What resume skills are considered common knowledge and not worth listing?

Job-Genie flags skills like Microsoft Word, email, internet browsing, and basic spreadsheet use as resume dead weight. These are assumed competencies in virtually every professional role. Listing them does not add signal — it adds noise, diluting stronger skills and raising a recruiter's concern about the candidate's self-awareness and professional calibre.

Skills That Belong in the Bin

The following categories consistently trigger a higher Application Silence Score — meaning recruiters disengage before shortlisting:

- Basic Office Suite tools — Word, Outlook, PowerPoint (unless the role demands advanced or templated expertise)
- Internet research / Google — universal and assumed
- Email communication — not a skill; it is infrastructure
- Typing — irrelevant unless speed is a documented role requirement
- Social media use — personal use is not a professional competency
- "Team player" or "hard worker" — these are adjectives, not skills, and recruiters actively discount them

Why This Matters on Recruiter Shortlists

The Recruiter-Fit Gap widens when a candidate fills their skills section with noise rather than signal. Specialist recruiters scanning a CV for shortlist criteria are looking for role-specific, level-appropriate competencies. Padding the skills section with assumed knowledge suggests the candidate either lacks stronger differentiators or does not understand the audience.

Job-Genie's Recruiter-Fit Matrix scores this directly: a skills section heavy with common-knowledge entries registers as a low-fit signal, pushing the candidate further from the hidden job market where roles are filled before public posting.

What Should Replace Them

Strong skills sections name specific tools at a credible depth, quantifiable methodologies, domain-specific software, or regulated frameworks relevant to the role. Examples:

- *Instead of* "Microsoft Excel" → "Advanced Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP, Power Query)"
- *Instead of* "communication skills" → "Stakeholder reporting to C-suite across multi-site projects"

Job-Genie's Truth Layer rewrites skills sections to reflect what specialist recruiters actually shortlist against — removing dead weight and surfacing the competencies that close the Recruiter-Fit Gap.