# What Are Your Professional Talents? How to Find and Use Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/professional-talents/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/professional-talents.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 Professional talents are what you do well naturally and repeatedly at work. Learn how they differ from skills, how to find yours, and how to prove them. ## Key facts - Title: What Are Your Professional Talents? How to Find and Use Them - Category: Soft Skills at Work - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Setting Goals, Influence - Primary keyword: professional talents - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/professional-talents/ ## What this page covers - Professional talents are what you do well naturally and repeatedly at work. Learn how they differ from skills, how to find yours, and how to prove them. - Practical guidance for professional talents - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation Professional talents are the things you do well naturally and repeatedly at work: habitual ways of thinking, feeling and behaving that reliably produce results, like noticing the detail others miss or staying calm when plans fall apart. Skills are different: you build them through study, practice and experience. The strongest professional profile combines both. If someone has just asked you to name yours, on an application form or across an interview table, the question can land awkwardly. It is easy to assume talents are rare gifts handed to other people, and that your own list will come out either empty or borrowed. Neither has to be true, and the reason starts with what a talent actually is. ## What are professional talents? In Gallup's definition, a talent is a naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied. Two words in that sentence do most of the work. *Recurring* means a talent is something you do again and again, not a single lucky performance. *Productively* means it has to lead somewhere useful. Nothing in the definition says the pattern has to be rare or impressive. A talent is something you bring with you rather than something you acquire, which is why it is often described as potential. The *professional* part simply means the pattern shows up in work, and work here is broad: a student job, a group project, a volunteer role or a sports team all count, because a pattern that recurs in one setting tends to recur in the next. So the useful question is not "what am I gifted at?" but "what do I do naturally, again and again, that works?" ## What's the difference between a talent and a skill? A talent is natural, and using it often feels effortless. A skill is developed through training, education or experience. A rough test: if you were doing it before anyone taught you, it is probably a talent; if you remember learning it, it is a skill. The two do different jobs. Talent can give you an early edge, but skills are what make your performance consistent and adaptable over time. In its work on strengths-based training, Gallup describes strengths as what develops when people invest in their talents by adding skills, knowledge and practice, and it notes that leaders and managers often overlook the value of pairing skills with innate talents. A talent on its own is raw material. Naming one is the starting point, not the finished product. For your own list, keep the two apart. Writing "good at Excel" next to "notices when numbers don't add up" mixes a learned skill with a natural pattern. Both belong in how you describe yourself; they just answer different questions. ## How do I find out what my talents are? Start before anyone asks, and start with evidence rather than introspection. Talents show up as patterns that repeat across different situations, so they are easier to spot in what you have done than in how you see yourself. Make three short lists: - Achievements you are quietly proud of, from any setting: jobs, studies, volunteering, clubs. - Feedback you have received, including offhand comments about something you made look easy and the requests that keep coming back to you. - Tasks that come easily to you but seem to drain other people. Then look for what repeats across the three lists and sort it into two columns: natural patterns and learned skills. The patterns that keep appearing, especially the ones backed by both an achievement and someone else's comment, are your talents. The result is a list that is genuinely yours, with the proof already attached. ## What if I don't think I have any talents? That feeling is common, and it usually comes from measuring yourself against the wrong standard. If talent means a spectacular gift, most people will come up short. By Gallup's definition, though, a talent is any naturally recurring pattern that can be put to productive use, and an ordinary, everyday way of working that reliably gets results qualifies. A blank list usually means you have looked in too few places, not that there is nothing to find. Widen the search to every setting where people have depended on you: part-time work, helping a younger sibling with homework, the group project you ended up organizing, the shift schedule you quietly fixed. Patterns that seem too ordinary to mention are often the ones that come so easily you no longer notice them. It can also help to come at the question from the other side. The skills you use at work are learnable, which makes them easier to measure, and a strong result often points to a talent underneath. A quick way to [check your current work skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) gives you a concrete place to start digging, and anything that comes out weaker is something you can practice rather than a gap you are stuck with. ## Can you develop a talent, or are you born with it? Mostly, you develop what you already have. According to Gallup, behavior that comes from knowledge and skills can be changed far more easily than behavior rooted in talent. Talents are enduring patterns, while knowledge and skills can be added at any stage of a career. That has a practical consequence. Trying to manufacture a talent you do not have is slow, frustrating work. The smarter move is to look for work that uses the talents you already have, then build skills around them so they turn into reliable strengths. If close attention to detail is not one of your natural patterns, you do not need to become a different person: a checklist and a habit of rereading can cover most of the gap, while you put more of your energy into what does come naturally. ## Are skills like communication and teamwork talents? No. Communication, teamwork and the other interpersonal skills you use at work are skills: they are built through training, practice and experience, not handed out at birth. Some people pick them up faster, often because a talent underneath gives them a head start, but nobody arrives fully formed. The distinction matters for two reasons. If you do not feel naturally good at communicating, you can still become good at it; it is a set of learnable behaviors, and you can practice them without changing who you are. And if you list communication as a talent, the person reading it will want to know where the evidence is. Treat it as a skill you have developed, and show the practice: the presentations you gave, the handovers you wrote, the disagreements you helped settle. ## How do I answer "What are your talents?" in an interview? The interviewer wants two things: what your talents