# An Introduction to Employability Skills: What They Are and How to Build Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/introduction-to-employability-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/introduction-to-employability-skills.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving professional behaviors at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Employability skills shape how you work with others and manage yourself at work. See the main types, why employers value them, and how to build them early. ## Key facts - Title: An Introduction to Employability Skills: What They Are and How to Build Them - Category: Employability - Primary skill: Professional Behaviors - Related skills: Communication, Teamwork - Primary keyword: introduction to employability skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/introduction-to-employability-skills/ ## What this page covers - Employability skills shape how you work with others and manage yourself at work. See the main types, why employers value them, and how to build them early. - Practical guidance for introduction to employability skills - How this topic connects to Professional Behaviors ## Detailed explanation Employability skills are the transferable skills that decide how you work with other people and how you manage yourself at work: communicating clearly, working well in a team, behaving professionally, managing your time. Employers weigh them alongside your qualifications because they carry into any job, at any level, in any industry. If you have spent years earning a qualification, it can be unsettling to hear that it will not be enough on its own. It does not have to be a worry. These skills are learned, not inborn, and group assignments and part-time shifts have probably given you more practice than you think. This introduction to employability skills covers what they include, why employers care so much, and how to start building them before your first full-time job. ## The main types of employability skills Employability skills are not one ability but several distinct ones, and they are easier to work on once you can tell them apart. NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, offers a useful map. It defines career readiness through [eight competencies](/knowledge/employability/career-readiness-competencies/): career and self-development, communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, teamwork, and technology. NACE also notes that they can be used in any combination rather than as a fixed package. A shared list like this gives colleges and employers a common vocabulary, and it gives you something more concrete than a label to aim at. The list also shows that employability is mostly, but not entirely, about people. Technology and critical thinking sit closer to technical know-how. The four types below are the interpersonal and self-management core: the part that is rarely taught as a subject in school and is usually picked up by trial and error. ### Communication Communication covers how you exchange information with colleagues, managers and customers, in conversation, in writing and in meetings. It ranks high on employers' wish lists: in NACE's Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update, clear communication is one of the three skills employers most want candidates to show evidence of. That evidence often exists already, in a presentation that landed, an email to a professor that got a clear answer, or a shift handover that left nothing out. ### Teamwork Teamwork is how you contribute to a shared goal alongside people whose roles, habits and opinions differ from yours. It sits in the same top three. It is also easy to undersell, because a group assignment feels like coursework rather than work experience. To an employer, though, a project where you kept your commitments while the deadline slipped elsewhere, or helped the group settle a disagreement about direction, is exactly the kind of proof that counts. ### Professionalism Professionalism is the everyday conduct that makes you someone others can depend on: arriving on time, treating everyone with the same respect regardless of rank, keeping confidential matters confidential, and getting the administrative parts of a job done without complaint. NACE lists it as a competency in its own right, separate from communication and teamwork. That separation makes sense, because professionalism is usually the first thing new colleagues notice, long before anyone has seen the quality of your work. ### Career and self-development The fourth type faces inward. Career and self-development means knowing what you are genuinely good at, asking for feedback, and steering your own learning instead of waiting to be taught. It is the one type on the list that concerns how you manage yourself rather than how you work with others, which makes it easy to overlook. It also sets the pace for the rest: feedback you ask for is the quickest way to find out which of your other skills need work. ## Why employers weigh these skills so heavily The first reason is portability. Technical knowledge tends to belong to a particular job; employability skills travel with you. The way you handle a disagreement or plan a week of competing deadlines is as useful in your third job as in your first, which makes these skills a safe bet for an employer hiring someone whose future role is still taking shape. The second reason is a change in how hiring works. According to NACE's Job Outlook 2026 survey, 70% of employers now use [skill-based hiring](/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-based-approach/), up from 65% the year before. Skill-based hiring screens candidates on what they can show they are able to do, rather than on their degree or major alone. For a graduate with a short work history, that raises the importance of these skills: they are a central part of how you will be assessed, not a bonus on top of your grades. And unlike the grades already on your transcript, they are still entirely yours to build. The third reason is evidence. The Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update, a NACE survey of 185 employers, framed its top three (teamwork, problem-solving and clear communication) as skills employers want candidates to show evidence of. Shawn VanDerziel, NACE's president and CEO, is explicit that listing those skills is not