Top 12 Design Consultant Skills to Put on Your Resume

In the competitive world of design consulting, a sharp resume with the right mix of skills makes all the difference. Blend technical mastery, creative spark, and people savvy. Show how you think, how you build, and how you bring others along.

Design Consultant Skills

1. AutoCAD
2. SketchUp
3. Adobe Creative Cloud
4. Revit
5. InVision
6. UX/UI Design
7. Rhino 3D
8. Figma
9. SolidWorks
10. BIM (Building Information Modeling)
11. Prototyping
12. Wireframing

1. AutoCAD

AutoCAD is a CAD standard for precise 2D/3D drafting across architecture, engineering, interiors, and construction. Clean drawings, tidy layers, exact geometry—no guesswork.

Why It's Important

For a Design Consultant, AutoCAD anchors documentation and intent. It speeds iteration, reduces ambiguity, and produces construction-grade outputs that teams can actually build from.

How to Improve AutoCAD Skills

Strengthen these areas and your speed—and confidence—will jump:

1. Nail the basics: Core commands, snaps, layers, blocks, xrefs. Muscle memory first, finesse later.

2. Go deeper: 3D modeling, parametrics, dynamic blocks, sheet sets. Automate the repetitive.

3. Add the right add-ons: Explore the Autodesk App Store to extend workflows without bloat.

4. Manage drawings like a pro: Layer standards, naming conventions, reusable blocks, external references—keep projects lightweight and consistent.

5. Stay current: New releases bring performance and drafting niceties. Read release notes. Test features. Keep what helps.

6. Join communities: Autodesk forums and peer groups reveal real-world fixes you won’t find in manuals.

7. Keep learning: Courses on LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, or vendor training keep you sharp and billable.

Small habit changes compound—fewer clicks, cleaner sets, fewer RFIs.

How to Display AutoCAD Skills on Your Resume

2. SketchUp

SketchUp is quick, visual 3D modeling for architecture, interiors, and landscapes. It’s fast for concepting and crystal-clear for stakeholder conversations.

Why It's Important

Clients grasp ideas faster in 3D. SketchUp’s approachable tools make exploration snappy, which shortens cycles and invites feedback while it’s still cheap to change.

How to Improve SketchUp Skills

1. Shortcuts: Learn them cold. Your hands will outrun your cursor.
2. Extensions: Curate a tight set from the Extension Warehouse to automate tedium.
3. Tutorials: Follow official videos and power-user walkthroughs; mimic, then modify.
4. Precision: Use the inference engine and typed dimensions—pretty and precise.
5. Keep current: New releases often improve performance and geometry tools.
6. Community: The SketchUp forum is a gold mine of tips and real-world modeling tricks.

How to Display SketchUp Skills on Your Resume

3. Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud brings together Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, and more for visual, motion, and layout work that supports pitches, brand systems, and production assets.

Why It's Important

It’s the backbone for polished visuals and coherent brand expression. From mood boards to print-ready files, it keeps deliverables unified and client-ready.

How to Improve Adobe Creative Cloud Skills

1. Shortcuts and actions: Speed compounds when routine tasks are one keypress away.

2. Libraries: Centralize colors, type styles, components—consistency without thinking.

3. Custom workspaces: Build layouts for each discipline so tools are exactly where you need them.

4. Stay updated: Use the Creative Cloud desktop app to adopt features that save minutes daily.

5. Plug-ins: Add narrowly focused tools through Adobe Exchange to fill the gaps you feel.

6. Experiment weekly: Try a new filter, blend mode, or workflow. Tiny experiments unlock new directions.

How to Display Adobe Creative Suite Skills on Your Resume

4. Revit

Revit is BIM software for building design, documentation, and coordination. Models carry data, not just surfaces, which makes collaboration tangible.

Why It's Important

Accurate models cut clashes, align teams, and make cost, schedule, and design decisions clearer. One source of truth, many uses.

