Identifying Skills
When we talk about skills in the career world, what do we mean? Skills are competencies or abilities you have that help you perform certain tasks or excel in certain roles.
There are essentially three broad types of skills:
- Hard or technical skills: these require certain knowledge of a subject area and practical experience with them. These include things like mathematical, scientific, or medical knowledge.
- Soft skills: these are utilized and learned through behavioral traits and include things such as communication, leadership, and teamwork.
- Transferable skills: any skill that can be applied across multiple industries, career paths, and subject areas.
While discerning hard and soft skills can be helpful on your resume, it’s not always so helpful in identifying what your skills are. Since there are a number of different ways to utilize your personal knowledge and education, we focus more on transferable skills and they ways they can be applied throughout your life.
8 Essential Skill Areas
After doing research on employers, a career organization named NACE has identified 8 skills or competencies employers look for most in students. To help you identify how those skills show up for you, we’ve created a checklist organized around 7 of these competencies (with a bonus section for further brainstorming).
Additionally, Focus 2 Career has an inventory you can take to identify your skills. Visit Focus 2 Career, scroll down to assessments, and take the Skills assessment, or visit this resource for more information about Focus to Career.
What’s In Your Toolbox?
Your skills don’t operate on their own – they’re connected to your experiences, your strengths and values, and your own personal journey. As you identify for yourself all the different facets you hold, it might be helpful to organize them so you can pull from them and share them with others.
The following worksheet can help you track your skills, experiences, values, and traits in a written “toolbox” that can you can use to overcome obstacles and share with employers.