# Personal Characteristics and Skills: How They Differ and How to Show Yours Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/personal-characteristics-and-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/personal-characteristics-and-skills.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 Personal characteristics describe how you behave; skills are what you can do. See the difference, real examples, and how to describe yours convincingly. ## Key facts - Title: Personal Characteristics and Skills: How They Differ and How to Show Yours - Category: Personal Qualities - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Professional Behaviors, Influence - Primary keyword: personal characteristics and skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/personal-characteristics-and-skills/ ## What this page covers - Personal characteristics describe how you behave; skills are what you can do. See the difference, real examples, and how to describe yours convincingly. - Practical guidance for personal characteristics and skills - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation Personal characteristics and skills are different things: characteristics describe how you tend to think, feel and behave (reliable, curious, calm under pressure), while skills are capabilities you have learned and can demonstrate, like writing a clear report. They overlap, though: most characteristics that matter at work show up as behavior, so they can be evidenced and developed. That overlap is why describing yourself on an application feels so slippery. Write "hard-working, reliable, good with people" and you sound like every other candidate; leave those words out and you seem to have nothing to say about who you are. The way out is not a better list of adjectives. It is knowing what each question is really asking, and what counts as proof. ## What is the difference between personal characteristics and skills? A skill is a capability you acquire through education, training or experience, and you show it by doing it. Formatting a balance sheet, preparing a lesson plan, operating a particular machine or holding a welding certification are skills in the plainest sense: concrete, teachable and fairly easy to check. A characteristic describes a tendency in how you behave across situations. Calm, curious, dependable and honest all say something about who you are rather than about a task you can perform. That is also their weakness on paper: naming a characteristic proves nothing, because anyone can type the word. It only becomes credible through behavior someone has seen you repeat. The interesting territory lies between the two. Interpersonal and self-management qualities, such as keeping commitments, staying patient with a difficult customer or organizing a group's work, are harder to measure than a technical skill, yet they shape how well someone does a job just as much. They sound like traits, but they work like skills: you can practice them, and you can point to moments when you used them. A simple test helps. If you can name a specific situation where the quality made a visible difference, you can present it as evidence. If you cannot, it is still only a claim. ## What are examples of personal characteristics and skills? It helps to sort examples into three groups, because each one is described differently: - Characteristics people most often name: reliability, integrity, honesty, adaptability, resilience, empathy, initiative and commitment. - Hard skills: formatting a balance sheet, preparing a lesson plan, operating specialist equipment, holding a welding certification, using a programming language. - Workplace skills: running a meeting, writing a clear email, prioritizing competing tasks, giving a colleague feedback. Look closely at the first group and several entries turn out to be behaviors rather than fixed traits. Being reliable means doing what you committed to, every time. Initiative means asking, volunteering or starting something without being told. Commitment shows in finishing what you started after it stops being fun. This matters more than it seems. A trait framed as something you are born with invites the conclusion "I either have it or I don't." A behavior can be practiced, and it leaves a trail of examples you can use in an application. ## Which personal qualities do employers look for? No single list fits every role, so the most reliable guide is the job description itself. Choose the qualities it emphasizes that you can genuinely show, rather than a generic set that would fit any job. A role built around customers will lean on patience and composure; a research assistant role will lean on thoroughness and curiosity. Because interpersonal qualities are hard to measure, employers probe them indirectly: through [interview questions](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/soft-skills-interview-questions/), through requests for examples and through references. What they can verify is a story and a track record, not an adjective. So the more useful question is not "what do employers want?" but "which of the qualities in this ad can I prove?" ## Can you learn personal qualities, or are you born with them? How much of any trait is inborn is still genuinely debated, and some parts of your temperament may stay fairly stable throughout life. But that question matters less at work than it seems. The qualities employers and colleagues actually rely on are expressed as behavior, and behavior can be practiced without changing your personality. Take reliability. You may not think of yourself as naturally reliable, but you can start writing down every commitment you make this week and keeping each one. After a few months, that is what reliability is, and other people will start describing you that way. Initiative works the same way: it starts with asking one question you would normally keep to yourself, or volunteering for one task nobody has claimed. A gap in a quality like these is not a flaw in who you are. It is a behavior you have not had a reason to practice yet. ## How do I know what my personal qualities are? Left alone, most people describe themselves with flattering, generic words, partly because those words are always within reach. A better starting point is evidence. Look at what you do repeatedly. Which tasks do people hand to you without a second thought? Which kind of work leaves you energized, and where do your best results come from? Strengths show up in how you work, how the work makes you feel and what it produces, not in which adjectives sound good. Then get an outside view. Other people's observations of your repeated behavior are more credible than self-assessment, and they often notice things you take for granted. Ask a teacher, a supervisor at a part-time job or a teammate from a group project what they have actually seen you do. A specific question gets a better answer than a vague one: "When did I make your work easier?" works far better than "What are my qualities?" Alongside those observations, a [structured read on your work skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) gives you a second reference point when your own list feels like guesswork, and anything it flags as weaker is a behavior you can build rather than a verdict on you. ## How do I describe my personal characteristics on a CV or application? Answering with traits alone, such as "I love working with people" or "I am responsible, dependable, honest and loyal," sends a weak message, because almost every