How to Improve Revit Skills

1. Keyboard shortcuts: Map them to your habits and sprint through tasks.

2. Families: Create parametric, well-named, lightweight families; reuse endlessly.

3. Templates: Bake standards into templates—views, sheets, view templates, object styles.

4. Collaboration: Use Autodesk Construction Cloud/BIM 360 for shared models, permissions, and tracking.

5. Updates: Watch release notes for performance and modeling improvements worth adopting.

6. Training: Vendor courses and LinkedIn Learning keep you aligned with current best practices.

7. Performance: Purge, compact, manage worksets, and keep linked models lean.

How to Display Revit Skills on Your Resume

5. InVision

InVision has been used for clickable prototypes, commenting, and sharing designs with stakeholders. Many teams now lean more on Figma for the same flows, but you’ll still encounter InVision in legacy stacks.

Why It's Important

When clients or partners rely on it, InVision bridges ideas and feedback quickly, keeping reviews structured and decisions visible.

How to Improve InVision Skills

1. Collaboration features: Leverage comments, hotspots, and present modes for crisp reviews.

2. Tool handoffs: Keep a clean pipeline from Sketch or Adobe apps into prototypes with consistent naming.

3. Design systems: Maintain shared components and pattern libraries for consistency across prototypes.

4. High-fidelity flows: Use transitions and overlays to communicate nuance—microcopy, timing, state.

5. User feedback: Capture observations directly in context and iterate fast.

6. Performance hygiene: Optimize asset sizes so reviewers don’t wait for screens to load.

7. Know when to migrate: If a team shifts to Figma, bring your prototyping craft with you, not just the files.

How to Display InVision Skills on Your Resume

6. UX/UI Design

UX/UI blends research, interaction design, and interface craft to make products useful, usable, and enjoyable. Strategy meets pixel-level care.

Why It's Important

Good UX/UI increases adoption and retention, reduces support costs, and lifts conversion. It builds trust, silently.

How to Improve UX/UI Design Skills

1. Know your users: Interviews, surveys, field studies—pick methods that fit your timeline and risk.

2. Personas and journey maps: Clarify needs, stages, and friction so decisions have context.

3. Test relentlessly: Usability tests, A/B tests, task completion—evidence over hunches.

4. Mobile-first thinking: Start constrained, scale up; touch targets, typography, and speed matter.

5. Radical simplicity: Reduce cognitive load. Fewer choices. Clear hierarchy. Honest affordances.

6. Accessibility: Aim for WCAG conformance—contrast, keyboard nav, semantics, captions.

7. Feedback loops: Heatmaps, analytics, and in-product prompts to guide iteration.

8. Trends with taste: Scan Behance and Dribbble, but prioritize clarity over flair.

9. Collaborate in the open: Figma or Sketch with shared libraries, comments, and tracked decisions.

10. Continuous learning: Courses from Coursera or UX Design Institute keep your toolkit fresh.

How to Display UX/UI Design Skills on Your Resume

7. Rhino 3D

Rhino 3D excels at NURBS modeling—precise curves, complex surfaces, intricate forms. Architecture, product, exhibits, boats—you name it.

Why It's Important

When geometry gets wild, Rhino stays composed. It empowers exploration without boxing you into presets.

How to Improve Rhino 3D Skills

1. Master fundamentals: Curves first, surfaces second; clean inputs yield clean models.

2. Advanced techniques: Rebuild, MatchSrf, FlowAlongSrf, SubD—choose the right tool for the form.

3. Plug-ins: Grasshopper for parametrics, V-Ray or Enscape for visuals—extend with intention.

4. Community wisdom: The Rhino forum and user groups expose patterns and fixes you won’t anticipate alone.

5. Structured courses: LinkedIn Learning or vendor classes keep you from forming bad habits.

6. Daily practice: Recreate real objects. Tackle constraints. Ship small models often.

How to Display Rhino 3D Skills on Your Resume

8. Figma

Figma is collaborative interface design in the browser and on desktop—live editing, shared libraries, comments, and prototypes in one place.

Why It's Important

It shrinks feedback cycles and keeps teams aligned. One file, many voices, fewer handoff headaches.

