.
• Your positioning is also crucial. The old adage that you should never turn your back to the audience is unhelpful; it’s fine to turn away if you’re directing the audience’s attention to the screen. However, be wary of spending too long facing in either direction and neglecting the other.

So, what does that leave us with? As I said, the key is to achieve a balance, so the ideal impression to portray would sit bang in the middle of the diagram above – shown by the dark purple circle.

• You should aim for a natural, relaxed posture – engaged but not intense.
• Use open, expressive gestures , dividing your attention between the audience and the screen.
• Aim for a little movement , and an open, friendly demeanour.
• Try not to copy someone else’s stance or gestures, keep it natural and authentic and you’ll make a much better impression.

How do you assess and improve your own body language?

Increase awareness: The first step to making your body language work effectively is to actually become aware of how you present at the moment. Often problems develop because people disregard it – letting their subconscious take over. It’s this inattention that allows bad habits to creep in.

The best way to become more aware of how you present is to see yourself do it. Mirrors don’t give you the full impression, it’s better to record yourself presenting something. Obviously it would be great to do so in a ‘live’ environment, but a dummy run in a meeting room would work perfectly well. Watch the footage and objectively assess yourself using the following questions:

• What message would my posture convey to a stranger?
• Am I moving around too much, or not enough?
• Do I come across as professional?
• How enthusiastic am I? Does it look like I’m just going through the motions?
• Do I look like I know my material?
• How open is my body language? How expressive am I being?

Sometimes, watching yourself back and becoming more conscious of your body language is enough to improve it. You will probably find that you have an innate understanding of the mistakes you’re making and can figure out how to fix them.

Use a third party: However, if you’re still not sure whether you have an issue, it makes sense to bring in outside opinions to help. Choose a colleague for support but do so wisely. This isn’t the time for a ‘yes man’, someone who will simply say you’re doing a great job. Pick someone who will be honest and critical. Even better, get a group together – and aggregate their responses. As with any form of research, be careful when collecting their feedback – don’t lead them in anyway. So, questions like ‘What impression did you get from the presentation?’ work better than leading ones like ‘Do I look nervous to you?’.

Listen to your colleagues and pull together the common elements of their feedback. If there is anything that comes across as universally negative, it probably needs examining. Varied feedback, or comments that aren’t particularly strong in any sense usually indicate that your body language isn’t overtly negative. As I said earlier, people will likely take slightly different messages from how you behave. Don’t worry too much about this; try to get a general appreciation of how the group felt.

Effecting change: This is the tricky part. Changing your body language can be a case of trying to undo decades of learned and cemented experiences. This is not only challenging, but even if achieved, can come across as robotic and unnatural – ironically leading to worse problems. What’s more, you don’t want to be so caught up in perfecting your presentation skills that you fail to get your message across. Your message is the most important thing so, if you can’t make it work, don’t worry about it.

Having said that, do give it a go. If you think you’re moving around too much, try to present a few slides staying still. If people have said you look bored, stand up straighter and bring more energy. Of course, the difficulty is sustaining your new behaviour and not falling into old habits. Again, it helps to have a trusted colleague with you to pull you up when you slip. The only way to improve and to keep it up is to practise – to keep presenting with your new behaviour until it becomes second nature. It’s a frustrating and often slow process, but the more you work on it, the better your results will be.

Other techniques for good presentation delivery

Along with balancing your body language, there are a few other presentation delivery techniques you can employ on the day. For example, pay attention to your tone of voice . Watch the recordings you’ve made and consider whether the emphasis and emotion in your voice helps convey your message. Is your voice a droning monotone or do you come across as enthusiastic, lively and truly passionate about your subject? Just as with body language, the key to success is practice.

Secondly, to help you feel comfortable, try to pick out a few friendly faces in the crowd. If possible, speak to some audience members one-on-one before your presentation so there are familiar faces to focus on. More importantly, ignore the grumpy faces. Some people look miserable when they are actually just concentrating. Even if some of your audience are in a bad mood, it probably has more to do with the disappointing hotel breakfast than your presentation skills.

Before we move onto our next section, I’d like to dig a bit deeper into how to deliver presentations if you’re naturally shy or introverted. It’s a myth to think that you need to be extroverted in order to be a good presenter – it’s just not true. Effective presentation skills can help any introvert delivery a persuasive pitch.

