Skills

Skills and abilities are tasks that you naturally do well, talents and strengths that you bring to the table as a student and/or employee.

These include natural capabilities you’ve always had, in addition to specific knowledge and skills you’ve acquired through experience and training.

Skills can be classified into three main categories:

  • transferable/functional skills
  • knowledge-based skills
  • personal traits/attitudes

Two Types of Marketable Skills Are Necessary in the Workplace:

Hard Skills

These skills are specific and usually measurable skills that are needed to do a job. You will learn these skills for your future career as you take courses. Hard skills, for example, might include building websites, cooking for fine dining restaurants, performing statistical analysis, learning graphic design, mastering math, or understanding art restoration. These are also called technical or applied skills. You will learn hard skills in your courses, but you can also use sites like Khan Academy and Codecademy to teach yourself certain skills.

Soft Skills

These skills are also known as transferable skills because you can transfer them to any job you have over the course of your career. You will learn these skills as you interact with teachers, course materials, and other students during your courses or through extracurricular activities. Soft skills, for example, might include listening, reasoning, professionalism, courtesy, punctuality, or public speaking.

Abilities and skills are the building blocks of success that employers seek when hiring new employees – your skill base allows you to perform well on the job and essentially bring value to your employer.

Having a clear understanding of your strongest skill sets and how you’d like to use them in your work will allow you to choose majors, internships and career fields that best utilize your strengths. Knowing your skills will also help you write resumes and prepare for interviews.

Transferable & Functional Skills

Transferable and functional skills are competencies that are transferable to many different work settings. You can develop skills in a variety of ways, including from jobs and internships, coursework and school projects, volunteer and extracurricular activities, hobbies, and from daily life responsibilities. This is a list that will help you acknowledge the skills you have used, the skills you would like to use, and the skills you would like to develop.

https://career.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/Plan/KnowYourSkills2.pdf

Accomplishments

Think back on the positive experiences you’ve had in your life, both inside and outside the classroom, and identify three instances where you felt successful, proud and/or accomplished. Describe each of these three stories in enough detail so you can capture the context of the situation, the actions and steps that you took, the skills that you utilized, and the outcomes and results of your efforts.

https://career.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/Plan/AccomplishmentExercise2.pdf

ODEP - Essential Skills to Getting a Job

https://pueblo.gpo.gov/CAARNG/ODEP/PDF/ODEP085.pdf

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) discussed the importance of such skills with the Circle of Champions, a distinguished group of U.S. businesses that have received the Secretary of Labor’s New Freedom Initiative Award for innovative and proactive efforts to recruit, hire, and promote people with disabilities. As part of this dialogue, the companies identified the following competencies as key to the success of young workers in the 21st Century workplace.

Soft Skills to Pay the Bills

Mastering Soft Skills for Workplace Success

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