Most computer skills on a CV are a list of things nobody doubted you could do. "Microsoft Office, email, internet" tells a recruiter nothing, and a bare "ChatGPT" tells them even less. The better question is which tools earn a place, and what you would say about each one if someone asked.
Which tools earn a line
Two sources decide this: the advert and the job itself. Read the advert first and copy out every tool it names, in the spelling it uses. If it says Salesforce and you have worked in Salesforce, that word goes on your CV exactly as written, because a recruiter scanning for it should not have to guess that "CRM systems" means the same thing. Our guide to keywords to include on a CV covers where those terms belong.
The second source is what the work actually runs on, even when the advert stays vague. A payroll assistant who lists Sage, a video editor who lists Premiere Pro, a site manager who lists Procore: each name says something a general phrase cannot, because the tool lives inside that trade. Ask someone who holds the job you want what they open on a Monday morning, and you have most of your list.
Everything else needs a reason. Say you took a two-day Tableau course in 2019 and have not opened it since. If the role involves dashboards and you could get back up to speed in a week, keep it and be straight about how recent it is. If the role has nothing to do with dashboards, that word is using space a better line could have.
The baseline to drop
Some skills are assumed the moment you apply for a job that involves a computer. Word processing, email, web browsing and video calls sit in this group for almost any office role, and listing them makes a strong CV read as if it had nothing better to offer. Nobody will reject a senior finance analyst for writing "Microsoft Word", but the line is wasted and the reader notices the padding.
There are exceptions, and the job sets them. Someone returning after a long break, or moving from a manual trade into a first office role, may be applying to an employer who really does want to know they are at ease on a computer. Even then, a specific line beats a generic one. "Excel" alone is baseline for many roles, while "Excel: pivot tables, lookups, monthly budget model" is not, because it shows how far you go.
The same goes for typing speed, "Windows" and "internet research". If the advert does not ask for them, cut them.
Layout is a separate question. Keep tools grouped by category, as our CV skills section guide sets out, rather than sorted under Proficient, Intermediate and Beginner. A self-rated level means little to a reader, and the next section gives you something better to put in its place.
How to list software on a CV: tool plus use
The formula is short: the tool, what you did with it, and an outcome when you have one. The skills section can carry the names, while your experience section carries the proof. A tool sitting in a list is a claim. A tool inside a job entry, doing something, is evidence.
Here are three before-and-after examples, all invented, from three different kinds of work.
Office: accounts assistant
- Before: Excel, Word, Outlook, Sage
- After: Reconciled supplier invoices in Sage and built an Excel model with pivot tables that cut month-end close from five days to three
Word and Outlook disappeared and nothing was lost. Sage and Excel now come with a task and a before-and-after that a hiring manager in finance will recognise straight away.
Technical: backend developer
- Before: Python, SQL, Git, Docker, Agile, various cloud tools
- After: Built Python and PostgreSQL services for a billing product; rewrote the three slowest queries and brought a nightly report down from forty minutes to six
The skills section can still hold the full stack for anyone scanning it. The job entry is what shows the depth, and "various cloud tools" was never saying anything.
Non-desk: warehouse team leader
- Before: Computer literate, good with technology
- After: Ran stock counts on handheld scanners and SAP for a team of eight; trained two new starters on the system in their first week
Non-desk jobs may benefit from this the most, because it is easy to assume your tools do not count. A handheld scanner, a route-planning app or a patient records system is software you use under pressure every shift, so name it.
AI skills on a resume or CV: use, not badge
Whether you are writing a CV or a resume, "ChatGPT" on its own is a badge, and "prompt engineering" with no example behind it is a bigger one. AI tools follow the same formula as any other software, with one addition: say how you checked the output. That detail separates someone who works with these tools from someone who pastes whatever comes back.
- Badge: AI tools, ChatGPT, prompt engineering
- Use with a result: Drafted customer help articles with ChatGPT, then fact-checked and edited each one; cleared a backlog of 60 articles in a month
- Use with a result, technical: Generated unit test scaffolding with GitHub Copilot and reviewed every test by hand, taking a legacy module from no tests to full coverage of its payment logic
Two cautions. Do not list an AI tool if your experience amounts to a few prompts over a weekend, because the interview will find that out quickly. And think before describing what you fed into it: many employers restrict what can go into public chatbots, so a line implying you pasted in client data can raise the wrong question. Check the rules where you work.
How much weight any given employer puts on AI use varies, and no general rule holds. Treat these tools like everything else on the page: they go in when they are relevant to the job and you can back them up. Writing your application with AI is a different subject, and we cover that in when to use AI for a cover letter.
The interview test
Go through your tool lines one at a time and imagine the interviewer reading each aloud, then saying "tell me about that". If you can describe a real task, something that went wrong and what you did next, the line stays. If your answer would start with "well, I did a course once", cut it or move it somewhere more honest.
Take Priya, an invented marketing coordinator who lists Google Analytics. Asked about it, she can explain the report she pulled each month, the landing page it showed was losing visitors and the change the team made. That is a defended line. Had she only glanced at a dashboard somebody else built, the same two words would become a liability.
Some roles add a practical test, which makes this more than theory. A line you cannot defend may get found out before the interview ends, and that can cost you trust in everything else on the page.
What to do before you send it
Keep the advert open beside your CV and give this ten minutes.
- Copy out every tool the advert names and check that each one you have really used appears in its exact spelling.
- Delete the baseline: word processing, email, browsing, typing speed.
- Take the two tools that matter most for this job and rewrite them inside an experience entry, with what you did and what came of it.
- Run the interview test on every remaining line and remove anything you cannot talk about for two minutes.
If your first draft comes from Postulit, which turns a LinkedIn profile into a CV, run the same pass on it: the profile supplies the raw tools, and the job you are applying for decides which ones stay.