What is an introvert: Most people think introversion is about shyness. Though this is partly true, it’s actually the level of stimulation you need to function, and the amount of time it takes to recover that determines whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert. Introverts need much less stimulation, and tend to want to withdraw in order to recharge. So, it isn’t really a surprise that a highly stimulating activity like giving a presentation in front of a huge crowd of people is going to wear out introverts much faster and more intensely that extroverts. If you want to do some further reading on this, check out Susan Cain and her book Quiet.

How to present well if you’re an introvert: But all is not lost. Introverts often give far better presentations that their extrovert counterparts, because they tend to be better prepared, but that isn’t always the most reassuring thing to hear when you have a presentation on the horizon. So, here are five practical pieces of advice to help your presentation go well:

• Attitude: We all get passionate about the things we really care about, so where possible, try to present on something that really interests you. But we know this isn’t always possible, so instead spend a lot of time with the content and dig how into it relates to you and your audience so that you can bring it to life.
• Content: Creating a presentation as a team often sounds great, but in reality it can be a bit chaotic. Why not gather ideas and information from your team then create the presentation yourself? This will help you add a personal spin to the content and get more comfortable with your version of the story rather than presenting a diluted version of your message.
• Preparing to deliver: Because introverts can become over-stimulated much faster than extroverts, it’s important to desensitise the newness of delivering your presentation. The more you practice, the more familiar it will feel, and the less likely you are to get over-stimulated. Prepare extensive speaker notes, but not a script, and practice in front of a camera. Trust me, it might feel awful, but if you know what your audience is seeing when you present, you’ll be able to relax a lot more on the day! Try to visit the venue beforehand if you can so that you aren’t acclimatising to a completely new place, and try to meet with some people who will be at your presentation beforehand, so you know you’ll have a few friendly faces to look at.
• Delivery: Soft skills won’t make up for bad slides, but if you’re well prepared up to now, it’s helpful to relax yourself before you go onstage. Have a shake to get the blood flowing, have a yawn to relax you further, and then take some deep, measured breaths – this will help moderate the adrenaline surge you might feel. Once you get out there, smile at your friendly faces, and as you present, don’t be afraid to be yourself!
• Follow-up: It’s completely understandable if, after your presentation, you have no energy to have further meetings and discuss follow-up sessions. If you think you’ll need time to recharge alone or with a close friend, put that in your calendar.

Once you’ve given your presentation, you need to recover. Talking about recovery as a good presentation skill might seem odd but learning how to recover well is important. If you feel awful after every presentation it will feed into your nerves for the next time. This skill is particularly key for introverts who are more likely to find themselves feeling mentally and emotionally drained after a presentation. Saying that, everyone should schedule in recovery time – be strict! – and give yourself the time and space to collect your thoughts and relax. Maybe you need to lie down in a dark room, or perhaps a quiet cup of tea is enough. Put it in your calendar and make it a priority. If you can avoid a corporate dinner or intense networking session, do. The less traumatic the experience, the quicker your presentation confidence will grow.

Once you’ve recovered, it’s time to gather feedback from your team, chat with audience members or watch a recording of your presentation and make notes for how to improve your presentation skills for next time.

How to train your team to present

Once you are confident in your own presentation skills it’s time to spread the love and help those around you take a step up the skill ladder. If you’re a manager, training your team is a great way to positively impact their efficiency and make sure they’ve got the effective presentation skills they need to get results.

So, how do you turn your team into better presenters?

No-one is a naturally great presenter. While it’s true that some people are able to ‘wing it’ and get by on their charisma alone, this is a rare talent – and an approach that doesn’t always go down well with an audience. For most people, becoming a better presenter takes old fashioned hard work and time. We have done our fair share of presentation skills training – and are happy to come and get your team into shape – but if you prefer to go it alone, you’ll want to follow the steps below.

Ask your sales teams to click through the deck they will be presenting and run through the narrative by themselves. This is a great way for them to become familiar with the material, it won’t raise the quality of their performance in and of itself, but these private rehearsals are the helpful groundwork before a more comprehensive, group coaching session. Just like a dress rehearsal, if your team don’t know their material thoroughly before this point, they won’t get the most out of the time, so make sure you encourage them to spend time learning the slide content before you concentrate on delivery.

• Group sessions

It’s hugely important to work on how to improve presentation skills in groups. Taking the time to run through the presentation in front of peers, and refining delivery based on their feedback is when you really start to see results. Ideally, you will work with a group who are all learning to deliver the same presentation. In this scenario, each person is given the opportunity to experience the material as a presenter and as a member of the audience, and they will very quickly see how they need to hone their delivery to communicate more effectively with their audience.

