Active Listening Skills in the Workplace (+ Examples)

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While making great presentations and being eloquent are sure to get you noticed in a corporate environment, active listening skills can give you the competitive advantage that you need to truly stand out.

In this article, we’ll discuss some active listening skills you should work on, and look great on any resume and impress recruiters, especially if you are looking for a role in management.

With our free resume builder, you can add active listening skills that are relevant to your role and land an interview in no time.

What Is Active Listening?

Active listening is the ability to fully focus on a speaker or group of speakers by paying attention to the verbal and non-verbal messages that are being conveyed. 

Some people seem to have innate active listening skills, but the good news is that empathic listening can be learned and developed. Some active listening skills examples include eye contact, paraphrasing, and verbal cues, such as “sure” or “I understand”.

Empathic listening involves providing feedback to the communicator to let them know that they are being listened to. It also ensures that you can recall details of the conversation without needing to listen to the information again.

5 Active Listening Skills That Look Great on a Resume

For jobs in customer service, project management, healthcare, or tech, strong listening skills can set you apart.

Here are some of the top active listening examples that look great on a resume, and why they matter:

Focused listening

This skill demonstrates that you can stay present in conversations and shows reliability and professionalism. This is key for roles involving talking with clients or with a group of coworkers.

Reflective paraphrasing 

By using reflective paraphrasing, you will be restating key points, which shows that you understand others clearly. This active listening technique makes you an asset in collaborative and leadership positions.

Empathetic communication

Actively showing empathy by recognizing emotions and responding with sensitivity, making this skill ideal for roles in HR, healthcare, counseling, and customer service.

Nonverbal communication

Reading and responding appropriately to body language, tone, and facial expressions to strengthen mutual understanding during interactions.

Conversation summarization

By knowing how to summarize conversations in the workplace effectively, you can make sure that your team stays focused. This is especially useful if you work in a fast-paced or remote work setting.

There are several ways to develop active listening techniques and demonstrate their application in your job. 

It’s important to work on them and include these skills on your resume, which demonstrates strong communication, emotional intelligence, and teamwork, exactly what a recruiter wants to see.

How To Add Active Listening Skills to Your Resume 

Recruiters want to see evidence that you can collaborate, understand others, and communicate effectively.

Below are some active listening examples tailored for various professions that reflect active listening in action:

Customer service or support roles

Active listening is key in support roles. Adding this skill to your experience section with quantifiable data, like in the following example, can help you win over a recruiter.

Resolved customer concerns 25% faster by using active listening techniques, including paraphrasing and clarifying questions.

Healthcare or caregiving

When working with elderly or ill patients as a nurse or in another similar role, it’s essential to listen actively. Here’s how you can add your skills to your resume:

Collaborated with 5+ multidisciplinary teams by actively listening during rounds and communicating patient updates with precision.

Tech and project management </H3>

If you’re in project management or working in a tech role, it’s key to be able to ask follow-up questions or sum up conversations accurately. Below is an example of how it can be added to your resume:

• Clarified vague project requirements by asking follow-up questions and restating goals, reducing scope creep by 30%.
• Led cross-functional meetings with consistent feedback loops and conversation summaries to align global remote teams.

Benefits of Developing Active Listening Skills

There are multiple benefits for those who choose to diligently work on their communication and active listening skills. Here is a list of the most important ones.

Listening generates trust

Listening carefully without interrupting does not go unnoticed in the workplace. It becomes essential when creating trust relationships, such as with business partners, customers, and colleagues.

Active listening helps you solve problems

Active listening helps you detect what other, not so keen, listeners may not. Dedicating your full attention to your speaker, observing their body language, and asking the right questions at the right time will often help you improve your problem-solving skills.

Helps you avoid missing critical information

As an active listener, you are dedicating your full attention to the person communicating with you. This means that you will rarely miss critical information. Always a major plus that can save a lot of time and effort in a corporate context.

Helps provide more career opportunities

Employees with active listening skills are bound to be noticed more quickly by management in the workplace, resulting in more interesting projects, and, possibly, more responsibility and better advancement opportunities.

Key Takeaways

Understanding how to be an active listener and its benefits are not only great for personal reasons, but also for your career. 

Active listening can provide better career opportunities and can help make sure you retain important information on a daily basis. 

Adding skills like reflective paraphrasing and empathetic communication to your resume and explaining how you use them throughout your resume can help you land your next dream job, especially if you’re in healthcare, education, or management.

With the right resume template and expert review, you can make sure your listening skills and qualifications shine.

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