# Relevant Knowledge, Training and Skills: Examples and How to Write Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/relevant-knowledge-training-skills-examples/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/relevant-knowledge-training-skills-examples.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building self-awareness at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer What counts as relevant knowledge, training and skills? Examples of each, how to tell them apart, and how to back each item with evidence employers trust. ## Key facts - Title: Relevant Knowledge, Training and Skills: Examples and How to Write Them - Category: Improve Your Skills - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Communication, Influence - Primary keyword: relevant knowledge training skills examples - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/relevant-knowledge-training-skills-examples/ ## What this page covers - What counts as relevant knowledge, training and skills? Examples of each, how to tell them apart, and how to back each item with evidence employers trust. - Practical guidance for relevant knowledge training skills examples - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation Relevant knowledge, training and skills examples fall into four kinds: knowledge the job needs, such as a subject or software; training that built it, including short courses without a certificate; [transferable skills](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/transferable-skills-for-resume/) proven elsewhere, such as handling customers; and self-management, such as reliability. Each counts once it matches the job description and comes with a specific instance. If the box on the application form looks bigger than your experience, you are in a very common position, and usually a better one than it feels. Coursework, a weekend job and a one-day first-aid course can all earn a place in it. What is usually missing is not material but a way to sort it and prove it, and that starts with a distinction the form rarely spells out. ## What the "relevant knowledge, training and skills" question is asking The heading bundles three questions into one. Knowledge is what you need to know already to do the job: a subject, a set of rules, how a particular tool or system works. Skills are what you can do by putting that knowledge to work, built up through training, practice and experience. Training is the route between the two, the course or workshop where the knowledge arrived and the practice began. Treat them as one thing and you end up listing subjects you studied, which says what you know and nothing about what you can do. The word "relevant" matters just as much, and you are not the one who defines it. The University of Oxford Careers Service describes the purpose of an application as showing evidence of the skills and qualities specified in the job description and person specification. Screeners score against those stated criteria. That makes the job description your sorting tool: whatever maps to a criterion belongs in the answer, and whatever maps to nothing stays out, however proud of it you are. The material you can draw on is wider than most first-time applicants assume. Torbay Council's application guidance tells candidates to use the experience and knowledge they have gained from current and previous jobs, [voluntary work](/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-gained-from-volunteering/), education, leisure interests and any other activities. Employers are assessing what you can do, not where you happened to learn it, so a student club committee role or a summer of lifeguarding is as legitimate a source as an internship. Knowing that all of it counts still doesn't make the list write itself. A degree describes what you studied and a job title describes where you sat; neither spells out what you can now do. > Why should I be able to contribute anything when nobody has told me what I actually can do? That question came from one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, and it deserves a straight answer. You find out what you can do by sorting your own experience into the four kinds below and finding one concrete instance of each. Nobody hands you that list, but building it is a method you can learn, not a talent you either have or lack. ## Four kinds of relevant knowledge, training and skills, with examples A useful way to sort skills is into three groups: knowledge-based, transferable and adaptive. The University of Utah's transferable skills inventory, for instance, gives knowledge-based skills a section of their own. Add training, the route by which most of it arrived, and you have four kinds of evidence. Sort your experience into them before you write a single sentence of the answer. ### Relevant knowledge This is the body of information the job relies on: a subject, regulations, or how specific tools, software and methods work. It can come from a degree, but just as easily from a part-time job or a hobby. Examples: - How a balance sheet and a cash-flow statement fit together, from an accounting course - Survey design and research ethics, from a psychology thesis - Food-safety and allergen procedures, from two years in a restaurant kitchen - Excel functions such as pivot tables and lookups, a booking system, or the design tool you used to run a club's social media Knowledge only becomes evidence when it is named precisely. "Proficient in data analysis" is a claim a screener cannot check. "Cleaned and analyzed my thesis survey data in Excel using pivot tables" is something they can picture. Replace every label with the concrete thing behind it. ### Relevant training Training is how you acquired knowledge or skill: degree courses, workshops, [online courses](/knowledge/improve-skills/employability-courses/) and the short, practical courses most applicants forget to mention. North East Lincolnshire Council's guidance for applicants makes the point that training which doesn't lead to a qualification still counts, because short courses give you skills and knowledge of a particular topic. Many application forms ask separately for courses without a qualification and for recent or in-progress coursework, so a class you are still taking belongs here too. Examples: - A one-day first-aid or food-safety course - Register, safeguarding or customer-service training from a part-time job - An online course in spreadsheet skills or project planning - A course in progress this semester that matches the role - A group project, thesis, or lab and fieldwork, which matter most when your work history is thin, because they show knowledge being applied to a real task Be selective. Irrelevant training dilutes an answer, and a long list of course titles reads as attendance, not ability. Where you can, attach an outcome: what you did differently or better afterward. One course tied to a result outweighs five titles on their own. ### Transferable skills Transferable skills are developed in one setting and can be applied in a new role with little additional training. Daemen University's career guidance groups them under headings such as communication, teamwork, professionalism and initiative, which makes a practical frame for sorting