# Job Knowledge and Skills: What Employers Mean and How to Build Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/job-knowledge-and-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/job-knowledge-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 Job knowledge and skills are what you understand about a role and what you can do in it. The five types, how employers judge them, and how to close gaps. ## Key facts - Title: Job Knowledge and Skills: What Employers Mean and How to Build Them - Category: Soft Skills at Work - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Working with Your Manager, Influence - Primary keyword: job knowledge and skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/job-knowledge-and-skills/ ## What this page covers - Job knowledge and skills are what you understand about a role and what you can do in it. The five types, how employers judge them, and how to close gaps. - Practical guidance for job knowledge and skills - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation Job knowledge and skills are the two learned parts of being able to do a job. Job knowledge is what you understand about a role: its field, its tasks and the procedures behind them. Job skills are your ability to actually carry that work out. Employers ask about both when you apply and rate both once you are hired. If the phrase has landed in front of you on an application form or a review template, it is easy to read it as a test you might already be failing. It is not. Almost everything it covers is learned, and much of it can only be learned once you are inside a job. That changes what you should be showing now, and what you should be building next. ## What job knowledge and skills include The U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET framework, which describes what occupations require, draws a useful line here. It defines skills as "developed capacities that facilitate learning or the more rapid acquisition of knowledge" and abilities as "enduring attributes of the individual that influence performance." Knowledge and skills are counted as worker requirements, acquired through education and experience, while abilities are treated as lasting personal characteristics. Much of O*NET's picture of each occupation comes from people who do the work themselves. The practical consequence for you: job knowledge and skills are the part of job fit that can be built. A gap there is something you have not learned yet, not a judgment of who you are. Within that buildable part, five dimensions cover most of what a role asks for. Three are kinds of knowledge and two are kinds of skill, and each is learned in a different place. ### Technical and specialist knowledge This is your understanding of a field's principles, methods and tools, built through a degree, a diploma, specialized training, or a certification or license. It belongs to the field rather than to one employer, so it travels with you, and it is the layer your education mainly provides. It is often what gets you considered for a role in the first place. What it does not tell you is when the job actually needs it. Many entry-level tasks call for the employer's way of doing things more than for what you studied, and learning to tell the two apart is part of the transition. If you have wondered how much of your education you will really use, you are not alone. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work described it this way: > Most people could probably have handled the tasks I've been given. Still, it was my degree that got me into the organization. So the transition has been about figuring out when to use what I know from my studies and my experience in general — and when to simply solve the tasks I'm given. The degree still counted. What he had to add was a sense of when to draw on it. ### Procedural knowledge Procedural knowledge is knowing how tasks are done where you work: the processes staff are expected to follow, and the past practice behind them. The University of California describes its operational and technical roles as ones where "problems are typically solved through knowledge of past practices and procedural guidelines, or knowledge gained through a certification or licensing program." Much of that knowledge is local. It lives in one organization's procedures and habits, and it can only be fully learned from inside. That is why nobody arrives with complete job knowledge, however strong their grades. Learning the procedures is the first real piece of work in most new jobs, and it is usually where a new starter begins. Writing down the steps the first time someone shows you, asking why a process runs the way it does, and noticing where the written version differs from what colleagues actually do are all ways of building it on purpose. ### Organizational knowledge Organizational knowledge is understanding how the employer works as a whole: its policies, its structure, and who decides what. Warwickshire County Council's job evaluation scheme, used to grade the council's jobs, counts technical, specialist, procedural and organizational knowledge together as the knowledge a job requires. It sets them out in tiers: the practical tier covers the processes staff must follow, and higher tiers add knowledge of policy and of advanced theory. Because the scheme grades jobs, the depth of knowledge a role demands is part of what sets its level. The lesson for you is that job knowledge is wider than expertise. Knowing how your organization works counts too, and it deepens with time. Early on, the most useful version of it is simple: knowing whose approval a piece of work needs, which policies apply to your tasks, and who to ask when something falls outside them. ### Job-specific skills Knowing how something works and being able to do it are different claims, and employers trust the second more. Knowledge can be gained by reading, training and being told. Skill only grows by doing the work and getting it right, again and again. Job-specific skills are that practiced capacity for the tasks a particular role is built around, and they rest on the technical side of your preparation: the degrees, diplomas and specialized training that most jobs call for. They are shown by evidence of use. Saying you are "familiar with" a tool or method says little. Describing what you did with it, and what came of it, says a lot. ### Transferable skills Most jobs require two sets of skills, according to the Vancouver Public Library's job-search guidance: the technical, job-specific set, and a non-technical set that [carries across work environments](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/transferable-skills-for-jobs/). The second set goes with you from job to job, which matters early in a career, because it is the half you