If you are coaching one person, the group should be formed of colleagues – ideally a mix of those with a good understanding of the subject matter, and those without. This will allow feedback that focuses on clarity of delivery as well as accuracy of content.

We learn best in a group of peers – each sees something slightly different, which enables a balanced and broad review of the delivery. But even for seasoned presenters, the prospect of presenting to colleagues isn’t an enticing one, so it’s important you encourage an atmosphere that is sympathetic, supportive, while still critical enough to be effective.

Facilitating group presentation skills training, though, is a skill in itself, so here are a few tips to help you run things well for you and your team:

Get everyone involved: Where there are multiple presenters, everyone gets a chance to present and a chance to watch and critique. If you only have one presenter, it’s a good idea to get a couple of other group members to have a go too. This not only takes the pressure off the trainee, and can boost their confidence, but also allows them to see the material from the audience’s point of view.

While the chance to present in front of an audience is helpful, I’d argue that the most beneficial element of a coaching session is the opportunity to watch how others present, see what they do well and where they go wrong. As you progress, the entire room’s delivery will improve as one presenter builds on the quality of the last.

Have multiple run-throughs: Once you’ve got everyone together, start running through the slides. This isn’t the time to talk about whether the message is right or whether the design looks perfect, you’re here to focus on delivery. Hopefully your team has learned their material, but even if not, encourage them to begin presenting anyway. They will learn the slides as they go through, and it’s more efficient than having the rest of the team sit around and wait.

• First run-through: Give everyone a chance to run through the presentation once without interruption and encourage those watching to make notes. Provide feedback after the first run and invite comments and suggestions from those watching. It’s important for the first run-through to be uninterrupted; you want the presenters to become comfortable with the flow and the audience to get a feel for the presentation in its entirety.
• Second run-through: Then get everyone to run through a second time and, this time, direct the presenters to focus on putting into practice the comments that came up. Begin to interrupt if a mistake already commented upon creeps into delivery: stop the presentation, suggest a correction and give the presenter the opportunity to retry that section. As you progress, begin interrupting for any mistakes, even if they haven’t been brought up so far.

Your role is to facilitate. Don’t allow others to interrupt a run through, and make sure you militantly chair feedback sessions. Invite comments from others, but don’t let the session descend into a free-for-all. There needs to be ground rules, so the learning experience is seen as fair, organised and effective.

Manage the feedback: Receiving criticism isn’t easy; all feedback should be constructive and never personal ( more on that here ). To be truly effective, it also needs to be mutual. I like to start with something positive, follow it with something more critical, then end on a positive, which I’ve found allows you to critique whilst supporting confidence. Make note of two or three positives and one or two negative elements from each delivery. Begin by summarising the delivery and picking out a couple of positive things you noticed. Invite the group to do the same. Then move on to areas that you think could use some work, presenting each as a learning opportunity, not a criticism. Again invite the others to do the same, and address any comments you think unduly harsh or damaging. Finally, sum up with a final, strong positive from your observations.

It is important to follow this pattern each and every time. Negative comments alone will damage confidence, while positive comments alone reduce your credibility and the effectiveness of the exercise. As you progress and the strength of delivery increases, you will find your negative comments become more and more minor, whilst your positive comments become more significant.

Encouraging group feedback keeps the session interactive and enjoyable for all. Slowly, you will see the strength of the presentation delivery increase, as presenters learn from one another’s mistakes and build on their successes. Taking time to coach your team in presentation skills, to ensure they are delivering your message in a powerful, confident and consistent way will never be time wasted.

So there you have it! Our ultimate guide to the presentation skills you need to ensure a great delivery every time. Just remember, positive body language and calm nerves are lovely, but they won’t save your presentation if your slides are rubbish! Our ultimate guide to sales presentations is a great place to start if you want to learn how to create effective, visual slides.

Kieran Chadha

Principal consultant; head of brightcarbon academy, related articles, review: glisser online interactive presentations.

• Presentation skills / Sales presentations / Presentation technology
• Comments: 1

Glisser is an online platform that allows you to create interactive presentations that can be used for marketing, training or any other type of events. The site has different functions available for presenters, attendees at events and event planners which all focus on allowing for increased presenter-audience interaction. Since creating engaging visual presentations is what we do, I decided to take a closer look at Glisser and see what it’s all about and how the various functionalities work.

