# Good Skills: What Employers Look For, and How to Show You Have Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/good-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/good-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 Good skills are the ones employers look for in every role: communication, teamwork, sound judgment and more. See the six that count and how to show them. ## Key facts - Title: Good Skills: What Employers Look For, and How to Show You Have Them - Category: Types of Skills - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Communication, Professional Behaviors - Primary keyword: good skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/good-skills/ ## What this page covers - Good skills are the ones employers look for in every role: communication, teamwork, sound judgment and more. See the six that count and how to show them. - Practical guidance for good skills - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation Good skills are the ones that make you useful in almost any job, not just the one your degree points to: communicating clearly, working well in a team, making sound decisions, taking initiative and behaving professionally, plus the technical skills your field requires. The technical layer gets you considered. The rest weighs heavily in whether you are hired and how well you do once you start. That can feel unsettling if you have spent years being graded mainly on what you know, but every one of these skills can be learned, and most can be practiced in work you already do. Which skills employers want is fairly settled. The harder questions are which ones you already have, which to work on first, and how to prove any of them to someone who has never seen you work. ## Six good skills employers look for When employers screen new graduates' resumes, problem-solving and teamwork top the list of what they look for, with communication close behind, according to NACE's Job Outlook 2025. Initiative, a strong work ethic and technical skills also rank high. Graduates rarely have much work history, so employers read these attributes from projects, part-time jobs, internships and activities, as a forecast of how someone will work alongside other people. Five of the six entries below are about exactly that: how you work with others and how you manage yourself. ### 1. Communication Good communication skills are quite consistently rated the number-one skill firms look for in new hires, The Irish Times reported in 2022. The reason is structural: almost every piece of work passes through it. An analysis helps only once a colleague can follow it, a question helps only if it is asked clearly and at the right moment, and a status update nobody can act on costs the team time. For someone starting out, communication is less about eloquence than about being understood: saying what you need plainly, explaining your own work to people outside your field, and listening well enough to answer the question that was actually asked. It is also the one skill you demonstrate in the application itself, so a clear, concise cover letter is already evidence. ### 2. Teamwork Teamwork shares the top of NACE's list with problem-solving, and it appears again among the non-technical skills employers most want from new graduates in a QS survey of 26,742 employers. Its value comes from a plain fact about work: very little gets done by one person, so what you contribute is worth only as much as how well it fits with everyone else's. In practice it means doing your share reliably, sharing what you know instead of guarding it, giving the team credit, and disagreeing about the work without making it personal. Being liked by a team is a bonus; being someone the team can count on is the skill. A shift you covered so your coworkers were not left short, or the unglamorous part of a group project you took on because nobody else would, is the kind of evidence employers recognize. ### 3. Decision-making, or what employers call problem-solving Problem-solving tops NACE's list, and in the QS survey it was the area where employers were least satisfied with graduates. That gap has a simple explanation: technical knowledge is what degree programs teach and grade directly, while working through an [open-ended problem](/knowledge/types-of-skills/problem-solver-skill/) with other people is learned mostly by doing. At the start of a career, much of what employers mean by problem-solving is judgment. It means working out what is actually wrong before you act, getting a second opinion from someone more experienced, relying on facts rather than hunches, knowing which decisions are yours to make, and accepting "good enough" when perfect would cost too much. Because this is where employers feel the biggest gap, one concrete example stands out: a problem you noticed, what you decided, and what changed as a result. ### 4. Influence without a title Initiative ranks high on NACE's list as well, and it ties into something employers look for in graduates without expecting them to have it yet: [leadership potential](/knowledge/teamwork/teamwork-and-leadership-examples/). That rarely means a management title. Employers read it from smaller signs, such as leading a project, motivating peers, mentoring someone newer or driving a change. Graduates seldom hold formal authority, so initiative shown in small settings is the evidence that counts. At work, this is what influence looks like early on: volunteering to prepare the first draft or organize the meeting, asking for an opportunity instead of waiting to be offered one, and building credibility by delivering on what you take on. A student society you helped run, or a better routine you got adopted at a part-time job, belongs on your resume. ### 5. Professional behaviors A strong work ethic ranks high with employers in NACE's survey, and it overlaps with what they assess beyond task ability: whether you can operate in a professional setting and settle quickly into a workplace's norms for how people behave, communicate and work together. Flexibility, which the QS survey lists among the skills employers most want from new graduates, shows up here as being open to change rather than defending the way you did things before. The behaviors involved are ordinary: being on time, finishing the dull administrative task without complaint, treating everyone with the same respect whatever their role. That ordinariness is exactly why they get noticed when they are missing. ### 6. Technical skills for your field Technical skills are the field-specific layer: the software, methods and subject knowledge a particular role requires. They differ from job to job, so the job description is the best guide to which ones a role needs. They matter, because they are often what gets you considered at all, and the QS survey found employers most satisfied with graduates' technical literacy. That is good news and a warning at once. It is the layer your degree has already built, and for the same reason it is rarely what separates you from other candidates. ## Why the human side carries so much weight Hard skills belong to a specific job. The other five entries on this list carry across industries, employers and roles, so they keep their value every time you change jobs. You need both, but the [transferable layer](/knowledge/types-of-skills/transferable-skills-definition-and-examples/) is the safer long-term investment, and it is also where the gap between what employers want and what graduates bring is widest. If that runs against what years of exams have taught you to expect, you will not be the first to discover it on the job. