What Are Job Skills and Why Do They Matter?

Job skills are the various abilities you use to complete your work—from workplace skills like time management to technical skills like programming. 

While employers still value credentials like a bachelor's degree, more and more have been turning to skills-based hiring in order to fill positions. For example, LinkedIn saw two connected trends occur in just two years: The number of jobs that didn’t require a degree grew on the platform by nearly 40 percent between 2019 and 2020, and the number of job listings focusing on skills and responsibilities rather than credentials grew by 21 percent between 2020 and 2021 [1].

Job skills, then, matter more and more. In this article, you will expand your understanding of job skills with detailed definitions and examples, learn how to use them on your resume, and find out what the top job skills currently are based on Coursera’s own user research. 

What are job skills?

Job skills are the entire collection of skills you use to complete your work. They typically comprise:

• Workplace skills: The personal skills that ensure you do your job well, such as being adept at teamwork, time management, or solving problems. Occasionally, some refer to these as “human skills,” “employability skills,” or “soft skills.”

• Technical skills: The skills that relate to technical or job-specific knowledge, such as the ability to code in Python, conduct data analysis, or use specific accounting software. These are sometimes called “hard skills.”

• Transferable skills: The workplace and technical skills that you can take from one job to another, such as when someone uses their aptitude for teamwork and their ability to code in Python to change careers from being a programmer to being a STEM educator. Transferable skills are any of the various skills that you can transfer between jobs. 

There are many ways to acquire job skills. While in some cases they may simply be a part of your personality, in other cases you may have learned them through formal education or work experience. Whatever your skill level, you can always strengthen your current skill set and acquire new skills through practice. 

Learn more: Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills: What's the Difference?

Examples of job skills

If we do something often enough, it can become so natural to us that we forget it is actually a skill that many others may not possess.  It can be helpful to read examples of others employing their skills to help you identify your own. 

The following examples describe hypothetical people alongside a list of likely skills that they employ as they maneuver in their unique life circumstances. As you read through it, think about the many skills you already possess. 

Top job skills for 2023

Every year, Coursera compiles a Job Skills report detailing the top skills that some 92 million learners on the platform have been developing over the past year. If you are looking to identify the most relevant skills for the near future, then you will likely find the following job skills lists useful.

The report is broken down into two sections: a human skills section, which describes the workplace skills users are developing, and a digital skills section, which describes the technical digital skills users are learning.  

Top workplace skills for 2023

• Storytelling: The ability to craft engrossing narratives that engage audiences

• Change management: Systematically helping individuals or organizations change their processes, goals, or technologies

• Organizational development: Furthering an organization's mission by incorporating new skills, tools, and strategies into an established processes

• Influencing: The ability to create change and impact decisions through communication

• People management: Recognizing, nurturing, and retaining an individual's talent in order to further an organization's goals

• Culture: The way things are done

• Collaboration: Working in cooperation with others

• Decision-making: The ability to make informed decisions by collecting information, analyzing it, and creating alternative choices

• Communication: The ability to effectively communicate ideas to diverse audiences through various media

• Planning: The ability to identify goals and create a concrete path toward accomplishing them

Top technical skills for 2023

• Scrum software development: A project management framework used to develop new software products and features

• Data visualization: Graphic representation of data and statistics through graphs and other visually descriptive media

• Customer success tools: Tools used to track and understand user experience

• E-commerce: Buying and selling products online

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software: Software used to track and manage customer sales and processes

• User experience (UX) design: Subset of design that specifically focuses on the ways that users interact with the product

• Agile software development: An approach to project management for software development

• Software framework development: A methodology for enacting efficient software development processes

• System software development: Designing, building, and supporting a network of interconnected software

• Search engine optimization (SEO): Increasing a website or webpage's visibility on search engines

Adapted from Coursera’s Job Skills of 2023 [2]

Job skills for resumes 

Job skills—both workplace and technical—are very important to employers looking to fill positions. Many employers are increasingly concerned with finding applicants with relevant skills rather than those that simply possess credentials [1]. It's important to showcase your unique talents on your resume. Let's review one of the key ways to do that.

Learn more: How to Feature Key Skills on Your Resume

Job skills as keywords

To deal with the large number of job applications they receive, many companies today use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to pre-screen resumes. These programs use algorithms to scan through resumes, and identify qualified applicants by identifying keywords describing relevant job skills. 

Unfortunately, while the systems are well-suited to efficiently parse large numbers of applications, they also have been found to disregard qualified applicants who have not optimized their resumes for the system [3]. 

Try to use the same phrasing or keywords that employers use in their job descriptions to highlight your particular job skills. Follow these steps to help identify keywords and phrases to use on your resume:

1. Find a job listing that appeals to you and read through the job description.

2. Take note of any required or preferred skills an employer wants candidates to have, and think about how your skill set fits.

3. Adapt your resume by using the exact (or similar) keywords and phrases in the job description that you possess. For example, if you see a job posting asking for an applicant adept at “conflict resolution,” then you might use that phrase to describe your skill set rather than the similar phrase “dispute resolution.”

4. Make sure your resume is easy to scan by using a clean and straightforward layout. A chronological resume is often best suited for this purpose. While it may be tempting to use flashy graphics, many systems struggle to read overly designed resumes and may inadvertently overlook important information. 

Consider putting a job description into an online word frequency program to identify the skills that are repeated throughout the listing—these are likely the most important skills to an employer. 

Some free online text analyzers include Lexicool and Online Utility.

Next steps 

Develop or strengthen your skills by earning a Professional Certificate from industry leaders such as Google, Meta, IBM, Salesforce, and more on Coursera. Programs take between four and seven months to complete, depending on the time you're able to dedicate, and are designed to teach you career-ready skills. You can learn more about project management, software development, and data analytics, among other topics.

Give your team access to a catalog of 8,000+ engaging courses and hands-on Guided Projects to help them develop impactful skills. Learn more about Coursera for Business.