Tips for tongue-tied presenters

• Presentation skills
• Comments: 2

As with many things in life, when you’re presenting, getting started is often the most challenging part. Often, once people get into the flow on a particular slide, they are fine. But starting off strongly, pulling together the first few words or phrases once you've clicked on to a blank new slide is typically something that people struggle with. Here are a few handy tips to keep up your sleeve for those mind-blank moments. 

How to make presentation handouts

• Presentation skills / Visual communication

Presentation handouts and leave-behinds are a great resource in giving your audience a tangible reminder of you and the company you represent. The problem is that they're oft-neglected and oft-ignored. So how do we create handouts that not only accurately represent our content, but look great and don't take a fortnight to create?

Thanks for your presentation skills guide. Well, apparently I’m looking for a skill training since I want to master that area. I have been scared of speaking my mind to a wider audience and I wanted to overcome that fear. Good thing I’ve read your piece. I like what you said about how practice is the key to really know my content inside out when presenting.

Thank you ❤️

Great learning tools

Great informations and learning tools.

Very useful

Thank you❤️

Good and informative article

Really helpful

Well done for this!

Good information it’s really helpful me

really helpful and informative

Having a positive mind will make you achieve more

Great learning album

Great learning and Thankyou very much

Thank you for the information

Thank you for the information .Great learning .

Good info. thank you a lot

Amazing information. thanks a lot

Amazing information. Thanks

Thank you so much

Thanks for great information

This is a good start.Thanks for the tip of confidence. I really need it as well because am really scared to speak to the audience

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100+ Hard Skills To Boost Your Resume [Technical Skills, Examples, & More]

3 key takeaways

• Hard skills are technical abilities you need to perform specific tasks.
• There are 100+ examples of hard skills across industries, roles, and experience levels you can leverage.
• Teal's Resume Builder can help you optimize your resume with the best hard skills for a job.

Hard skills are the technical skills and specialized knowledge necessary for performing specific tasks. Unlike soft skills (which are more about personality traits), hard skills are usually teachable and measurable.

But what's the most strategic way to make sure they stand out on your resume? And how do you know the best hard skills for a resume that'll make you the ideal candidate for a job?

Struggling to add the right hard skills to your resume? Sign up for Teal today .

What are hard skills?

Hard skills refer to practical abilities. They're directly linked to your capacity to perform a specific job or task. These skills are typically concrete and measurable. And you can acquire them through education, training, certifications, or on-the-job experience.

When it comes to required skills for a role, the specific hard skills are often described in detail in the job description.

Hard skills can encompass a variety of areas depending on your industry and role. For instance, some hard skills examples could be:

• Python programming language skills
• Statistical data analysis
• CNC machine operation
• Quickbooks accounting software

What sets these skills apart is that they're both teachable and testable, often acquired through formal education, online courses, training programs, and similar, more structured, structured learning. They're also objective; you either have a specific skill or you don't (and unlike soft skills, your level of expertise can be measured).

But understanding hard skills goes beyond recognizing them.

Hard skills are continuously evolving, with new ones emerging in response to technological advancements (hello, AI!) and changing industry demands. Most industries are adopting new technologies, methodologies, and tools. And because of this, continuous learning and "upskilling" to acquire and update hard skills is now an important part of professional growth.

How do hard skills differ from soft skills?

Traditionally, skills are categorized into two types: hard and soft skills. Resume soft skills highlight more abstract or interpersonal skills—like how well you work with others, while hard skills are more tangible, quantifiable, and directly related to job functions or tasks.

Soft skills often include abilities like:

• Communication skills
• Emotional intelligence (EQ)
• Problem-solving skills
• Adaptability

As companies (especially across industries like tech, industrial, and engineering) rely more and more on automation and technology, the importance of more human-centered soft skills is often emphasized similarly to hard skills. 

However different they may be, these two types of skills are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they're complementary. Most roles or positions require a blend of soft and hard skills for employees to succeed. 

For example, data analysis requires not only statistical knowledge but also critical thinking and storytelling to transform raw data into actionable insights. Similarly, the rise of remote work emphasizes the need for self-management and effective online communication (think platforms like Zoom and Slack), illustrating the codependence of technical hard skills and soft skills.

What are technical skills?

