# Desired Skills: What They Are, the Three Types, and How to Show Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/desired-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/desired-skills.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving communication at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Desired skills are the nice-to-haves employers look for beyond the requirements. See the three types, what employers rank highest, and how to show yours. ## Key facts - Title: Desired Skills: What They Are, the Three Types, and How to Show Them - Category: Types of Skills - Primary skill: Communication - Related skills: Teamwork, Building Self-Awareness - Primary keyword: desired skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/desired-skills/ ## What this page covers - Desired skills are the nice-to-haves employers look for beyond the requirements. See the three types, what employers rank highest, and how to show yours. - Practical guidance for desired skills - How this topic connects to Communication ## Detailed explanation Desired skills are the abilities an employer would like you to bring on top of the must-haves. In a job posting, they are the "nice to have" list that sits apart from the required qualifications; more broadly, they are the skills employers look for again and again when they screen candidates. Missing some of them is normal, and rarely a reason not to apply. That can be hard to believe when the list runs to a dozen lines and seems to describe someone with five more years of experience than you have. It gets easier to read once you see that it mixes three different kinds of skill, and that employers do not weigh them the same way. ## What a desired skills list is really telling you Most job postings hold two lists, whether or not they are labeled as such. The required qualifications, sometimes called minimum qualifications, are the must-haves: an application that misses a genuine requirement is likely to be screened out. The desired qualifications are the extras the employer hopes to find on top. Missing a few of them is usually not disqualifying, and many of them can be learned once you are in the job. The reason is that a posting describes an ideal candidate, while the hire is made from the people who actually apply. And the ideal is ambitious. In NACE's Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update, more than half of employers cited ten or more skills on their wish list. Hardly anyone starting out can show all ten with evidence attached, so the desired list works as a ranking of what the employer values, not as a checklist you must complete before you are allowed to apply. What the list does tell you is where to put your effort. The technical items change from one posting to the next. The items about how you work with others and how you manage yourself turn up on almost all of them. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work described the distance between a list like that and the job behind it: > I was actually a bit surprised by how simple many of the tasks were. You read all these fancy job ads that expect a lot — you have to be able to do this, and that, and the other thing. But I quickly found that even though I was just the student assistant, I felt at least as competent as many of my colleagues, if not more. So in the end, that worry was proved wrong. The length of a desired skills list says little about whether you can do the work. What you can show about the skills on it says a great deal more. ## The three types of desired skills Almost every item on a desired list belongs to one of three types. They overlap at the edges, but each one answers two practical questions differently: how quickly can a gap be closed, and how do you prove you have the skill? ### Hard skills and technical skills Hard skills are learned, technical abilities that can be easily proven: a programming language, a lab method, a bookkeeping qualification. Technical skills, meaning proficiency with specific software, tools or platforms such as spreadsheets, are the most familiar kind. Because they are tied to particular roles and tools, the technical items on a desired list vary from posting to posting. That makes hard-skill gaps the easiest to judge. Ask whether a missing tool is central to the daily work, in which case it is a real gap, or an extra that could be picked up in the first weeks. It also makes them the easiest to show: a course, a certificate or a project file speaks for itself. ### Interpersonal and self-management skills This is where employers put most of their weight. According to NACE's Job Outlook 2025, nearly 90% of employers look for evidence that a student can [solve problems](/knowledge/types-of-skills/problem-solver-skill/) and nearly 80% want strong teamwork skills, while written communication, initiative and a strong work ethic each matter to at least 70%. Technical skills make that list too, but as one item among several nontechnical ones. These are the skills of working with others and managing yourself: how you communicate, how you collaborate, how you deal with a manager, how reliably you keep your commitments. They are often called soft skills, and they are learned behaviors, not personality traits. Their difficulty is proof. As Southern New Hampshire University's career guidance points out, hard skills can be easily proven, while soft skills are less obvious and not always easy to demonstrate. There is no certificate for being a good colleague. So these skills have to be shown through examples. "Strong communicator" [on a resume](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/soft-skills-resume-examples/) proves nothing. "Kept a four-person project on schedule by sending a short status note every Friday" proves quite a lot, because it names what you did and what came of it. ### Transferable skills Transferable skills are the ones that [carry over from one role](/knowledge/types-of-skills/transferable-skills-definition-and-examples/) or setting to another. Interpersonal skills are one type of transferable skill, but the category is wider: some hard skills, such as data analysis, travel just as well. What defines this type is portability, not content, and that matters because desired skills are written in workplace language. A line like "collaborates across functions" may sound like something you have never done, when you have in fact done it in a study project with students from another program, in a student job that sat between two departments, or in a volunteer role that depended on coordinating people. The work here is translation: name the setting, what you did