Identifying and articulating your skills

A step-by-step guide to figuring out what you’re good at and how to explain this to a potential employer.

By jitendermittal

Published 10 July, 2025

Identifying and articulating your skills

A step-by-step guide to figuring out what you’re good at and how to explain this to a potential employer.

By jitendermittal

Published 10 July, 2025

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Even those who have been employed for the past decade find it difficult to articulate their skills, and consequently sell them, to someone else. It is an exercise most like to avoid, but come job interview time, it is critical.

Research shows that women often receive less recognition than men for the same accomplishments. While there are many (frustrating) reasons for this that are beyond our control, like bias and discrimination, it helps to focus on what we can control: the language we use to promote ourselves.

Whether it’s in your resume, an interview, a performance review, or simply over coffee with a colleague, it can pay to know how to sell your skills.

This resource steps through how to identify your skills as well as how to articulate them – with a focus on resumes at the end. This isn’t a dreaded task, but a precious moment for self-reflection and introspection.

Part 1: Identifying your skills

Skills are often classified into two categories: soft skills and hard skills. Both are highly valued by employers.

What are my skills?

It’s worth sitting down to reflect on the full suite of skills you have under your belt. This will give you a clearer sense of your strengths for interviews and performance reviews. It also gives you a bank to pick and choose from when tailoring your resume for an application.

We recommend building a ‘master list’ that you can add to over time. If you’re struggling to think of what to put on your list, use our tips below.

Sit down and reflect

Over the course of the week, notice what kind of tasks you excel at and what gets you motivated. These don’t have to be work-related. Tasks that may feel “everyday” (like family admin) involve highly employable skills, like problem-solving, critical thinking, time management and budgeting.
Have you done any short courses, training or volunteering? Think about the skills you learned through non-work experience.

Dig up old files

If you’ve spent time out of work, can you go back to any old resumes, emails or files that help jog your memory of skills you gained and enjoyed over the years?
If you’re currently working, be systematic about the key tasks and projects that you handle and what skills they require.

Google

Try searching ‘top 10 skills in [insert] industry’ and jot down the relevant skills. This can remind you of critical skills you have (but may not have articulated before).
If you’ve spent time out of work, this can be particularly useful for reminding yourself of the skills you acquired in the past.
If you’re changing industries, it can also highlight your transferable skills.

Ask other people

Talk to people who know you well – in and outside of work. While it may feel awkward at first, trust us when we say that it can be a great boost of confidence. You might be surprised at what people view as your core skills and strengths.

Try a free strengths test

The Myers-Briggs test will define your personality type (out of 16 options) and provides a range of strengths associated with each type.
The VIA Character Strengths Survey takes less than 15 minutes and provides you a framework to understand your strengths.

If you’re thinking about changing industries or returning to work after a long break, we strongly recommend taking this one step further to audit what skills you might be lacking and whether you need to bridge that gap. Check out the skills audit tips here: where to begin after a career break.

Part 2: Articulating your skills

Now that you know your skills, the way you articulate them to your current or potential employer is critical.

Be bold

When describing your skills, don’t be afraid of bragging! Recruitment and promotion processes are not the time to be modest.

Research shows that women will hold back on describing their skills and achievements until they are overqualified and overprepared. While this isn’t our fault (blame social conditioning!), it’s important we build the confidence to communicate our skills with impact.

We recommend using strong and direct language to describe your skills. Always use qualifying words like ‘strong’, ‘expert’, ‘specialist’, ‘highly effective’, ‘highly capable’, ‘successful’, ‘demonstrated’ etc.

If this feels confronting or unnatural to you, you’re not alone. It might be worth stepping back for a moment and reading our article on imposter syndrome.

Tailor your language

When applying for jobs, it’s important to use the exact language in the job ad, as strict marking criteria and AI filters will be looking for this.

At the same time, you need to personalise your language by avoiding too many buzzwords that don’t tell the reader much. Instead, really think about how you bring particular skills to the table and don’t be afraid to use authentic and tailored language so that you stand out from the crowd.

For example, most of us can say that we are ‘good communicators’ or have ‘interpersonal skills’. But what does that mean for you? Perhaps you bring expertise in distilling complex information into accessible language. Perhaps you’re a confident speaker, presenter and facilitator? Maybe you pride yourself on clear and concise written products that are tailored to the audience? Dig deep.

Don’t undersell yourself!

Ever caught yourself saying, “I’m terrible with numbers”? Or deciding not to apply for a role because it requires expertise in platforms like Excel or Survey Monkey? Maybe you’re not ready to push for a promotion because you haven’t fully mastered one of the many skills your job requires?

Too often, society associates women with ‘soft’ skills and men with ‘hard’ skills. We internalise this narrative, often downplaying our technical capabilities or shying away from jobs that we could be great at.

If you’re asked about a technical skill, ask yourself: do you have any experience with it? Even if you’re not an expert, it’s very possible you have a foundational understanding that you can attest to and build on. Excel is a big one here.

If you have no experience, consider whether it’s something you could propose to learn on the job. Research shows that men will apply for a job if they meet just 60% of the criteria (it’s called a “stretch role”), while women will only apply when they meet 100%.

