Use concrete facts in your answers and be more precise by giving figures. You need to support these statements with facts and evidence.

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Bad answer

• Excellent customer service representative
• Increased sales in Northern Europe
• Successfully launched new iPhone 6 communication strategy in Europe
• Managed P&L

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Good answer

• Retained customers in 2014 by 15% compared to 2013
• Increased sales in Northern Europe by 10% (mainly by acquiring 5 new clients in Ireland)
• Launched 20 new events in Spain for iPhone 6 and wrote and got published 18 press releases
• Controlled P&L of company with turnover of 20 million Euros

If you use general terms and ‘buzz’ words like Entrepreneur, Visionary, Dynamic, Effective, Team player, then be sure to also support them with concrete examples when you describe in bullets your work experience.

It’s better to write examples than use these terms which are overused and generic.

• I started up a new on-line software company in 2008, called eBuzz; developed the communication strategy and found the funding to go pre-IPO”

This shows you are an entrepreneur.

• As a colleague to 10 people, I communicate the weekly meeting agendas and invite all the attendees.
• I write the action plans during our minutes of meetings and distribute to all team members afterwards.
• I am the back-up to the project manager, mainly helping with the weekly project reporting to the stakeholders. If necessary, I support other team members in technical support when needed.

This shows that you are a supportive team member and willing to work outside your direct domain of responsibilities.

Be real.

I did a job interview preparation session with a guy recently who was a business analyst. He was good with figures and quite analytical, calm and reflective, took measured risks and prepared well. His first paragraph in his CV said, I’m a communicative dynamic team player. Huhh? That description didn’t really reflect who he really was.

Use feedback from colleagues, your manager or results from a personality test and use these competencies to describe your soft skills in your profile. Don’t make up words which don’t reflect who you are. If you don’t describe yourself correctly, you lose immediate credibility and we don’t take seriously what else you have written.

And make sure that you can show concrete examples in your past work experience which demonstrate how you put into practice these soft skill competencies. This is called “behavior style interviewing” or “competency based interviewing”…the most common interview model used today by HR managers and recruiters. Can you site an example in your current job about how you went about to “plan” for your new product launch. Here, we are testing the soft skill competency, “planning”.