How to Improve Figma Skills

1. Shortcuts and features: Master auto layout, constraints, variants, and styles.

2. Plugins: Add tools for accessibility checks, content, localization, and automation—curate, don’t hoard.

3. Design systems: Components, tokens, and libraries keep products coherent across squads.

4. Stay updated: Follow product updates and test features on a sandbox file before rolling out.

5. Real-time collaboration: Co-design with engineers and PMs; comment threads are your decision log.

6. Figma Community: Borrow templates, then refactor to your standards.

7. Courses: Skillshare, Udemy, or internal training—focus on workflows, not just buttons.

8. Practice projects: Redesigns, design challenges, component libraries—reps matter.

How to Display Figma Skills on Your Resume

9. SolidWorks

SolidWorks is CAD for mechanical design—parametric parts, assemblies, drawings, plus simulation and manufacturing workflows.

Why It's Important

It connects design intent with manufacturability. You catch problems early, communicate clearly, and ship with fewer surprises.

How to Improve SolidWorks Skills

1. Shortcuts and macros: Cut clicks and script repetitive steps.

2. Advanced toolsets: Surface modeling, sheet metal, weldments, configurations—expand your range.

3. Interface your way: Customize toolbars, mouse gestures, and templates to match your flow.

4. Performance checks: Use Performance Evaluation and lightweight assemblies to keep large projects snappy.

5. Keep learning: Official tutorials, user forums, and release notes reveal time-savers.

6. Community: Join the SolidWorks User Group Network for peer-level problem solving.

7. Practice: Rebuild complex mechanisms. Reverse-engineer. Iterate.

8. Certifications: CSWA, CSWP, CSWE signal competence to clients and hiring teams.

How to Display SolidWorks Skills on Your Resume

10. BIM (Building Information Modeling)

BIM is a process and data-rich model for design, coordination, and lifecycle decisions. Architecture, structure, and MEP information lives together, not apart.

Why It's Important

It reduces rework, clarifies scope, and aligns teams around measurable information rather than assumptions.

How to Improve BIM (Building Information Modeling) Skills

1. Shared environments: Use Autodesk Construction Cloud/BIM 360 for permissions, versioning, and live coordination.

2. Standards: Align to ISO 19650 principles for information management and naming.

3. Training cadence: Regularly level up through LinkedIn Learning, vendor courses, and internal standards reviews.

4. Toolchain depth: Revit for authoring, Navisworks for clash and 4D/5D reviews—connect the dots.

5. BIM Execution Plan: Define roles, deliverables, coordinates, model LODs, and QA from day one.

6. Data management: Use connected platforms like Trimble Connect to keep exchanges structured and traceable.

7. Feedback loop: Post-mortems and client reviews improve your next BEP before it starts.

How to Display BIM (Building Information Modeling) Skills on Your Resume

11. Prototyping

Prototyping creates an early, testable version of an idea—low to high fidelity—to de-risk decisions and uncover edge cases before they get expensive.

Why It's Important

Seeing and touching beats speculating. Prototypes expose gaps, validate flows, and align teams faster than documents alone.

How to Improve Prototyping Skills

1. Define outcomes: What question does this prototype answer? Scope ruthlessly.

2. Pick the right tool: Sketch, Figma, or Adobe XD for UI; paper or click-throughs for speed; code prototypes when fidelity matters.

3. Iterate quickly: Short cycles, targeted changes. Keep momentum.

4. Test early and often: Lightweight user tests, task-based walkthroughs, and rapid feedback channels.

5. Collaborate: Share in Miro or team spaces, annotate decisions, and track open questions.

6. Stay curious: Follow industry research and case studies; borrow patterns that work, discard the rest.

How to Display Prototyping Skills on Your Resume

12. Wireframing

Wireframing maps structure, hierarchy, and behavior without the distraction of final visuals. It’s the blueprint before the paint.

Why It's Important

Wireframes clarify scope, align teams, and surface mismatches early. Faster changes, fewer surprises.

How to Improve Wireframing Skills

1. Audience-aware: Adjust fidelity to who’s in the room—stakeholders need clarity; engineers need detail.

2. Relentless clarity: Consistent patterns, restrained type, limited color. No noise, just intent.

3. Rapid iteration: Sketch or Balsamiq for speed; Sketch or Figma for detail. Move quickly between them.

4. Real content: Use true copy and data where possible—placeholders lie.

5. Collaborate: Share, comment, and revise in the open so decisions are recorded.

6. UX principles: Heuristics, information architecture, and accessibility fundamentals make wireframes sing.

How to Display Wireframing Skills on Your Resume