Technical skills are hard skills. They are abilities learned through training or education that apply to specific work, particularly in fields like IT, engineering, or science. These skills often require the use of complex tools and technologies

List of technical skills

• Adobe Creative Suite
• Application Development
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Big Data Management
• CAD Software
• Computational Design
• Computer Programming
• Cybersecurity Analysis
• Database Management
• Information Security
• IoT (Internet of Things)
• Network Structure & Design
• R Programming
• Ruby on Rails
• Statistical Analysis System (SAS)
• Web Development

Are technical skills also hard skills?

Technical skills fall under the category of hard skills. These are specific abilities acquired through education or training (like coding, data analysis, and using specialized software). Emphasizing these skills on your resume can highlight your technical expertise, demonstrating your capability to handle job-specific tasks and making you a more attractive candidate to potential employers.

How to learn hard skills

Learning hard skills is a strategic investment in your career.

These skills can be acquired through various means, but the key is to find the learning method that best fits your career goals and current circumstances.

On-the-job training

One of the most effective ways to learn hard skills is through on-the-job training. Gaining hands-on experience allows you to apply what you learn in real-world scenarios—deepening your understanding and proficiency.

Many employers offer training programs or mentorship opportunities to help you develop these skills. Whether it's tackling new software or learning advanced technical procedures, the experience you gain on the job is a great way to learn hard skills.

Certifications for hard skills

Certifications strengthen your career. They're a tangible testament to your skillset, expertise, and dedication to continuous learning.

Different industries value various certifications that highlight diverse hard skills, boosting your credibility and opening up new career opportunities. Consider pursuing certifications in areas relevant to your field, such as project management, IT, or specialized software, to enhance your skill set and marketability.

Best hard skills to put on a resume

Showcasing the right hard skills on your resume can make a significant difference in catching the eye of potential employers.

These skills highlight your technical abilities and demonstrate your capability to perform specific job functions. Here are some of the best hard skills to consider adding to your resume.

Resume hard skills

If you're worried you don’t have very specific technical skills that measure up to a particular role, don't get discouraged just yet. There are some general hard skills for your resume that still pack a punch.  

Project Management Skills : These skills are about overseeing projects to ensure they're completed on time and within budget. Proficiency in project management software like MS Project, JIRA, or Asana can be a definite plus.

Foreign Language Proficiency : In an increasingly globalized (and remote!) world, being multilingual can be a significant advantage, opening up opportunities in international business and communication.

Digital Marketing : This encompasses SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and PPC advertising. A deep understanding of tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Ads Manager, or SEMrush is also a great companion to this skill.

Salesforce Proficiency : Salesforce is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Expertise in this platform can be a significant advantage, particularly in sales and marketing roles. (Other CRM platforms include Hubspot, Zendesk, ClickUp, and Active Campaign). 

Data Analysis : In today's era of big data, the ability to interpret and use information to make informed business decisions is invaluable. Including any knowledge of data analytics tools such as SQL, Python, and Tableau is also beneficial. 

Resume technical skills 

Software Development : This hard skill involves designing, implementing, and testing software (and indicates strong computer skills ). Knowledge of languages like Java, Python, or C++ and an understanding of software development methodologies can make you a valuable asset across various industries.

Machine Learning/AI : With businesses increasingly leveraging AI and ML for decision-making and operations, having this skill can place you on a short list of candidates with hard skills in tech innovation.

Technical Writing : The ability to communicate complex information in an easy-to-understand way is critical in many fields. Proficiency in tools like Microsoft Office , Adobe Acrobat, and MadCap Flare could increase your appeal to recruiters and hiring managers.

Cloud Computing : As more businesses move to the cloud, knowledge of cloud service platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud can help boost your prospects.

Cybersecurity : With cyber threats on the rise, knowing how to protect and recover systems, networks, and data from cyber-attacks is crucial. Command of tools like Nessus, Wireshark, or Metasploit can strengthen your credentials.

Job-specific hard skills

Job-specific hard skills are the specialized abilities and knowledge needed to perform particular tasks in a specific job.

For example, software engineers may need proficiency in Python or Java, while marketing managers might need different, specific marketing skills like SEO or Google Analytics.

The TLDR? Job-specific skills are important because they connect your past experiences directly to the job you're applying for, showing hiring managers that you have what they're looking for.

Technical skills examples - software engineer

When it comes to software engineering, having the right technical skills is crucial. The following are a few of the top technical skills for software engineers that can help you excel in this field

• Algorithm Design
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
• Database Design
• Mobile Application Development
• Quality Assurance (QA)
• Scripting Languages
• Version Control Systems (VCS)

Find more software engineer resume skills .