enough: employers want examples. The logic is credibility. Anyone can write "strong communicator" on a [résumé](/knowledge/employability/soft-skills-to-write-in-cv/), but a specific situation, what you did in it and how it turned out can be [tested in an interview](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/soft-skills-for-interview/). The real work, then, is collecting instances of these skills, not memorizing their names. Put those facts together and a useful question appears: which of your skills could you back with an example today, and which could you not? It is worth [running your own skills check](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) before an employer runs one for you. A skill that comes out thin is not a verdict, just the next thing to practice. ## How to start building employability skills before your first job You do not need a job to begin, but work experience is where these skills grow fastest and where most of the proof comes from. NACE research consistently finds that when employers choose between two equally qualified candidates, they overwhelmingly pick the one with internship experience. An internship tells an employer you have already practiced communication, teamwork and professional conduct in a real workplace, where mistakes have consequences. The same reasoning applies to part-time jobs, volunteering and student organizations. Any setting where other people depend on you is a place to practice. Work experience also teaches conduct that no course covers, often without anyone spelling it out. > I would feel a week had gone by without working on anything relevant to my degree — but I was learning other things. How to behave at a workplace, how to write a professional email, how to greet someone far more important than yourself, how to book a meeting. Not much academically; it's everything around it I learned. That was one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, looking back on a student job. It is not an argument against a degree. It is a reminder that the layer around it has to be learned somewhere, and a workplace is usually where that happens. The other half of the job is noticing what you have already done. Most students have more raw material than they realize: a group assignment, a weekend shift, a club they helped run. What is usually missing is the habit of asking which skill a situation demanded and what you actually did. Try it with one recent experience. Name the situation, the skill it called for, your action, and the result. A handful of those, written down, will serve you better in an application or interview than any list of adjectives. ## The behaviors that make a new hire easy to work with Look underneath the labels employers use and the same few everyday behaviors keep turning up, none of them reserved for people with a particular personality. **Professional Behaviors** turn the abstract idea of being employable into conduct people can see. Showing genuine interest in what colleagues do, thanking someone who helped you, staying humble when you think you know a better way, and steering clear of habitual complaining are small signals, but they shape whether people want you on their team. None of it requires a job title; a seminar group or a weekend shift is already a place to practice. **Communication** is the channel through which every other skill reaches an employer: if you cannot explain what you did, the example might as well not exist. It rests on a few learnable habits rather than a gift for words. Lead with your main point, keep it brief, listen fully before you answer, and choose a conversation over an email when the subject is sensitive. Every group chat and every message to a professor is a chance to practice. **Teamwork** is what an employer is counting on when they hire someone who will spend most days working with others. It is not the same as being agreeable. It means doing what you committed to, sharing what you know, giving the group the credit, and disagreeing about the work without making it personal, then backing the decision once it is made. A group assignment is a full rehearsal, and the slipped deadline or the stalled discussion is exactly where the skill gets built. Gut feeling is a poor judge of habits like these, because the ones you do well tend to feel like nothing at all. The **free Job Skills Test** looks at all three as part of a broader set of **twelve work skills**, and it is a quick way to [see your full skills picture](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), including strengths you might never have thought to name. Whatever comes out lowest is simply the next habit to work on. ## Making these skills your own Parts of this may already sound like you, at least on a good day. Maybe you are the one who writes up who is doing what after a group meeting, or who stays level when a customer at your part-time job does not. Moments like those are where employability already shows, and the rest can be added deliberately, at your own pace, without turning into someone you are not. Starting now pays off, because each step up in work leans on these habits a little harder than the last, and every one of them can still be learned. What would help most is a clear view of where you stand today. ## Find out where you stand What remains is to swap guesswork for a clear view. In 7 minutes, the **free** Job Skills Test, a self-assessment covering twelve core work skills, shows how you score on each one and points to the few that would make the biggest difference before your first full-time job. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, and your results appear instantly.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Employability skills shape how you work with others and manage yourself at work. See the main types, why employers value them, and how to build them early. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Professional Behaviors. It also relates to Communication, Teamwork. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/professional-behaviors.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/introduction-to-employability-skills/ Preferred summary: "Employability skills shape how you work with others and manage yourself at work. See the main types, why employers value them, and how to build them early." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.