# List of Personal Traits: 10 That Matter at Work and How to Prove Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/list-of-personal-traits/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/list-of-personal-traits.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 A list of personal traits for work: the Big Five plus the qualities employers look for in graduates, with how to back each trait with a real example. ## Key facts - Title: List of Personal Traits: 10 That Matter at Work and How to Prove Them - Category: Personal Qualities - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Professional Behaviors, Teamwork - Primary keyword: list of personal traits - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/list-of-personal-traits/ ## What this page covers - A list of personal traits for work: the Big Five plus the qualities employers look for in graduates, with how to back each trait with a real example. - Practical guidance for list of personal traits - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation A practical list of personal traits for work starts with the five broad dimensions psychologists use to describe personality (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability) and adds the qualities employers ask graduates to prove: a strong work ethic, a team orientation, initiative, honesty and leadership. Each trait only counts once you can back it with something you did. Most likely you need these words for something concrete: a [resume summary](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/personal-skills-for-a-resume/), a cover letter, the interview request to describe yourself. Finding adjectives is the easy part. Choosing ones that are true, and making them believable, is harder, and the most popular words on any list are often the weakest when they stand alone. Here are ten traits, what each looks like at work, and how to show it. ## A list of personal traits that matter at work The first five traits on this list come from the Big Five, the standard model psychologists use for personality, also known as OCEAN. Each one is a spectrum, not a box: everyone sits somewhere between the two ends, so landing toward the quieter or more cautious end of a dimension is a position, not a flaw. The last five are qualities employers consistently look for in new graduates. For every entry, the question that matters is the same: what have you done that shows it? ### 1. Curious Curiosity is the everyday face of openness to experience: being imaginative, open to new ideas and willing to try a different approach when the usual one is not working. At the other end of the scale sit people who are practical and prefer proven methods, which many roles value just as much. If curious is genuinely you, your proof is a time you went beyond what was required: you taught yourself a tool nobody asked you to learn, or you questioned how a task was done and suggested something better. Without that kind of example, curious reads as a word you liked the sound of. ### 2. Organized and thorough This is conscientiousness at work: planning ahead, following through and catching the details others miss. It is one of the easiest traits to evidence, because organization leaves traces. Think of a deadline you hit while juggling classes and a job, a schedule you kept for a group, or a checklist you created that others started using. Its negative counterpart is careless, and the contrast is useful: if your honest answer is that you are organized with big deadlines but loose with small admin, that is a more credible self-description than claiming perfection. ### 3. Communicative Extraversion shows up at work as being communicative and energetic: comfortable speaking up, quick to make contact, energized by working with people. Because it is a spectrum, a reserved, reflective person is not disqualified; plenty of roles favor focus over sociability. Pick the end of the scale that is true. If you are outgoing, point to a role with customers, a presentation or an event you hosted. If you sit at the quieter end, describe yourself as a careful listener or someone who prepares well before speaking, and give an example of that instead. ### 4. Supportive Agreeableness at work means being helpful, supportive and cooperative: the colleague who notices someone struggling and offers a hand. Supportive is not the same as agreeing with everything, though. The other end of this dimension is more skeptical and direct, and roles that reward challenge and critical review often need exactly that. Your proof for supportive is specific help you gave: onboarding a new coworker, covering a shift, walking a classmate through a method they were stuck on. ### 5. Even-keeled Emotional stability, the reverse of what psychologists call neuroticism, means staying calm and steady under pressure. Do not claim you never feel stress; nobody believes it. Claim how you handle it. A rush hour in a service job, an exam week combined with work, or a group project that fell apart two days before the deadline are all good material, as long as you can say what you did to keep things moving. ### 6. Hardworking and motivated A strong work ethic is one of the qualities employers ask about most directly. According to NACE's Job Outlook 2024 survey, at least two-thirds of employers look for evidence of a strong work ethic on a new graduate's resume, and NACE's Job Outlook 2016 put it at 68.9%. Motivation, the energy behind the effort, can also carry real weight when your experience is thin. > The only reason I was hired — and my boss told me this too — was that I was passionate about it. I came in with so much energy and such a strong will to get out there and do something great. You can learn a lot of things, but you can't really learn to be motivated. That was one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, recalling what his manager told him about why he got the job. It was one manager's reason, not a general hiring rule, but it shows how a trait can count when it is visible in how you show up. On paper, hardworking becomes believable through effort someone can see: hours you worked alongside your studies, a project you pushed through when it got tedious, a result that took persistence. ### 7. Team-oriented The ability to work in a team is among the attributes employers rank highest. In NACE's Job Outlook 2024 survey, nearly 80% of employers said they look for evidence of teamwork on a graduate's resume, and the 2016 edition put it at 78.9%. Because "team player" is one of the most common phrases in any application, it needs a sharper example than most. Name the team, your role in it, what you contributed and how the group did. Showing that you made the team better, rather than just that you were on one, is what lifts it above the crowd. ### 8. Shows initiative Initiative means acting without being told: spotting something that needs doing and doing it. In NACE's Job Outlook 2016 survey, 65.8% of employers wanted to see it on a new graduate's resume. For a student, the best proof is something you started. Perhaps you set up a study group, proposed a fix to a clumsy process at a part-time job, or volunteered for a task nobody else wanted. Keep the example small and real rather than