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work described the moment it landed for him: > In our studies, we read a great deal about leadership, organizations, employees, and HR, and all of that is useful. But it doesn't always feel entirely representative of what actually happens in the real world. > > Textbooks often describe organizations in terms of systems, structures, and fairly clear-cut frameworks. But once I entered working life, I realized that much of organizational life is actually shaped by human relationships and human behavior. > > The systems and structures are there to hold things together, but it is people who make the organization work in practice. In that sense, the human side of working life carries far more weight than I had expected. He does not dismiss what he studied, and neither should you. Your degree and your technical skills are the foundation. The skills on this list are what let other people make use of it, and they can be built in whatever work you are doing now. ## How to prove a skill on a resume and in an interview Employers screening new graduates now put more weight on evidence of skills such as problem-solving and teamwork than on GPA, as Diverse: Issues In Higher Education reported from NACE's Job Outlook 2025. The logic is predictive: grades show how you performed in a course, while a demonstrated skill shows how you are likely to perform in a job. If you worry that your grades alone will not carry you, this is the practical answer. Showing where you used a skill can matter as much as your transcript. A skill counts when you can point to where you used it. For each one you want to claim, have a [specific example ready](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/soft-skills-interview-questions/): the situation, what you did, and what changed because of it. Ordinary experience is enough raw material, whether it comes from a part-time job, a group project, a volunteer role or a student society. Writing "excellent communicator" proves nothing; describing how you calmed a customer whose order had gone wrong, and kept their business, proves a great deal. A blank spot simply marks a skill you have not had the chance to practice yet, and each of the five people-related skills above can be practiced in your next semester or your next job. ## Where to start when the list feels long Six skills is a lot to work on at once, and you do not have to. Two principles narrow it down. First, start where employer demand is strongest: communication, teamwork and decision-making sit at the top of what employers screen for, and they pay off in every role you will ever hold. Second, build on what you are naturally good at instead of spreading your effort evenly across every weakness. Unlike school, work lets you choose much of what you learn, and a strength you develop tends to give you more back than a weakness you merely patch. Together, those principles turn a long list into a short one: the high-demand skills where you already have some footing, plus the one gap that would hold you back most. Rather than guessing at that short list, you can [pinpoint the skills worth prioritizing](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and spend your limited time there. ## What makes the rest of the list work for you Run back through the six and the same condition keeps appearing. A skill helps you only once you know you have it, once other people can see it, and once the way you behave makes them trust what they see. **Building Self-Awareness** is what turns a general list of good skills into your own starting point. The useful question is not which skills are good, but which of them you already have and which are missing. That means telling your natural strengths apart from mere competence: pay attention to how you work on a task, how it makes you feel, and what results it gets. Feedback covers what you cannot see yourself, and asking a supervisor or project partner for one specific thing to do differently next time surfaces blind spots that reflection alone will not. A gap you find is not a fixed trait, just a skill you have not learned yet. **Communication** is the skill every other one travels through, which is why it earns a second look here. Its practical core is narrower than it sounds: be clear and direct, put the main point first, listen fully before you answer, and speak up in meetings even when you are the newest person in the room. These are habits rather than a gift for speeches, so quieter people can build them as well as anyone. You can start this week, in the next email you send or the next question you ask, and notice the difference in how people respond. **Professional Behaviors** are the part of your skills that colleagues notice first. They are made of small, learnable signals: showing respect to everyone regardless of role, expressing appreciation, staying open to change, and steering clear of the habits that quietly put people off, such as staying passive in discussions, acting as if you know better, or complaining by default. They cost nothing to adopt, they are visible from your first week, and they often decide whether a capable newcomer becomes one colleagues actually want to work with. Of the three, self-awareness is the hardest to build on your own, since a blind spot is exactly what you cannot see from where you stand. The **free Job Skills Test** [gives you an outside view](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) of your own habits, covering these three among **twelve work skills** in all, so the gaps it shows come with names you can work on. ## What you may already be doing You might recognize parts of this list in things you already do without calling them skills. If you have been the one in a group project who wrote the plan everyone else worked from, or the one at a part-time job who spotted a recurring mistake and suggested a fix, that is communication and initiative already at work, and each comes with a story you can tell. The skills you have not built yet are not a verdict on who you are. They are behaviors you can learn in your own way, starting with whichever one would make the biggest difference to the application or job in front of you. Each step up, from your first job to your first project of your own to the first time someone relies on your judgment, leans on them a little harder. That is a reason to begin now rather than a reason to worry, because every one of them can be practiced in the work you already have. The next step is seeing your own starting point. ## See which good skills you already have From here, it comes down to measuring yourself against the list. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: it measures all twelve, shows which ones are already working in your favor, and points to the ones that would make the biggest difference to your applications and your first years at work. 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? Good skills are the ones employers look for in every role: communication, teamwork, sound judgment and more. See the six that count and how to show them. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Communication, Professional Behaviors. ### 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/professional-behaviors.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/good-skills/ Preferred summary: "Good skills are the ones employers look for in every role: communication, teamwork, sound judgment and more. See the six that count and how to show them." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.