# The Best Personal Skills, and How to Know Which Are Yours Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/best-personal-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/best-personal-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 The best personal skills employers look for, from communication and teamwork to time management, plus how to tell which are genuinely yours and prove them. ## Key facts - Title: The Best Personal Skills, and How to Know Which Are Yours - Category: Types of Skills - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Communication, Time Management - Primary keyword: best personal skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/best-personal-skills/ ## What this page covers - The best personal skills employers look for, from communication and teamwork to time management, plus how to tell which are genuinely yours and prove them. - Practical guidance for best personal skills - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation The best personal skills are the ones employers prize and you can prove: communication, teamwork, sound decision-making, professional behavior, time management and initiative, plus the self-knowledge to tell which of them are genuinely yours. A short list backed by real examples carries far more weight than a long list of labels. If that list looks familiar, that is part of the challenge. It is the same handful nearly every applicant names, so writing "communication" or "time management" on its own sets you apart from no one. The difference lies in which skills you choose and what you can show for them, and both start with knowing what each skill actually looks like when someone watches you use it. ## The best personal skills, and what each looks like at work Personal skills come in two kinds. Interpersonal skills shape how you work with other people. Self-management skills decide whether you deliver reliably, on time and without needing to be chased. A strong shortlist draws on both. What employers want at the top is fairly stable, even when the order shifts. Written communication was the attribute employers sought most in the previous Job Outlook survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), then dropped to fifth in the 2025 edition, while problem-solving, teamwork and a strong work ethic moved to the front. Chasing whichever skill ranks first in a given year is less useful than building the core that keeps returning. The seven entries below cover that core, plus one skill that decides which of the others you can honestly claim. ### 1. Communication NACE describes communication as exchanging information, ideas, facts and perspectives with people inside and outside an organization. The key word is exchanging. Communication at work runs both ways: listening closely enough to answer the question that was actually asked, then making your own point clearly and briefly. In NACE's Job Outlook 2023, employers rated it the most important of the association's [eight career readiness competencies](/knowledge/employability/career-readiness-competencies/), with a score of 4.49, which is exactly why it appears on almost every applicant's list. To make it yours, point to a behavior rather than the label: a project update your team could act on without a round of follow-up questions, or a disagreement you raised about the work without making it personal. ### 2. Teamwork Teamwork was named by 86.3% of employers in NACE's Job Outlook 2025, and NACE's own description of it goes well beyond getting along. Its sample behaviors center on building collaborative relationships aimed at shared goals, while respecting different viewpoints and sharing responsibility. In practice, that means asking where the team needs you rather than guarding your own part: coordinating with others, passing on what you know, giving the group the credit, and picking up the piece of work nobody had claimed. The strongest evidence is a moment when you put the group's goal ahead of your own section, such as taking over the data work a project was stuck on so the whole team could submit on time. ### 3. Decision-making Problem-solving was the attribute employers cited most often in NACE's Job Outlook 2025, named by 91.2% of respondents. For someone in a first job, most of what that word covers is judgment: making a sound call when nobody hands you the answer. It starts with knowing which decisions are yours to make and which belong to your manager. From there, a few habits do most of the work. Ask someone more experienced for a second opinion, slow down when you feel rushed or upset, base the call on facts rather than a hunch, and settle for good enough when perfect would cost more than it gains. Two traps are worth watching for: seeking only the information that confirms what you already think, and sticking with a plan because of the [effort already sunk](/knowledge/decision-making/sunk-cost-fallacy/) into it. A strong example names the decision you faced, what you weighed and how it turned out. ### 4. Professional behavior A strong work ethic was named by 80.4% of employers in NACE's 2025 survey. NACE's professionalism competency spells out what sits behind the phrase: recognizing that workplace settings differ, and showing sound work habits in the interest of the wider workplace, not only your own tasks. That makes it less about formality than about reading the setting and being dependable. The behaviors are ordinary and visible: arriving on time, treating everyone with the same respect whatever their role, finishing administrative tasks without complaint, and speaking about colleagues as if they were in the room. Because they are ordinary, the proof is usually a pattern rather than a single moment, for example a year in a part-time job where you were never the one people had to chase. ### 5. Time management Time management is the self-management side of personal skills made visible. Managing your time, staying organized and keeping yourself motivated decide whether work arrives when you said it would, and that is something colleagues see directly. The habits are concrete. When a task comes in, clarify who is asking, what exactly they need, when it is due and what finished looks like to them. Keep one to-do list, break big tasks into smaller pieces, and separate what is important from what is merely urgent. Saying no with a clear reason belongs here too, once people trust your judgment. Being busy is not the skill; finishing the right things is. A good example is a crowded stretch you got through without anything slipping, such as a thesis month you planned backward from the deadline. ### 6. Initiative Leadership, as a personal skill, has little to do with a title. It is initiative, accountability and influence at whatever level you work. Early in a career, with authority over no one, it shows up in small, deliberate moves: volunteering to draft the plan or organize the meeting, taking ownership of a problem nobody had picked up, asking for an opportunity instead of waiting to be offered one. Each of those moves builds a reputation for delivering, and that reputation is where influence at work comes from. The evidence is a change you started, such as a better routine you suggested and got adopted, or a project you set in motion. ### 7. Knowing your own strengths The last entry decides how you use the other six. NACE counts career and self-development among its eight competencies, and it includes recognizing your own strengths and areas for development, seeking feedback to keep growing, and setting plans and goals for your career. Self-knowledge is treated as a skill in its own right, not a warm-up before the real ones. It turns the question from "which personal skills are best?" into "which of these are genuinely mine?", and it works in both directions. It catches the skills you claim without evidence, and it surfaces the ones you undercount. