# Skills Profiler: What It Measures and What to Do With the Results Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-profiler/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-profiler.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 A skills profiler maps your job-specific, foundational and transferable skills. Learn what the results mean, why self-ratings need checking, and what to do next. ## Key facts - Title: Skills Profiler: What It Measures and What to Do With the Results - Category: Types of Skills - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Setting Goals, Building Confidence - Primary keyword: skills profiler - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-profiler/ ## What this page covers - A skills profiler maps your job-specific, foundational and transferable skills. Learn what the results mean, why self-ratings need checking, and what to do next. - Practical guidance for skills profiler - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation A skills profiler is an assessment that turns what you can do into a structured profile. Usually that means your job-specific skills, your foundational skills such as literacy, numeracy and digital skills, and the [transferable skills](/knowledge/types-of-skills/transferable-skills-list/) of how you work with others and manage yourself. It then compares the profile with other people's or matches it to occupations. Treat the result as a starting hypothesis to test, not a verdict. That is useful if you have a degree or a few jobs behind you and still find it hard to say plainly what you are good at, because a profile gives you the words. Whether it gives you an accurate picture depends on two things: how each part was measured, and what you do with it next. ## What a skills profiler measures Most skills profilers split your abilities into a few distinct kinds, because each kind is built, measured and valued differently. The OECD Skills Profiling Tool is a clear example. It is a free online assessment designed to support career decisions, and in about 25 minutes it covers occupation-specific skills, foundational skills, and a set of noncognitive skills measured with academically validated self-report tests. You can read any profile through the same lens, plus one category that rarely fits a single box. ### Occupation-specific skills These are the skills tied to doing a particular job: using a specific piece of software, knowing a regulation, running a lab procedure. They make you effective in one role quickly, but they carry over less readily to the next. Early in a career, this part of a profile often looks thin. That says how little time you have spent in any one role, not how much you can learn. ### Foundational skills Literacy, numeracy and digital skills sit underneath almost everything else. Nearly every job draws on them, and unlike most of a profile, they can be tested directly instead of being estimated from your own answers. In many profiles this is the most solid section, and it gives you something firm to stand on when the rest feels uncertain. ### Transferable skills: how you work with others and manage yourself This is the part of a profile that follows you into any role and any organization: how you communicate, work in a team, bounce back from setbacks, and manage your time. The OECD tool calls these noncognitive skills. They are learnable behaviors, not personality traits, so a low score here describes where you are today, not who you are. They are also the part employers trust least when it rests on your word alone, which is why checking it matters so much. ### Hybrid skills Some skills do not sit neatly in one category. Knowing a project-management tool is job-specific; using it to keep three colleagues on the same deadline is also a way of working with people. A profile that records only labels loses that second half. Write down the example behind the skill and you keep both. ## How a skills profiler turns your answers into results A profile only means something in comparison. The OECD tool lets you benchmark your profile against other users in your country, at your education level or in your age group. It then suggests occupations that use your skills, drawn from the O*NET occupational database. The OECD piloted it in late 2021 with 270 users and 38 career guidance counselors in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, and it is built to be used on your own or with a counselor. The list of [suggested occupations](/knowledge/setting-goals/what-occupation-is-right-for-me/) is tempting to treat as the answer, especially while working life itself still feels unclear. If that sounds familiar, you are in good company. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work told us: > I'm about to finish my master's degree, and I'm currently writing my thesis. But I still don't really know what I'm going to do once I'm on the other side of it. > > That is probably my biggest concern: I simply don't have a very clear picture of what working life actually looks like, or where I might fit into it. > > It feels as though I'm running toward the edge of a cliff, and I still don't know where I'm supposed to jump. A skills profile will not show him, or you, exactly where to jump. What it can do is replace a blank with a short list of leads worth exploring, and a clearer sense of which skills you would bring to each. The benchmark tells you where you stand relative to others. The occupations tell you where those skills get used. Neither one tells you which job to take. ## Why a self-reported skills profile needs checking The weak point of most skills profilers is that much of the profile comes from your own answers. Self-report captures how you see yourself, not what you actually do when a deadline moves or a meeting goes sideways. Employers know this. In