Also remember that there are lots of useful and free resources online to teach you the basics of certain platforms if you’re not feeling confident (for example, YouTube and LinkedIn Learning).

Are there skills I shouldn’t talk about?

The short answer is yes. You should avoid any of the following when talking about your skills.

Skills you simply don’t have. There’s a difference between selling yourself and puffery. Faking skills will only set you up for failure. If you don’t have a specific skill, don’t mention it at all.
Irrelevant skills. Remember, you should always tailor your skills to the context. Make it easy for the audience to know why you’re a good fit. For example, don’t include your barista certification when you’re applying for a corporate job, or don’t highlight your data crunching skills for a public speaking gig.
Obsolete skills and outdated technology, for example, using a floppy disk.
Skills everybody should have. For more senior roles, there’s no need to include a laundry list of foundational skills like using Microsoft Word. These should only be used if specified in the job description or performance criteria.

Use LinkedIn

You should consider adding your main skills to your LinkedIn profile.

Use the skills section of your resume

While not as critical as your experience section, the skills section of your resume is a valuable, yet often overlooked part of the job-hunting process. It helps employers and recruiters to quickly assess if you’re suitable for the role, at a glance.

To help you communicate your skills in your CV with impact, follow the steps below. You may also be interested in our resume resource for additional tips on how to get your resume to the top of the pile, and our interview resourcefor selling yourself in person.

Step 1: Go through the job description – find out what skills your employers want

Highlight the skills needed for your job, differentiating between the hard and soft skills (if relevant). Also note down any keywords (like company values) that you can use.
Remember: many large corporations use technology to filter out applications that don’t include keywords from the job posting.
If you lack critical skills listed in the job description, note this down as well – you don’t need to address it in your application but may need to mention how you’ll gain these skills at the interview stage.

Just because you lack a skill, does NOT mean you can’t apply for the job. While there are some critical skills that might prevent you from being a competitive candidate, many technical skills can be taught on the job.

Step 2: Write down the skills that align with yours

Look at your master list and highlight any other skills relevant to the job.
Pick and choose 4-10 skills from the job description and master list, prioritising those you want to emphasise to the employer. This will help you stand out from other applicants and feel confident explaining in an interview.

Step 3: Create a dedicated skills section in your resume

There are a lot of resume templates on the internet that suggest different placements and structures for your skills section. What is most important is that your skills are clearly listed and that your most relevant skills are emphasised – remember that you can tailor this section of your resume to each job you’re applying for.
Title your section ‘Skills’. There are a few ways you can structure this section.

Technical and core skills. This is just another way of saying hard and soft skills that the employer will understand.
Job-relevant skills and soft/interpersonal skills. This structure is more suited for a job description with technical requirements.

Step 4: Show how you used your skills

Step 1: Go through the job description

Step 3: Technical and core skills

Step 4: Show how you used your skills

If you’ve had a career break

In a post-COVID world, the narrative of how career breaks impact your career is changing. As employers’ perceptions on career breaks are shifting, you can capitalise on this by using your resume and interview to highlight the skill development opportunities you’ve encountered in your time away from the office.

Remember: unpaid work IS relevant. In a survey of 23,000 workers, over half said that they acquired new skills or improved existing ones during their career break, overall making them better at their job than they were before.

As mentioned, employers are coming to increasingly value soft skills over an applicant’s textbook years of experience and number of qualifications. Articulating this can shift the focus away from ‘why’ you took a break to ‘what’ you learned in that time.

Common soft skills gained from a career break include:

Time management
Organisation
Networking
Budgeting
Risk management
Effective communication
Emotional intelligence and compassion.

Refer to step 4 if you have your career break listed in your work experience section – you may choose to elaborate on how you utilised and developed your skills during this period of time.

Curious to see how your workplace has evolved during your time away? Check out this resource by LinkedIn – if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you can type in a profession and see how the top 10 skills have changed from 2015 to now.

Refer to our resource on where to begin after a career break for further guidance.

If you’re changing industries

The first step in thinking about your skills when changing industries is to do your research. As explained in Part 1, try searching ‘top 10 skills in [insert] industry’ as well as reading through job descriptions for the kinds of roles that pique your interest. Take note of those skills that are transferable and those you may need to upskill.

Refer to our resource on where to begin after a career break for useful tips on how to undergo a skills audit and better understand your transferable skills.

Remember, while you might not offer as much industry-specific knowledge, you will almost definitely have transferable soft skills, and possibly some transferable hard skills. These transferable skills could have been gained from almost anywhere – your work history, volunteer and community work, career break and general life experience.

It may be helpful to take a look at this LinkedIn resource, which allows you to enter any profession and uncover potential career paths and roles that have overlapping skills with that role. This may provide some direction on which industries you should direct your attention towards.

When selling your transition, remind the reader/audience of the unique benefits that it will bring. This could include bringing a uniquely fresh perspective to the company, new problem solving or creative approaches, a new network of contacts and more.

Once you’ve gained this understanding, you want to create a general narrative throughout your resume of how your transferable skills can add value to your company of choice. This should involve:

Clearly articulating your transferable skills in your skills section.
Elaborating on how you developed and utilised your skills in your work experience section.