can already show from studies, projects and part-time work. O*NET groups the skills that cut across occupations into families, among them complex problem solving, resource management (managing time, money, materials and people), social skills, systems skills and technical skills. Read a job description with that in mind and much of its skills list turns out to be cross-functional rather than unique to that job. That makes the list less intimidating: a good part of it asks for things you have already done somewhere else. ## How job knowledge and skills are judged Two moments matter most: when you apply, and once you are in the role. When you apply, especially in the public sector, the application may ask you to describe your knowledge, skills and abilities against the requirements listed for the job, often in [short written statements](/knowledge/skills-standards/ksa-s/). These are judged on evidence: a specific situation where you used the knowledge or skill, and what came of it. A list of claims carries little weight. Your evidence will mostly come from coursework, projects, internships and part-time jobs, so the real work is translation. Take each requirement, find one situation that shows it, and describe it in the language of the role. Where you cannot find an example, you have found a gap rather than a dead end. Technical gaps close with [study and training](/knowledge/improve-skills/learning-new-skills-and-knowledge/), and gaps in workplace skills close with practice, because they are learned behaviors, not fixed traits. Before you draft those statements, the free Job Skills Test can help you [find your strongest workplace skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), so you know which examples to lead with and which skills still need practice. Once you are in the role, job knowledge becomes a rated category on many [performance review forms](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/job-knowledge-performance-review/). The questions behind the rating are usually whether you understand your role's tasks, procedures and tools, whether you keep that knowledge current as technology and processes change, whether you take part in the training available to you, and whether you share what you know. Low ratings tend to reflect gaps in basic knowledge or resistance to changing methods. In other words, job knowledge is judged as something you maintain and pass on over time, not a fixed stock you prove once. That also means the gaps you start with are expected. The knowledge fills in as you do the work, ask about the procedures and keep up as things change. The skills fill in through practice and feedback. How quickly both happen depends less on what you already know than on how you handle the people around it. ## What makes your knowledge count at work Look across the five dimensions and only the first can be prepared mostly on your own. The others are learned from other people, judged by other people and made visible to other people. **Building Self-Awareness** is where an honest inventory starts. Being competent at a task and being naturally strong at it are not the same, and the difference shows in how you work when a task goes well, how the work leaves you feeling, and the results it produces. The other half is feedback. A colleague or supervisor can see gaps in your job knowledge that you cannot, and asking for specific advice about what to do differently next time brings them out while they are still small. With both halves, you know which evidence to put forward and which knowledge to build first. **Working with Your Manager** matters because your manager is usually the one who judges your job knowledge, often on the review form itself. You learn what the role really requires by aligning expectations early: what good work looks like, which decisions are yours to make, and where your manager wants to be consulted. Regular one-on-ones are the place to ask for feedback, make your results visible and, over time, shape your role toward the work you do best. Prepared that way, a review rating stops being a verdict and becomes a plan you both agreed on. **Influence** is what turns job knowledge into standing. Knowing your work well helps your career only when others know it too, and early on that comes from a reputation earned steadily: delivering consistently, becoming known for one specific area of expertise, and taking the initiative to volunteer for the drafting, preparing or organizing that nobody has claimed. Once that happens, colleagues start bringing you the problems that match what you know, which is how knowledge turns into opportunity. None of the three has to stay where it is today, and each improves with practice in ordinary work. To [know which one to start with](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), the **free Job Skills Test** scores all three, along with the **nine other work skills** most jobs draw on, and a lower score simply marks where your effort will pay off soonest. Parts of this may already be familiar from your own work. If you once kept a running list of the steps a supervisor showed you at a part-time job so you would not need to ask twice, you were building procedural knowledge on purpose, and noticing what you still needed to learn. The knowledge and skills you have not built yet are simply next. You add them through your own work, in your own way, without turning into someone else. The longer you are in a role, the more you are expected to know without being told, so gaps are easiest to close early, while questions are still expected of you. What would help most now is knowing which of these skills to put first. ## See where your work skills stand From here, it comes down to seeing your starting point. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: in about 7 minutes it scores you across all twelve and shows which ones would do the most for how you learn, use and show your job knowledge, whether your next step is an application or a review. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, and 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? Job knowledge and skills are what you understand about a role and what you can do in it. The five types, how employers judge them, and how to close gaps. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Working with Your Manager, 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/soft-skills-at-work.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager.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/soft-skills-at-work/job-knowledge-and-skills/ Preferred summary: "Job knowledge and skills are what you understand about a role and what you can do in it. The five types, how employers judge them, and how to close gaps." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.