Technical skills examples - data analyst

For data analysts, having the right technical skills is key to analyzing and interpreting complex data sets. The following are a few of the top technical skills:

• Advanced Excel
• Apache Hadoop
• Data Mining
• Data Visualization
• Deep Learning
• Predictive Analytics
• Regression Analysis

Explore over a dozen data analyst resumes to help create a list of hard skills for your resume.

Technical skills examples - IT manager

IT managers need a diverse set of technical skills to oversee and maintain an organization's technology infrastructure effectively. Here are a few of the top IT technical skills:

• Active Directory
• Cloud Security
• Ethical Hacking
• Malware Analysis
• Network Security
• Risk Management
• Server Administration
• System Administration
• Virtualization

Review the skill sections of these IT analyst resumes .

Examples of hard skills - web designer

Web designers need a combination of hard and technical skills to create engaging and effective websites. The following are a few of the top UX and web design hard and technical skills:

List of hard skills examples

• Adobe InDesign
• Information Architecture
• Interaction Design
• Prototype Design
• Technical Drawing
• User Interface (UI) Design
• Wireframing

Examples of hard skills - copywriter

Copywriters require specific hard skills to write compelling and effective content across platforms. The following are a few of the top hard skills for copywriters:

• Content Strategy
• Google Suite
• HTML/CSS for Writers
• Project Management Skills
• SEO Copywriting
• Technical Documentation
• Web Content Writing
• Writing Skills

Examples of hard skills - students

Students can benefit from developing a range of hard skills to boost academic performance and future career prospects. The following are a few of the top hard skills for students:

• Data Analysis
• Research Skills
• Public Speaking
• Programming (e.g., Python, Java)
• Graphic Design
• Time Management
• Technical Writing
• Foreign Languages
• Statistical Analysis

Hard skills examples

Different industries require unique sets of hard skills to excel and meet job-specific demands. Understanding which skills are most valued in your field can help you tailor your resume for a specific job in a specific industry. In this section, you'll find hard skills examples across various industries to give you a clearer picture of what employers are looking for.

Examples of hard skills - marketing

To excel in marketing, having a strong foundation of hard and technical skills is essential. The following are a few of the top marketing hard and technical skills:

List of hard skills for resume

• A/B Testing
• Affiliate Marketing Software
• Content Management Systems (CMS)
• CRM Software (be specific)
• Email Marketing Software
• Google AdWords
• Inbound Marketing Software
• Keyword Research (be clear about the tools you use)
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Video Editing

Hard skills examples - customer success

Customer success professionals need a range of hard skills to effectively manage and grow customer relationships. The following are a few of the top customer success hard skills:

• Customer Lifecycle Management
• Customer Success Strategy
• Customer Success Operations
• Metrics and KPIs
• Project Management
• Revenue Expansion
• SaaS Knowledge
• Team Leadership

Hard skills examples - project management

Project managers require specific skills to successfully plan, execute, and oversee projects. The following are a few of the top hard skills in project management:

• Agile Methodologies
• Contract Management Skills
• Earned Value Management
• Gantt Charts
• Microsoft Project
• Process Improvement
• Risk Assessment

Hard skills examples - Human Resources

Human resources professionals need a diverse set of hard skills to manage various HR functions effectively. The following are a few of the top hard skills in human resources:

• ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) Management
• HRIS (Human Resources Information Systems) Software
• Compliance Auditing
• Benefits Administration
• Performance Metrics Analysis
• Learning Management Systems (LMS)
• Organizational Development Tools
• HR Data Analysis
• Conflict Resolution Techniques
• Compensation Benchmarking

Hard skills examples - Sales

Sales professionals need a combination of hard skills to drive revenue and close deals effectively. The following are a few of the top hard skills in sales:

• Cold Calling
• CRM Tools (be specific)
• Direct Sales
• Leadership Skills
• Market Research
• Negotiation
• Presentation
• Product Knowledge
• Sales and Budget Forecasting
• Sales Strategy and Planning

Hard skills examples - Leadership

Good leaders require a range of hard skills to guide their teams and drive organizational success. The following are a few of the top hard skills for leadership:

• Business Strategy
• Change Management
• Conflict Resolution
• Financial Management
• Human Resource Management
• Operations Management
• Organizational Development
• Strategic Planning
• Supply Chain Management
• Talent Management

Add hard skills to your resume with Teal

In one click, Teal's resume creator can help you add all or a selection of your hard skills to a resume without the frustration of rewriting them every time you apply for a specific role. 

