# Experience, Knowledge and Skills: How They Differ and Connect Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/experience-knowledge-and-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/experience-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 Knowledge is what you know, skills are what you can do, and experience is where you've used both. Here's how the three connect and how to show each one. ## Key facts - Title: Experience, Knowledge and Skills: How They Differ and Connect - Category: Types of Skills - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Building Confidence, Setting Goals - Primary keyword: experience knowledge and skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/experience-knowledge-and-skills/ ## What this page covers - Knowledge is what you know, skills are what you can do, and experience is where you've used both. Here's how the three connect and how to show each one. - Practical guidance for experience knowledge and skills - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation Knowledge is what you know, skills are what you can do, and experience is where you have already put both to work. Employers ask about experience, knowledge and skills separately because each answers a different question, and for someone starting out, experience includes part-time jobs, internships, volunteering and student projects, not only years of full-time work. That distinction is worth having when a job ad lists all three and your CV looks thin next to it. What [a short CV](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/work-skills-cv/) usually lacks is not experience but a way of describing it, and that is something you can learn. The key is a fourth element that sits between the three, and it is the main thing experience actually leaves you with. ## What experience, knowledge and skills each mean The three words often appear side by side in a job ad or on an application form, as if they made up one requirement. They are better read as four related layers: what you know, what you can do, where you have done it, and the know-how that doing it leaves behind. Each layer is shown in a different way, which is why it helps to pull them apart before putting them back together. ### Knowledge: what you know Knowledge is the facts, concepts and procedures you have taken in through study, training or work. It is the easiest of the three to prove, which is why a job ad can simply ask for "in-depth knowledge of" a subject or a tool, and why a degree or a certificate can stand in for it. Its limit is just as clear: knowing a recipe is not the same as being able to cook the dish. A degree mostly certifies knowledge, and that counts for a great deal, but an employer also needs to see that the knowledge can be put to work. If you have ever finished a course sure of the material and still unsure you could do the job, the feeling has company. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work put it plainly: > I thought: you've been to university, you've learned everything, now you can do anything. I've taken every course — and I can't. When I get a job it'll be a company taking me in because they can use me in the long run, but in the short run they'll have to teach me a lot. Her degree had not let her down. It had given her knowledge, which is what everything else is built on. What it could not give her on its own was the practice that turns knowing into doing, and practice is open to anyone willing to start small. ### Skills: what you can do A skill is the ability to do something, and it is built by practicing rather than by learning about it. Skills come in [two broad kinds](/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/hard-and-soft-skills/). Technical skills belong to a field: analyzing a dataset, writing code, drawing up a budget. The other kind [applies in any role](/knowledge/types-of-skills/transferable-skills-definition-and-examples/): communicating clearly, working well in a team, managing your own time, building a working relationship with your manager. That second kind is rarely taught explicitly, so most people pick it up by trial and error, yet employers weigh it alongside the technical kind. Because a skill exists only in the doing, a credential cannot fully stand in for it. The convincing way to show one is an example of you using it. ### Experience: where you have done it Experience is the setting in which knowledge and skills meet real conditions: real deadlines, real colleagues, real consequences. It is not limited to paid, full-time employment. A part-time job, an internship, a volunteer role, a student project for an outside organization, a position of responsibility in a club or society: each is a setting where you applied what you knew and used skills that someone else relied on. Employers ask about experience because it shows that your knowledge and skills have already held up in practice, on work similar to theirs. So the useful question is not how many years you can list, but which of your settings show the skills the role needs. ### Tacit know-how: what experience leaves behind The philosopher Michael Polanyi captured the fourth layer in a single line: "We can know more than we can tell." Much of what a capable person knows is know-how that is hard to put into words, such as when to interrupt a busy colleague, how to calm an upset customer, or how much detail a manager wants in an update. This tacit knowledge is acquired mainly through experience rather than formal education. That explains two things. It is why employers value experience even when a candidate holds exactly the right qualification: experience carries something a course cannot pass on. And it is why describing your own experience feels so awkward. The know-how is there, but it only becomes visible when you describe a specific situation and what you did in it. ## How experience turns knowledge into skill Time spent in a setting does not turn into skill by itself. David Kolb's experiential learning model, published in 1984, describes learning from experience as a cycle of four stages: you do something (concrete experience), you reflect on what happened (reflective observation), you draw a general lesson from it (abstract conceptualization), and you try that lesson out the next time (active experimentation). The stage most easily skipped is the second. Without reflection, experience piles up without teaching much; with it, even a short project can leave you noticeably more capable. That is why two people can spend a year in the same job and come away with very different