the City of London Corporation's study of transferable skills in the workplace, employers found self-reported skills unreliable and rated interviews and simulated work tasks as better ways to judge skills than résumés or cover letters. A Fanshawe College report for HEQCO on assessing transferable skills found employers held the same view of self-assessments, and saw scenario-based interviews as more reliable. So treat a self-reported profile as a private working document, and strengthen it with two inputs a questionnaire cannot supply: - Concrete past experiences. For each skill your profile rates highly, write down one situation where you used it, what you did, and what came of it. If you cannot find an example, the skill is untested, not missing. - Feedback from people who have seen you work, such as a supervisor, a colleague or a project partner. [Ask one specific question](/knowledge/self-awareness/questions-to-ask-for-feedback/) per skill: when have you seen me do this well, and when not? Outside views catch the blind spots self-assessment misses. The examples you collect are also exactly what an employer asks for in a scenario question, so the effort pays off twice. If the transferable part of your profile is the part you feel least sure of, [a structured read of your workplace skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) gives you a second view to set beside your own, and each difference between the two becomes a good question to ask in that feedback conversation. ## What to do with your skills profile A skills profile is a snapshot of one moment, and skills change with practice. It becomes most useful when you sort it into three groups and come back to it later: - Strong and proven: skills the profile rates highly that you can back with an example. Lean on these when you choose roles and tasks. - Strong but untested: skills you rate highly with no example yet. Look for a task in the next few months that puts them to work. - Gaps: skills that score low. Pick one, not five, and treat it as [something to develop](/knowledge/improve-skills/develop-new-skills/), not a label. Run the profile again after six months or a change of role, and compare. Movement between the groups is the point. That is how a description of you turns into a record of progress. ## The skills that turn a profile into a plan Look at what the useful part of all this depends on: reading your results honestly, deciding what they mean for your next move, and working on a gap before you feel ready. None of that happens inside the profiler. It happens in you. **Building Self-Awareness** is what separates a profile you can act on from a self-portrait that is either too kind or too harsh. It means telling apart what you are genuinely good at from what you are merely competent at, and testing your own ratings against specific feedback from people who have seen you work. A questionnaire gives you the first draft; this skill is the editing. **Setting Goals** turns the output into direction. It means favoring roles and tasks in your strengths zone, checking each suggested occupation against your work values instead of skill match alone, and treating the list as experiments for the next six to eighteen months rather than a fixed plan. That keeps a list of matches from hardening into a verdict about your career. **Building Confidence** decides what happens when the profile shows a gap. Confidence grows from evidence of doing, built up in manageable steps, not from a better score. Choose one gap, practice it in a real task slightly outside your comfort zone, and note what happened. Each small success adds exactly the kind of evidence a self-reported profile lacks. Building Confidence is one of **twelve workplace skills** the Job Skills Test measures, and the other two here are among them as well. The test can [pinpoint which gap to start with](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), and since every one of the twelve can be learned, a low result marks your next step, not your limit. ## What your profile already says about you Parts of this may already sound like you. If there is a group project or a busy shift where people came to you with one particular kind of problem, you already have the first line of evidence no questionnaire can produce on its own. Whatever a profile shows today, it describes skills you are still building: the gaps can close with practice, you decide which ones matter most for you right now, and you can grow them without becoming someone else. The clearer you are about your skills, the more it helps each time you choose a role, a task or a next step, and a clear starting point is quick to get. ## Put a second view beside your skills profile Your next step is short. Take the Job Skills Test, a **free** self-assessment of your work skills that shows where you stand across all twelve and which ones would make the biggest difference for you. Then set its results beside your own profile and mark where the two agree and where they differ. The differences are where your examples and feedback questions belong. ## 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? A skills profiler maps your job-specific, foundational and transferable skills. Learn what the results mean, why self-ratings need checking, and what to do next. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Setting Goals, Building Confidence. ### 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/setting-goals.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/confidence.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/skills-profiler/ Preferred summary: "A skills profiler maps your job-specific, foundational and transferable skills. Learn what the results mean, why self-ratings need checking, and what to do next." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.