The skills section on most CVs is dead weight. Eight technologies in a grid, most of them already implied by your last three jobs. Worse: it competes with the part of the page that actually changes hiring decisions.
What I replaced it with
A single line under each role: "What I shipped that mattered."
Examples (real, anonymised):
- Sr. PM at X (2022–2024) — What shipped that mattered: cut activation friction by replacing a 3-step flow with a 1-screen import, lifting D7 retention from 18% → 31%.
- Data engineer at Y (2020–2022) — What shipped that mattered: rebuilt ETL from cron + bash to scheduled dbt + Airflow; pipeline cost dropped 4x and on-call alerts dropped from ~12/week to under 2.
Why it works
Three reasons:
- It forces specificity. You can't bullet "React" anymore — you have to remember what you actually did with it.
- It moves the proof above the fold. Most readers don't scroll past the first two roles.
- It creates the question you want them to ask in the interview: "Tell me about that retention lift."
Where the skills go
If a recruiter screening tool needs them, put them in a one-line ribbon at the top, alphabetised, no proficiency marks. That's enough for the keyword scan.