are, and why they make you a strong fit for this particular role. So the answer should change from one company to the next. Read the job posting, pick the two or three talents it would genuinely use, and leave the rest out. Then back each one with a short story. The [STAR structure](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/soft-skills-interview-questions/) keeps it tight: the Situation, the Task you faced, the Action you took and the Result. For example, in a volunteer role the sign-up process kept losing people between registering and their first shift; you noticed they dropped off at the same step every time, rewrote the reminder message, and far more of them started turning up. That story shows a talent for spotting patterns without you ever having to claim it. Avoid stock answers. Calling yourself a perfectionist or a people person weakens the answer unless a real example stands behind it. The evidence you gathered in your three lists is exactly the material an interview needs. ## Should I list my talents on my résumé? Yes, but not as a row of adjectives. On a résumé or application form, a talent persuades only when an achievement backs it. Rather than a line that reads "analytical, organized, detail-oriented," put the talent to work inside your experience: a [bullet point](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/career-skills-resume/) about the scheduling problem you solved says more about your talent for organizing than the word itself ever could. Match what you highlight to the posting, just as you would in an interview, and keep learned skills such as software, languages and methods in their own section, where a recruiter expects to find them. ## How do I use my talents at work? Start by choosing work that lets you use them. Gallup's Q12 employee engagement survey includes the statement "At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day," and Gallup treats that opportunity as one of the basic workplace conditions behind engagement. Knowing your talents lets you judge in advance whether a role would offer it. Before you accept a job, ask [what a typical week looks like](/knowledge/setting-goals/what-jobs-fits-me/) and which tasks take up most of the time, then compare the answer with your lists. Once you are in the job, the next challenge is understanding your talent well enough to direct it. > Something I feel I'm missing — and I think you can only learn it through experience — is how to gain power and influence at a workplace. In other words, how do I turn the fact that I'm really good at networking and at talking with lots of people into real influence, or into moving up more easily? > > I've sometimes seen people who are really good at positioning themselves to be the one who gets brought along. I think I'm actually quite good at that naturally, but I would like to know what I'm doing that works, and what doesn't. That came from one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, and her last sentence is the one to hold on to. She already senses a natural talent; what she is missing is a clear view of what she does that works. You can close that gap deliberately: [ask colleagues](/knowledge/self-awareness/how-to-ask-for-feedback/) who have seen you at your best what specifically made the difference, and keep track of which results repeat. A talent you understand is one you can aim, and one other people can start to rely on. ## What turns professional talents into results Look back across these answers and one pattern runs through all of them. The talent itself was never the hard part. Every answer turned on what happens around it: whether you can see it clearly, whether your work makes room for it, and whether the people around you notice it in what you deliver. **Building Self-Awareness** is where a vague sense of being good at something becomes a talent you can name. The question is whether you are genuinely good at it or merely competent: notice how you work when you do it, how it makes you feel and what results it produces. Then ask the people who see your work for specific, forward-looking feedback on what you should do more of, because others often spot a natural strength you have stopped noticing. The proof comes from your own work, not from a label. **Setting Goals** turns that self-knowledge into direction. At school, everyone follows the same curriculum and weak subjects get the extra hours; working life lets you choose far more of your own, so you can put your energy into what you do naturally well instead of mostly patching weaknesses. Treat your first jobs as experiments, planned six to eighteen months ahead rather than a decade, and let your goals grow out of what you learn about which talents carry real weight. **Influence** is how a talent starts to count for other people. It becomes professionally valuable once colleagues know about it and rely on it, and that kind of reputation is earned: you deliver results consistently until you are known for something specific. Taking the initiative speeds it up. Volunteering to prepare the analysis, write the summary or organize the event puts your talent where people can see it working, with no need to advertise it. Which of the three already works for you is hard to judge from the inside, and that is where the **free Job Skills Test** comes in. It scores you on each of them and on nine more, the full set of **twelve work skills**, so you can [see which skills back your talents](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and which deserve your practice next. Every one of them is learnable, so a lower score shows you where to start, not where you stop. ## Talents you may already be using You may recognize a few of these patterns from your own week. If you have ever finished a task and been surprised that others found it hard, that surprise is one of the clearest signs of a talent you have been taking for granted. What you build around your talents is up to you. The skills that turn them into strengths can all be learned, at your own pace, and none of them asks you to become someone else. You can start with whichever matters most for the role you are aiming at right now. Each step in a career brings more choice over the work you take on, and those choices are easier to make well when you know what you do best. That knowledge is quick to start building, and the natural next step is to see where your skills stand today, next to the talents you already bring. ## Find out which skills already back your talents All that is left is to put the learnable side of your profile on paper. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: in about 7 minutes it shows where you stand on all twelve, which ones already work alongside your talents, and which would make the biggest difference to develop next. **[Discover my skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, about 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? Professional talents are what you do well naturally and repeatedly at work. Learn how they differ from skills, how to find yours, and how to prove them. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Setting Goals, 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/setting-goals.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/professional-talents/ Preferred summary: "Professional talents are what you do well naturally and repeatedly at work. Learn how they differ from skills, how to find yours, and how to prove them." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.