skills. You can run your own experience back through the cycle. For each job, project or role, pick one situation that was difficult and write down three things: what you did, what you noticed afterward, and what you would repeat or change next time. The first answer shows a skill in use. The second and third capture the knowledge you took away, including some of the tacit kind. Together they are the raw material of a convincing example. The hardest part is usually naming skills you use without thinking about them, precisely because so much of that know-how is tacit. A short self-assessment can help you [put names to those skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), which makes them far easier to spot when you sift through your own situations. ## Putting experience, knowledge and skills to work on an application On an application, the three work together rather than as three separate lists. The skill is the claim. The experience is the evidence. The knowledge is what you brought to the situation or took away from it. A line such as "good communication skills" says almost nothing by itself; one sentence about explaining a delayed order to a frustrated client, and what happened next, says a great deal. Application forms that ask about experience often want exactly this: personal, specific examples of situations you were involved in, with dates and results. Employers then check each layer in its own way. [Behavioral interview questions](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/soft-skills-interview-questions/) ask what you actually did in a past situation. Situational questions describe a hypothetical and test how you would apply what you know. Technical tests check job-specific skills directly. A CV tends to be scanned for skills first, then read in the experience section to judge depth. Behavioral questions and the CV in particular reward concrete examples from your past, which is one more reason to collect yours before you need them. How much each layer weighs depends on the role. In fast-emerging fields, where few people have years of experience, skills tend to count for more. In safety-sensitive or compliance-heavy work, experience tends to count more heavily. For an entry-level role, a missing number of years is not automatically disqualifying: skills built through study, part-time work or volunteering can carry an application, provided you describe clearly where and how you used them. ## Getting more out of the experience you have Look again at the reflection exercise and at a strong application example, and they turn out to ask for the same three things: seeing your own work honestly, trusting what it shows, and choosing where to gather more of it. **Building Self-Awareness** is what lets you tell something you have genuinely learned to do well from something you have merely been around. It means putting a few honest questions to your own work: how you go about a task, how it feels while you do it, and what results it produces. Asking a supervisor or teammate for specific, future-focused feedback fills in the parts you cannot see yourself. The outcome is an inventory of what you can do that you can stand behind, rather than a list of strengths borrowed from a job ad. **Building Confidence** answers the belief that without "real" experience you have little to offer. Confidence here is not a mood you talk yourself into; it follows evidence. It grows from doing things in manageable steps, practicing at one level before moving to the next, so that each completed step shows you can handle the one after it. Seen this way, a first part-time job or a small project is not too modest to count. It is the first rung, and it is where knowledge starts turning into skill. **Setting Goals** decides which experience you collect next, and that matters more than how much of it you collect. Early in a career, direction tends to come out of what work shows you rather than from a fixed long-term plan, so it pays to keep your planning horizon short, lean toward work that plays to your natural strengths, and weigh a role by what you will learn and who you will learn it from, not only by its starting salary. Each experience chosen this way adds skill and a clearer sense of what fits you. None of the three is a fixed trait; each grows with practice, much as experience itself does. The **free Job Skills Test** measures them together with **nine more work skills**, so you can [find the skill worth building](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and choose your next job, project or volunteer role with that skill in mind. ## The know-how you already carry Some of what this article calls tacit know-how is probably already in your hands. If you have ever shown a new coworker how the register works, or explained to a teammate how a shared folder is organized, you have already turned something you knew how to do into words someone else could use. That is the same move a strong application example makes. The skills behind it can be learned and strengthened, and building them changes what you can do, not who you are, so you can choose the ones that matter most for you right now. The more responsibility you take on, the more it matters that you can say what your experience has taught you, and that habit can start with the very next task on your list. What helps most at this point is an honest picture of where your skills currently stand. ## See what your experience has built so far The only step left is to find out which skills your knowledge and experience have already built, and which are worth building next. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills that takes 7 minutes. It shows where you stand across twelve skills that shape how you work, so you can describe your strengths with evidence and choose experiences that grow the rest. ## 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? Knowledge is what you know, skills are what you can do, and experience is where you've used both. Here's how the three connect and how to show each one. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Building Confidence, Setting Goals. ### 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/confidence.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/setting-goals.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/experience-knowledge-and-skills/ Preferred summary: "Knowledge is what you know, skills are what you can do, and experience is where you've used both. Here's how the three connect and how to show each one." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.