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work noticed the second kind in herself: > As a student you don't expect to be able to contribute anything. Sometimes I felt I could — because being in the education system now, you're actually better placed academically than people who left it years ago. What she describes is a strength she had not expected to count. Strengths like that are easy to miss precisely because they do not look like skills from the inside, and they belong on your shortlist as much as anything an employer names. ## How to tell a real strength from a buzzword Because nearly every candidate names the same few personal skills, the label carries almost no weight on its own. What carries it is a specific example: when you used the skill, what you did, and what came of it. NACE notes that each of its eight competencies can be demonstrated in a variety of ways, which is good news if your work history is short. A group project, a part-time job, [a volunteer role](/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-gained-from-volunteering/) or a student society gives you the same raw material a full-time job would. Three quick checks separate a real strength from a borrowed word: - Can you name the moment? If no specific situation comes to mind within a few seconds, the skill is an aim for now, not a claim. - Would it survive a follow-up question? [Interviewers ask for examples](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/personal-skills-interview/), and a skill that runs out of story after one sentence needs a better example or a different skill. - Would someone else name it? A teammate, supervisor or professor who would describe you the same way is the best confirmation available. If you are not sure, ask them. Two or three skills that pass all three checks make a stronger case than seven that pass none. A skill that fails them today is not a verdict on you, just one you have not had the chance to practice yet. Judging yourself from the inside is genuinely hard, so alongside the feedback you collect, a short self-assessment can give you [a structured second opinion](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) before you commit your shortlist to an application. ## What makes a shortlist of personal skills hold up Look back across the seven entries and the hard part is rarely knowing what employers want. It is choosing which skills to stand behind, describing them so someone else believes you, and showing them consistently enough that the claim holds over time. Each of those moves leans on a skill of its own. **Building Self-Awareness** is what lets you sort the list honestly. A natural strength is different from something you are merely competent at, and three things tell them apart: how you go about the task, how it leaves you feeling, and the results it produces. A skill that energizes you and gets results is one to build on; one you can manage but that drains you belongs further down. Feedback fills in what reflection misses. Ask a supervisor or project partner for one specific thing you could do better next time, take time to understand it before adding your own view, and you will find blind spots before an interviewer does. **Communication** is also the skill you use to present all the others. Stating the main point first, staying brief and adapting to the person in front of you turn a vague claim into a sentence someone remembers: the skill, the moment, the result. These are habits rather than a gift for speeches, and they work the same on paper and out loud. Saying it out loud is the harder half, so practice telling each example in under a minute before you need it. **Time Management** is what turns a claimed skill into a track record. Most of the entries above are proved by patterns rather than single moments, and patterns come from working effectively week after week: checking early with whoever asked for the work, matching the effort to how much the task matters, and spending your energy on the few activities that create most of the value. Applied to your own development, the same thinking says to pick one or two skills to build at a time rather than all seven at once. Choosing which one or two is where the **free Job Skills Test** comes in. It shows you [which skill to build first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), drawing on **all twelve work skills it measures**, these three included, so your next round of practice goes where it pays off. ## Your own best personal skills Parts of this list may already describe how you work, even if you have never thought of them as skills. If your study group tends to hand you the schedule, or a shift manager asks you to show the new hire the ropes, you already have the start of an example for at least one entry. The entries you cannot yet back up are not gaps in who you are. They are habits you can build in your own way, a couple at a time, while staying entirely yourself. As your work brings more people and more responsibility, these skills tend to carry more of the weight, and each of them can be practiced in the job or studies you have right now. What helps next is seeing the whole picture at once: the skills you can already stand behind, and the ones worth building. ## See which personal skills you can stand behind All that is left is to hold your own skills up against the list. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: it scores you across all twelve, shows which ones you can already put forward with confidence, and points to the one or two that would strengthen your applications most. It takes 7 minutes. ## 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? The best personal skills employers look for, from communication and teamwork to time management, plus how to tell which are genuinely yours and prove them. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Communication, Time Management. ### 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/types-of-skills.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/time-management.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/best-personal-skills/ Preferred summary: "The best personal skills employers look for, from communication and teamwork to time management, plus how to tell which are genuinely yours and prove them." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.