your own experiences. Examples: - Communication: calming down an upset customer at the counter, or presenting a group project's findings to your class - Teamwork: coordinating who did what in a five-person project, or covering shifts so a busy weekend ran smoothly - Professionalism: handling confidential information in an office job, or representing a club to outside sponsors - Initiative: proposing a new shift schedule for a student club's events, or volunteering to organize an event nobody else would take on Because these skills are proven in one context and claimed for another, they need an instance from the original context. "Good team player" says nothing; "kept our five-person project on schedule by setting weekly check-ins" says a great deal. ### Adaptive or self-management skills These describe how you conduct yourself at work: [being on time](/knowledge/professional-behaviors/punctuality-in-the-workplace/), showing enthusiasm, getting along with others. They are behaviors, not personality, and you prove them through a pattern over time rather than a certificate. Examples: - Not missing a shift across two years of weekend work - Holding down a part-time job through final exams - Asking a supervisor for feedback after your first month and acting on it - Staying with a volunteer commitment for a full season These are the hardest kind to see in yourself, because they feel like ordinary behavior rather than skill. If you can't tell which of yours would stand up to a closer look, it helps to [map your work skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) first. The result is free and gives you a starting list to hunt for evidence against, and since every skill on it can be built further, a weaker score simply tells you where to collect your next example. ## How to turn examples into a strong answer With your experience sorted, the writing is mostly a matter of matching and proving. 1. Start from the criteria. Copy the job description's key requirements into a list and use its key terms in your answer. The same answer should never go to two employers unchanged; each one gets matched to its own job description. 2. Name the specific thing: the software, the method, the course, the regulation. Specific detail is what a screener can verify. 3. Add one instance, and a result where there is one: where you used it, and what came of it. 4. Lead with the point. Put the knowledge or skill first and the evidence straight after, so someone skimming dozens of forms sees the match at once. 5. Cut whatever maps to nothing. An item that answers no criterion dilutes the ones that do. Here is the difference in practice. A weak answer reads: "I have good IT skills, have completed various training courses and am a strong communicator." A stronger one, for an administrative role asking for spreadsheet skills, first aid and customer contact, reads: "I use Excel daily for my thesis, including pivot tables and lookups to analyze survey responses. I completed a one-day first-aid course last spring and have since been the named first-aider on my café shifts. At the café I deal with customer complaints at the counter, and my manager now asks me to show new hires how I handle them." Every sentence in the second version names something specific, ties it to the job and carries its own proof. It isn't stronger because the applicant has more experience. It's stronger because the same experience has been sorted and evidenced. ## What separates a list from a convincing answer Look back at what set the two versions of that answer apart: not more experience, but knowing what was there, saying it so a stranger could follow, and aiming it at what the employer needs. **Building Self-Awareness** is where the inventory comes from. The blank box is first a self-knowledge problem: you can't list what you know and can do until you've taken stock of it. That means separating what you're genuinely good at from what you can merely manage, judged by how you work on a task, how it feels and what results follow. Feedback fills in what you can't see from the inside. A supervisor, professor or teammate has watched you work and can often name a strength you've been underrating. **Communication** decides whether that inventory lands with a busy reader. A screener working through a pile of forms needs the main point first, stated clearly and briefly, in terms that match the criteria they're scoring against. Writing each item as a claim followed by one concrete instance is a communication choice, and it's the one that separates a credible answer from a row of adjectives. **Influence** is what an application answer exercises, because every answer is a pitch to a stranger. The preparation step, working out what's in it for the employer, is how you decide which knowledge and training are relevant in the first place. The pitch itself follows familiar rules: impress early, keep it simple, and use examples rather than claims. Honesty is part of the method too, since an overstated answer loses its credibility the moment an interviewer asks for detail. The **free Job Skills Test** measures these three together with **nine other workplace skills**, and the ones a written application relies on are the same ones an interviewer will probe out loud. [Spot the skill to sharpen](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and you'll know where practice will pay off; none of them depends on personality, and all of them improve with use. ## Your examples are closer than they look Parts of this may already sound like your week. If a manager has ever asked you to show a new hire how something works, you have found one item of relevant knowledge and the evidence to go with it. If a project group leaned on you to pull the final report together, that's a transferable skill with a witness. Where the evidence is thinner, nothing about it is fixed. These are behaviors you build in the jobs, courses and commitments you already have, and you build them as yourself. Being able to name and prove what you can do only gains value from here, through every application, review and conversation about your next step, which makes it worth knowing now which of your skills are ready to cite and which need another example. ## See what you can claim The only step left is finding out where you stand. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: it takes 7 minutes, shows where you are across all twelve, and points to the ones that will strengthen your next application most. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, results shown 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? What counts as relevant knowledge, training and skills? Examples of each, how to tell them apart, and how to back each item with evidence employers trust. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Communication, Influence. ### 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/improve-skills.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/relevant-knowledge-training-skills-examples/ Preferred summary: "What counts as relevant knowledge, training and skills? Examples of each, how to tell them apart, and how to back each item with evidence employers trust." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.