candidate claims the same words. The fix is to let the characteristic sit behind a concrete action and its result. A simple structure works: the characteristic, a situation that shows it, and what happened. "Reliable" becomes "Opened the café alone on Saturday mornings for two years." "Organized" becomes "Coordinated deadlines and drafts for a five-person course project." Action verbs such as organized, implemented or led do the work the adjective cannot. Two or three characteristics, each backed by a line of proof elsewhere on the page, are far more convincing than a profile paragraph of ten adjectives. Study and [part-time work](/knowledge/types-of-skills/transferable-skills-definition-and-examples/) count as evidence. A group project, a volunteer role, a weekend job or a student association all produce situations where you showed initiative, kept commitments or handled pressure; the work is translating them into what you did. Choose characteristics that are genuinely yours, even if they sound less impressive than the ones you could borrow. Whatever you claim, you then have to live up to in the interview and in the job. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work gave this as her first advice for anyone beginning a new job; the words come from our notes of the conversation rather than a recording: > Be yourself — from the very start. Otherwise, you end up spending too much energy on being someone else. ## "What would you say are your strongest personal qualities?" Pick one or two qualities, not five, and choose the ones most relevant to the role. For each, explain briefly and back it with a real situation, then stop and let the interviewer ask for more. A useful shape is: name the quality, show it with one example, connect it to the job. For instance, describe a moment when a deadline slipped and you reorganized the work, then explain why that matters in a role with competing priorities. The example carries the answer; the quality is just its label. ## "How would a close colleague describe you?" This question asks for the outside view directly, so answer with what people have actually said or shown. A comment from a supervisor, a line from a reference or the task a team kept handing you is stronger than your own guess at how you come across. If you have already asked people what they see in you, this is where it pays off. Stay honest: what you say can be checked against [your references](/knowledge/networking/professional-references-relationship/), and an answer that matches them builds trust quickly. ## "List five words that describe your character" Treat the five words as headlines, each needing a story behind it. Give each word a different job: one about how you work, one about how you deal with people, one about how you handle pressure or setbacks, and so on. Five versions of "hard-working" waste the question. Have a short example ready for each, because you will likely be asked to expand on one or two, and the word you cannot back up is the one that undermines the rest. Across all of these questions, the same pattern runs underneath. The characteristics that carry weight are the ones you can see clearly in yourself, show through behavior other people recognize, and point to as something you have done more than once. The words follow the evidence, never the reverse. ## What turns a list of qualities into proof That pattern points past any list of words toward a few underlying abilities: seeing yourself accurately, behaving in ways colleagues notice and trust, and letting a track record speak for you over time. **Building Self-Awareness** is what lets you tell which characteristics are genuinely yours rather than the ones that merely sound right. It means judging your natural strengths by how you work, how the work makes you feel and the results it produces, and then using feedback to close the gap between how you see yourself and how others see you. Asking for specific, future-focused advice, such as what you could do differently next time, turns other people's observations into material you can use, without reducing you to a personality-test label. **Professional Behaviors**. Respect, humility, genuine interest in others, openness to change, punctuality and discretion with confidential information are the conduct colleagues watch every day, and much of what people call character at work is made of it. The same holds in reverse: being passive, arrogant or constantly negative are patterns anyone can slip into and anyone can correct. Seen as behavior, a good quality becomes something you practice in ordinary situations instead of something you assert, and you keep your own personality while doing it. **Influence** explains how dependability, integrity and initiative become visible to others: as a reputation. That reputation is earned by delivering results consistently, being straight-talking, and taking initiative, whether by asking for an opportunity or volunteering to prepare, write or organize something. Over time, what people say about you replaces what you say about yourself, and that is the version an employer trusts. If you want to see which of these you can already back up, the free Job Skills Test will [show where your behaviors stand](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), measuring **these three alongside nine more workplace skills**, and each gap it reveals is a skill you can practice rather than a trait you lack. Parts of this may already describe you better than you would describe yourself. If a supervisor at a part-time job ever handed you the keys to close up, or a project group started sending you the final draft to check before submission, someone had already seen a characteristic in you and trusted it. That moment is the raw material for an answer. The qualities without moments like that are not missing pieces of your personality; they are behaviors you have not yet had a reason to practice, and you can choose the ones that matter most for where you want to go next while staying entirely yourself. Early on, a couple of strong examples can carry an application. As more of your work runs through other people, how you behave tends to weigh more heavily than anything you list, which makes now, while habits are still easy to shape, a good time to start building that evidence. Knowing where your skills stand today is the obvious first step. ## See which characteristics your skills already back up All that remains is to get that picture. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: a short set of questions that takes about 7 minutes and gives you a profile across all twelve skills, showing which ones already support the characteristics you want to claim and which would make the biggest difference to build next. **[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? Personal characteristics describe how you behave; skills are what you can do. See the difference, real examples, and how to describe yours convincingly. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Professional Behaviors, 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/personal-qualities.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/professional-behaviors.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/personal-qualities/personal-characteristics-and-skills/ Preferred summary: "Personal characteristics describe how you behave; skills are what you can do. See the difference, real examples, and how to describe yours convincingly." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.