and what happened. ## Why showing a skill can outweigh the degree line Employers increasingly hire on what candidates can do. In NACE's Job Outlook 2026, 70% of employers report using [skills-based hiring](/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-based-approach/), up from 65% the year before, which means focusing on the skills a candidate has rather than specifically on their degree or GPA. That moves the weight of the decision from credentials to demonstrated ability. For you, this cuts both ways. If your degree or grades are not an exact match for a posting, a desired skill you can show in action may count for more than the line in your education section. But a skill you can only name, without an example behind it, counts for little. NACE's Spring Update to the same survey found that employers look for evidence of teamwork, problem-solving and communication on resumes. Evidence is the operative word. ## How to build and show what you're missing Once you can sort a list by type, a posting becomes something to work with rather than something to measure yourself against. Four moves cover most of it: 1. **Read the list by type.** Separate the required lines from the desired ones, then mark each desired item as technical, interpersonal or transferable. A missing tool that is not central to the role is usually learnable on the job. A missing interpersonal skill is often one you have practiced somewhere and simply not described yet. 2. **Take an honest inventory before you write anything.** For each nontechnical item, ask whether you could name a specific moment you used it. Where you cannot, that is a skill to build, not a claim to make. These skills are hard to judge from the inside, so [checking your work skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) before you pick your examples keeps every claim honest, and any gaps it shows are ones you can start working on right away. 3. **Turn every match into a short example.** Two or three sentences per skill are enough: the situation, what you did, what happened. That is the evidence employers screen for. 4. **Build the rest where it becomes visible.** The gaps that remain close fastest in real work: an internship, a student job, a project with genuine stakes. That kind of experience carries extra weight, too. According to NACE, when employers choose between two equally qualified candidates, they overwhelmingly pick the one with internship experience, because experience is where desired skills become visible and checkable. ## What makes the most-requested skills easier to prove Look again at the items that keep recurring on desired lists, and at what it takes to prove each one. Being easy to understand, working well with other people and knowing honestly what you bring cannot be added to a resume as a line. They show up in how you work, which also means they can be practiced. **Communication** shows up on almost every desired list, usually as a single vague word. In practice it is a handful of concrete habits: stating your main point first, being clear and brief, listening fully before you answer, and writing an email the reader can act on without needing a second one. Each habit can be practiced in a seminar, a shift or a group chat, and each leaves the kind of trace you can describe in an application. The habits also shape the application itself: a cover letter that leads with what you can do is already evidence of the skill. **Teamwork** is the skill most students have practiced more than they realize. Group projects, sports teams, student jobs and volunteering all involve what employers are screening for: putting the shared goal ahead of your own part, doing what you said you would, raising a disagreement without making it personal, and then committing to what the group decided. It is not about being agreeable; disagreeing well is part of it. Naming those behaviors is what turns "team player" from a claim into evidence. **Building Self-Awareness** is what makes the whole list readable. Matching yourself against a dozen desired skills takes an honest view of your natural strengths, the things you are genuinely good at rather than merely able to do, and of the blind spots you cannot see on your own. Asking someone who has watched you work for specific, forward-looking feedback is the quickest way to get that view. It keeps you from underselling what you bring, and from claiming what you have not built yet. A practical place to start is the **free Job Skills Test**. It covers these three as part of **twelve work skills** in all, and shows you [which skill to practice next](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), so the group project or shift already on your calendar becomes a place to build that skill rather than just get through it. ## Reading the list as a starting point Some items on a desired list may describe things you already do without calling them skills. If you have ever been the one who sent the message that got a stalled group project moving again, you used two of them at once: you communicated clearly, and you put the team's deadline ahead of waiting for someone else to act. The rest can be built one experience at a time, starting with the ones that matter most for the roles you want, and none of it asks you to become a different person. These skills also tend to count for more once you are in the job, when colleagues judge you by how you work rather than by what your application said, so every one you build now keeps paying off. What helps most at this point is knowing exactly where you stand. ## Put your own skills next to the list All that is left is to set a clear picture of your own skills beside the next posting you read. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: it takes 7 minutes, shows where you stand across all twelve, and points to the ones that will make the biggest difference to the roles you apply for next. ## 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? Desired skills are the nice-to-haves employers look for beyond the requirements. See the three types, what employers rank highest, and how to show yours. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Communication. It also relates to Teamwork, Building Self-Awareness. ### 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/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.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/desired-skills/ Preferred summary: "Desired skills are the nice-to-haves employers look for beyond the requirements. See the three types, what employers rank highest, and how to show yours." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.