inflated. ### 9. Trustworthy and honest Trustworthy is a character trait rather than a personality trait: it makes a claim about your values, and people test it against what you do. It is also among the qualities most often listed on resumes, which means the word alone carries almost no weight. Its counterpart, deceptive, is a reminder of what it rules out. Show it through responsibility you were given: handling the cash register alone, being trusted with keys or confidential information, being the person a manager asked to train newcomers. A reference who can confirm it is stronger still. ### 10. Ready to lead Leadership topped NACE's Job Outlook 2016 list of attributes employers wanted to see on graduates' resumes, at 80.1%. [You do not need a title](/knowledge/teamwork/teamwork-and-leadership-examples/) to show it. Coordinating a group project, training a new coworker or running a club event all count. What makes it leadership rather than participation is that you set direction and other people followed it. ## How to pick the traits on the list that are true of you Ten traits is a menu, not a self-description. Three, well evidenced, will serve you better than ten asserted. **Read the job ad as a list of personal traits.** Employers describe the people they want in trait language, and that language shifts with the type of role. A 2024 analysis of roughly 39,000 job postings on university job boards, *Personality Characteristics Demanded by Employers*, mapped this trait language onto the Big Five and found it weighted differently by job category. So start where the ad's traits and your own overlap, and lead with those. **Pair each trait with its opposite.** Personal traits fall naturally into groups (social, character, work ethic, emotional) and each positive word has a recognizable negative counterpart: reliable and careless, honest and deceptive, supportive and self-centered. Looking at both sides tells you where you tend to slip as well as what you bring, and it hands you an honest answer to the [interview question about weaknesses](/knowledge/self-awareness/strengths-and-weaknesses-examples/). **Expect to be measured.** Many hiring assessments place you on each Big Five dimension by asking you to rate statements on a scale from 1 to 5. Answering the way you think the test wants rarely helps; consistent, honest self-knowledge does. If you would rather know how you come across before an employer's assessment tells you, you can [get an honest outside read](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) on the work skills behind these traits first. Anything that comes up short is something you can learn, not a verdict. ## Turning a personal trait into proof The shift in what employers screen for makes evidence more important than ever. NACE reports that employers' use of GPA as a screening tool for graduates has dropped sharply, and the employers in its surveys look for evidence of attributes, not just the words on the page. A trait on its own is a claim. A trait with a situation, an action and a result is proof. Compare "I'm organized" with "Organized: I kept the schedule for a five-person project and we submitted two days early." The second needs no adjective at all; the example does the work. Build each of your three traits the same way: name the trait, describe the situation, say what you did, and finish with what happened. If you cannot find an example for a word, choose a different word. That is not a weakness of yours. It just means the evidence lies somewhere else. ## What turns a trait into something people notice Look back at the proof every entry on the list asks for, and a pattern emerges. None of it is about the adjective. It is about things you do that other people can see, and about knowing which of those things you actually do well. **Building Self-Awareness** is what lets you pick the right three words in the first place. It starts with your natural strengths, judged by how you work, how the work makes you feel and what results it produces, rather than by which traits sound impressive. Asking someone who has seen you work for specific feedback then shows where your own list and their view of you diverge. A personality test can start that reflection, but it is a prompt, not a label to wear. **Professional Behaviors** are where many positive traits become visible day to day. Supportive, curious and positive show up as respect for everyone, genuine interest in other people, seeking the positive and being open to change. Their opposites have a recognizable form too: passive, arrogant or negative conduct is something colleagues notice quickly, and something anyone can correct once they see it. **Teamwork** gives the most-claimed traits on any resume their working meaning. Team-oriented and trustworthy become credible through habits: being sincere, being reliable about what you commit to, being authentic, and putting the team's purpose ahead of your own credit. It also includes disagreeing constructively, which is why being a good teammate never requires being the most agreeable person in the room. The free Job Skills Test [shows where each of these habits stands](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) for you, along with nine others that run through almost any job, so you know which one would make your three traits easiest to prove. Every one of them can be learned, and none asks you to become someone else. Some of the entries above may already come with an example in your head. If you have ever been the one friends call when a plan falls apart at the last minute, even-keeled already has its proof; what is left is to say it with the story attached. The traits that do not have examples yet are not missing pieces of your personality. They are habits you have not had the occasion to practice, and you can grow them while staying entirely yourself, choosing the ones that matter most for where you want to go next. As your work gets more visible, people judge you more by what you do than by the words you choose. The habits behind your traits are easiest to build while your working reputation is still taking shape, and seeing your starting point is the natural place to begin. ## See which of your traits your skills already back The only thing left is to find out where you stand. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: about 7 minutes of questions that map your profile across all twelve skills and point to the ones that would do most to make your traits believable to an employer. **[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? A list of personal traits for work: the Big Five plus the qualities employers look for in graduates, with how to back each trait with a real example. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Professional Behaviors, 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/personal-qualities.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/professional-behaviors.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/personal-qualities/list-of-personal-traits/ Preferred summary: "A list of personal traits for work: the Big Five plus the qualities employers look for in graduates, with how to back each trait with a real example." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.