You can also categorize your hard skills however you'd like, making them easy for hiring managers to find—maximizing their impact and visibility. 

The most in demand hard skills of 2024

With the rapid pace of tech advancement, emerging hard skills continue to shape the job market. To remain ahead in your field, stay updated on these skills.

• 3D Printing : The ability to design and print three-dimensional objects using specialized software.
• Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) Development : The creation of immersive digital environments and experiences using AR and VR technology.
• Cryptocurrency Knowledge : Understanding the mechanisms of digital currencies like Bitcoin, including blockchain technology, mining, and trading strategies.
• Data Privacy : The ability to protect and manage personal and confidential data in compliance with evolving privacy laws and regulations.
• Drone Operation : Piloting uncrewed aerial vehicles, often used in cinematography, agriculture, or emergency services.
• Edge Computing : Processing and analyzing data where it is generated—reducing latency and increasing data processing speed.
• Genomics : The ability to sequence, interpret, and apply genome data, crucial in healthcare and biotech sectors.
• Green Energy Technologies : Skills in designing, implementing, or managing technologies that generate environmentally friendly energy (like solar or wind power systems).
• Quantum Computing : Understanding and working with computers and systems that use quantum bits (qubits) to perform complex calculations at unprecedented speeds.
• Robotics : The ability to design, construct, operate, and apply robots or robotic systems (increasingly in demand in manufacturing, healthcare, and logistics).

How to list hard skills on your resume

Mastering the art of hard-skill presentation on a resume isn't just about creating a bullet point list. It's about strategically adding hard skills throughout your resume to amplify your potential to leave a lasting impression on prospective employers.

Choosing the right hard skills 

Listing the right hard skills on a resume comes down to understanding what a hiring manager or recruiter is looking for and presenting your relevant hard skills to match these needs. 

So, how do you choose the best hard skills for your resume?  

Create a base list of hard skills

Brainstorm all of your technical abilities, certifications, and education. What industry-specific knowledge and expertise do you have? What project management, analytical, or leadership methodologies and frameworks have you worked with? What software or tools are you proficient in within your field? Once you have your list, store it in one central location for easy access when it comes time to fill out an application. 

Pro Tip: The Teal AI Resume Builder Skills Manager is a great place to do this.

Store all of your skills in one central location. Then, just check the box next to a specific skill to add it to your resume for any role you apply for.

Manage all of your hard skills in one place with Teal. Sign up for free to get started .

Review the job description

A job description often offers insight into the relevant skills needed to perform in a specific role. Look for words or phrases that indicate tools and technical competencies like "Google Analytics," "process improvement," "project management," "Python," "content strategy," etc.

The Teal AI Resume Builder and Job Application Tracker highlight the most important hard skills from any job description so job seekers like you can easily list them on your resume.

Match your hard skills to the role

Once you've identified the key skills required, you should match these with your own. Between hard skills, soft skills, and other requirements, you want to have at least 70% of the qualifications a company is looking for. (But remember, honesty is critical, so only incorporate your actual skills.)

Where to include hard skills on a resume 

Demonstrating hard skills on a resume in various sections offers a high-level view of your technical abilities. Dispersing them adds depth and showcases your well-rounded skillset. 

So, what sections should have examples of your hard skills? 

Professional Summary

Incorporate hard skills in your professional summary or short professional bio to complement your soft skills and most notable accomplishments. 

For example, if you're a software engineer, one sentence of your professional summary could look like this: "As a highly skilled software engineer with 10+ years of experience, I have expertise in Python development, database management, and a strong problem-solving mindset."

Work Experience

Include hard skills in your work experience achievements to complement your soft skills and illustrate how you effectively made an impact. 

So, let's say you increased conversions by 3x through A/B testing and data analysis of landing page copy as an achievement; that would look like this: 

"Achieved a 3x increase in conversions through A/B testing, effectively utilizing data analysis to identify and implement data-driven solutions that optimized website performance and user experience."

Create a dedicated resume "Skills" section to highlight hard skills related to those in the job description.

A list draws attention to your diverse range of abilities and highlights the unique qualities you bring to the table as a professional. And using a dedicated section prominently showcases your technical expertise and interpersonal skills.

