Showcasing Your Crisis Management Skills on Your Resume

When a crisis hits your business, you'll need to spring into action. That's why crisis management skills are essential for every role in any industry.

If you have a passion for solving problems under pressure, you can pursue a career focused on crisis management. To make this dream a reality, you'll need the right resume to highlight your skills and experience.

In this blog post, you'll discuss how to showcase your crisis management skills on your resume. We'll also provide examples of crisis management resumes to help you get started. Let's dive in.

Table of Contents

• What are crisis management skills?
• Demonstrating Crisis Management Skills on Your Resume
• Examples of Crisis Management Skills on Resumes

What are crisis management skills?

Crisis management skills help professionals effectively assess and solve problems as soon as they occur. These skills include crisis communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, decision-making, crisis negotiation, and risk assessment.

A crisis could be a big one like a health emergency or something smaller like missing an essential delivery for a wedding. Regardless of the crisis, professionals need to keep calm under pressure and find alternatives when necessary.

In most roles, it's important to keep your cool and problem-solve in times of need. Whether you are looking for a job in a crisis management role or moving into a managerial position, crisis management skills are a must-have. You can see these essential skills below.

Learn more about how crisis management team roles can be defined in this article.

Clear Communication

When communicating during a crisis, you'll need to remain calm, speak with clarity, and provide concise information.

This can help everyone involved stay on the same page about what needs to happen for the crisis to be resolved quickly and efficiently.

Leadership

Leadership is also important during crisis management. People need to know who is in charge and how to respond to the crisis. As a leader, you must remain organized, provide clear direction, and be a source of stability for others.

Problem-Solving and Decision-Making

Problem-solving and decision-making are two crisis management skills that go hand in hand. When there is a crisis, it's important to be able to assess the situation quickly and make decisions accordingly.

This means gathering as much information as possible, assessing the best course of action, and making a decision on how to move forward.

It's also important to be able to anticipate what the outcome of that decision might be, so you can adjust if needed.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking involves looking at a situation from different angles. Crisis management professionals can scenario plan quickly, assessing the event from many perspectives in a short period.

While critical thinking may be common in the workplace, pressure makes the process more difficult. With limited resources on hand and tight timeframes, you'll need to find creative solutions in difficult circumstances.

Negotiation and Conflict Resolution

Negotiation and conflict resolution are two crisis management skills that can help defuse a tense situation.

Negotiating involves working with all parties involved in a crisis to come up with mutually beneficial solutions. Conflict resolution is about understanding the needs of each party and finding ways to resolve the crisis peacefully.

You can practice these skills before a crisis arises by solving smaller-scale conflicts. The next time your team faces a challenge, develop a plan, execute, then debrief.

What did you handle well? What needed improvement? Take note of your strengths and weaknesses so you can improve gradually. After this exercise, you'll be more prepared when a crisis strikes.

Demonstrating Crisis Management Skills on Your Resume

Crisis management skills are difficult to showcase until disaster strikes.

You can instead reflect these skills on your resume. Provide examples of the activities and accomplishments that showcase your ability to handle conflict.

For example, you might list a crisis you managed where you had to quickly assess the situation and make decisions under pressure.

You could also include a crisis you averted by taking preemptive steps that de-escalated the conflict before it became unmanageable.

By showcasing your crisis management skills on your resume, you can show potential employers that you are prepared to handle tough situations.

Below, we'll explore how you can showcase your ability in the different sections of your resume.

Showcasing Crisis Management in Your Work Experience

One of the best ways to demonstrate crisis management skills is within the work experience section of your resume. Here, you list your past job titles and duties, so it's the ideal place to highlight crisis situations you have managed or led.

Be sure to include a brief description of the crisis, how you handled it, and the outcome. Here's an example.

"Managed crisis team in response to a natural disaster. Developed a plan of action for crisis communication, monitored the crisis as it unfolded, and provided clear direction for crisis resolution. Resulted in successful crisis response and avoided further escalation."

You can also craft this section with bullet points to showcase crisis scenarios and the steps you took to resolve them.

Crisis Management Accomplishments to Highlight

Another way to demonstrate crisis management skills is in your accomplishments section. List any crisis-related awards you have won or mention any crises you successfully managed.

For example:

"Awarded 'Outstanding Employee' for successfully managing crisis situations in the workplace."

If you've taken any leadership courses or classes related to crisis management, be sure to list those as well.

Demonstrating Crisis Management Skills in Your Objective and Skills Sections

If you're looking to tailor your entire resume to crisis management roles, you'll need to do more than summarize conflicts you've quelled.

In the objective section, you can mention crisis management specifically or use more general terms such as "high-pressure situations" or "conflict resolution."

This is a great place to showcase your expertise in crisis management and why you would be an asset to the company.

In the skills section, you can list crisis-related keywords such as "negotiation," "decision-making," and "risk evaluation."

This section is also a great place to include any certifications or training courses you have taken in crisis management.

Making Your Skills Known on LinkedIn

In today's world, LinkedIn is an extension of your resume.

You have unlimited space and more room to showcase your crisis-management experience than your paper CV. If you've solved more than one major crisis in your role, you can describe multiple scenarios more easily on LinkedIn.

You can also use your posts to show your dedication to crisis management. If you regularly share crisis management tips, articles related to the topic, or brief descriptions of what you've handed at work, recruiters are sure to notice.

Below, we've gathered top-notch LinkedIn profiles of different crisis management professionals and lessons you can learn from each.

Workshop your headline.

Not every crisis management role has the phrase in the title. Instead, you'll need to make the connection clear on your profile.

Let's turn to Megan McCann, a media relations professional, for an example. Her profile dives deep into her experience in healthcare has shaped her skills to handle any situation.

In her role at Northwestern medicine, she refers to her experience communicating information about COVID-19 —a crisis familiar to all.

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McCann's roles don't include the phrase "crisis management." To make the connection clear, she places the phrase "Crisis & Issues Management" in her LinkedIn headline.

Pro tip: If your role doesn't explicitly mention crisis management, you can include the information in your headline and experience sections.

Reference specific crisis scenarios.

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Kelly Nantel successfully sums up 30 years of experience in her LinkedIn profile.

Her experience section shares the different positions she's held at recognizable organizations, including Amazon, the National Safety Council, and the National Transportation Safety Board.

All of these roles involved crisis communication, which she reflects throughout her profile.

Nantel's LinkedIn headline reads "reputation management and crisis communications expert." By using this phrase at the top of her profile, recruiters already know that she has experience managing sticky situations.

Further, Nantel reflects her crisis communication experience in her about section. She says that she managed "dozens of major transportation investigations" before listing crises that have made headlines.

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Pro tip: Don't just say you have crisis management skills. Refer to specific examples.

Make a connection to your industry.

Some industries face crisis situations more frequently than others. For example, healthcare, media, public relations, government communications, and first responders may regularly face emergencies.

Take the time to explain common crises that your field and how your role intersects.

Suzanne Kennedy, who runs a consulting practice and media training program, demonstrates in her profile.

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Kennedy has experience as a journalist, covering crises like the Clinton Impeachment, September 11, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and other natural disasters.

Those who view her profile know automatically that she can communicate calmly in stressful situations.

Pro tip: Everyone has handled a crisis in their role. Make the connection between your role and these situations clear.

Making Your Crisis Management Resume Work For You

Showcasing your crisis management skills shows that you can problem-solve in stressful situations. This know-how is helpful for both crisis managers and employees at any level.

Be sure to include crisis management examples in the work experience, objective, and skills sections of your resume. And remember to show your experience rather than just listing it. That's how you'll truly stand out as a great candidate.