How to tailor hard skills to fit job descriptions

By tailoring your resume to every role you apply for, you demonstrate how your skills align with the position's requirements. And this helps hiring managers evaluate how qualified you are.

Think of your hard skills as ingredients for a recipe and the job description as your cookbook. Creating a dish with delicious flavor requires specific ingredients, and so does the right candidate for a job.

To tailor your resume to a role, start by carefully reading the job description—this is your recipe. Pay attention to the skills the employer is looking for (these are the 'key ingredients'). Are they looking for proficiency in a particular language or expertise in a software tool?

Next, look at your own set of hard skills. (Think of this as your 'kitchen pantry.') Choose those skills that match the ones listed in the job description. And just like the perfect ingredients make a dish flourish, choosing the right hard skills makes you the ideal candidate for the role.

Highlighting hard skills with Teal's Resume Builder

The best practice for adding hard skills to your resume is choosing the ones that align with the job description of the role you're applying for. Then incorporate them in each section to elevate your entire professional profile—and you can do this with the free Teal AI Resume Builder.

Step 1: Sign up for a free Teal account if you haven't yet.

Step 2: Click the "Resume Builder" icon in the left navigation panel. From here, you can choose an existing resume or click the "New Resume" button at the top right.

Step 3 : To add hard skills to your professional summary, scroll to Professional Summaries, click the drop-down button, and then "Add Professional Summary." (Create one from scratch, or click the "Generate With AI" Button.)

Step 4:  To hard skills to your work experience, from the Resume Builder, scroll to Work Experience. Then, click the drop-down button. Click "Add Work Experience" to create a new section or "Add an Achievement" to incorporate hard skills into an existing work history.

Step 5: To add hard skills to your "Skills" section in the Resume Builder, scroll to Skills, click the drop-down button, then click "Add Skills." Here, you can list your skills individually (in addition to incorporating them in a summary or achievements). 

Examples of hard skills on resumes 

Check out some real-life examples of hard skills on resumes through various sections and across different position levels and roles.

Examples of hard skills for student resumes

Professional summary

Certifications

Examples of hard skills for resume - Entry-level professional

Entry-level social media manager 

Entry-level software developer

Entry-level data scientist 

Examples of hard skills for resume - Mid-level professional

Graphic designer 

Business analyst

Project manager 

Examples of hard skills for resume - Senior-level professional

VP of Sales

Chief administrative officer

Senior IT analyst  

Hard skills and the 2024 job market

The future of hard skills is being rapidly shaped by the increase in cutting-edge technology development (particularly AI, machine learning, and data science). 

As tech progresses, traditional hard skills may need to be supplemented with expertise in newer technology. And the result could be a significant increase in opportunities for those with skill proficiency in these areas.

As hard skills become more intertwined with technological innovation, so does the importance of lifelong learning. Investing in education, training, and development will be key for job security, more opportunities, and a competitive edge.

Use hard skills to stand out

Understanding and effectively leveraging your hard skills is crucial to standing out in today's job market. And it isn't just about providing a list of your skills; it's about offering a holistic view of your professional journey, demonstrating how those hard skills, with complementary soft skills, have amplified your impact. 

The Teal AI Resume Builder can help you present those skills with clarity and precision throughout different sections of your resume—highlighting them in a way that resonates with prospective employers.

Compare your hard skills with Teal

Want to make sure you've got the best ingredients for every application during your job search? Use Matching Mode in Teal's Free Resume Builder to quickly compare the skills and keywords in a job posting to those in your resume. Then, receive a "Match Score." 

You want your Match Score to be 60-70%. You can incorporate more skills and other keywords from a job listing into your content to improve your score—creating a tailored resume. 

Start leveraging your hard skills to their full potential. Sign up for Teal for free today.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can i identify which hard skills i already have.

You can identify which hard skills you already have by analyzing your past experiences, achievements, and hobbies or interests, focusing on the concrete abilities you utilized or developed in these areas.

Is it better to have a wider range of hard skills or to specialize in a few?

The choice between having a wide range of hard skills or specializing depends largely on the specific demands of your industry and your career aspirations. In rapidly changing fields, diversity in skills can be advantageous, while in highly specialized roles, depth of expertise is often more valuable.

How can I effectively demonstrate my hard skills in a job interview?

To effectively demonstrate your hard skills in a job interview, prepare stories from past experiences that highlight these skills in action.

Kayte Grady

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