# Skills Search: How to Find Work That Fits What You Can Do Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-search/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-search.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 search finds work by what you can do, not by job title. Learn the four types of skills, how to name yours, and how to turn matches into options. ## Key facts - Title: Skills Search: How to Find Work That Fits What You Can Do - Category: Types of Skills - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Setting Goals, Networking - Primary keyword: skills search - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-search/ ## What this page covers - A skills search finds work by what you can do, not by job title. Learn the four types of skills, how to name yours, and how to turn matches into options. - Practical guidance for skills search - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation A skills search means looking for work by what you can do instead of by job title: you list your skills, and a matching tool or a job board's skill filter shows which occupations or openings fit. It works best with a specific list that covers both technical and interpersonal skills. That sounds simple until you sit down to write the list. Which of the things you did in courses, a part-time job or a group project count as skills, and what are they called? The answer starts with the kinds of skills there are, because each kind behaves differently in a search. ## How a skills search works Most job hunting starts from a title: you pick "marketing assistant" or "junior analyst" and read the openings that come back. That only works if you already know which titles exist and which of them would suit you. If you have no clear sense yet of [where you would fit](/knowledge/setting-goals/career-discovery/), you are not the only one. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work described it like this: > 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 search will not answer his question for him, but it changes where the answer comes from. Instead of guessing at a destination, you start from what you can already do and let the matches show you which kinds of work it leads to. Two public tools are built on this idea. The first, O*NET OnLine's Skill Search, draws on the U.S. Department of Labor's database of what occupations involve and the skills each one requires. You select the skills you have, or are about to acquire, and it returns the occupations that match your list. That second option matters if you are still studying, because skills from courses you are finishing already count. CareerOneStop's free Skills Matcher, built on the same Department of Labor data, works by self-rating instead: you rate yourself on 40 skills and get a list of careers that fit the profile. Because you supply the ratings, the results are only as accurate as your view of yourself. Rate the skills you built in coursework, a part-time job or volunteering lower than they really are, and the tool shows you a narrower list of careers than your actual profile supports. The fix is to check each rating against a concrete moment when you used the skill: an example either exists or it does not. The same logic runs the other way. When an employer [filters applications](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/skills-to-put-on-job-app/) or profiles by skill, it can only match the skills you have actually named. Finding good matches and being found depend on the same thing: a list of your skills in clear, specific terms. ## The four types of skills to search with Skills are not all the same kind of thing, and the kind decides how a skill behaves in a search. O*NET sorts skills into basic, cross-functional and technology skills, while everyday language splits them into hard and soft skills. No single scheme is the final word. A 2022 review prepared for the UK Skills and Productivity Board concluded that no skills taxonomy is perfect for every purpose, even as it judged O*NET the best fit for the purpose it examined. That is why the same ability can carry different labels in different tools and job ads, so when a term looks unfamiliar, check what it describes before deciding you lack it. Four types cover what you need to build a useful list. ### Basic skills O*NET describes basic skills as developed capacities that help you learn and take in new knowledge faster. They are the foundation your education built, and they are real assets. Their weakness in a search is that nearly every job relies on them. Career guidance from California State University Channel Islands points out that selecting only a few general skills in a skill search, especially basic ones, returns a large number of matching occupations. Keep them on your list, but do not stop there: on their own they match almost everything and narrow almost nothing. ### Cross-functional skills Cross-functional skills, in O*NET's terms, are capacities that help you carry out activities found across many different jobs. This is the closest official counterpart to what most people call [transferable skills](/knowledge/types-of-skills/define-transferable-skills/), and for a career starter it is often the most useful category, because these skills open occupations beyond the title your degree points to. A thesis is evidence that you can plan a long piece of work and deliver it on a deadline; a customer-facing part-time job is evidence that you can handle people under pressure. Neither shows up on a transcript as a skill, so the translation is yours to make: name the ability, then attach the situation where you used it. ### Technical and technology skills Hard skills are the technical, teachable abilities that can usually be shown or tested: a language, an accounting method, a statistics package. O*NET keeps a separate Technology Skills framework for the software and tools used at work, grouped by standard product codes. These are the most concrete skills you have and the easiest to search for, which also makes them the easiest for an employer's filter to find, as long as you name them precisely. "Computer skills" matches nothing in particular. The name of the program you actually used does. ### Interpersonal and self-management skills The skills that shape how you work with others and manage yourself, often grouped as soft skills, are the easiest to leave out. They are the least visible on a transcript, so it is easy to forget that a group project, a part-time job or a volunteer role built them. Communication, teamwork, time management and working with your manager all belong here, and a search can only match them if you put them in concrete terms with an example behind each one. "Good team player" is a claim. "Kept a four-person project on schedule by agreeing deadlines with each member" is evidence of teamwork and time management at once. If these are the skills you find hardest to put into words, the free Job Skills Test can help you [name the workplace skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) you already use, so your list starts from specific terms rather than a blank page. ## Hard, soft or transferable? Hard skills on one side, interpersonal and self-management skills on the other: that is the everyday split. "Transferable" is not a third type alongside them. It describes how portable a skill is, and both kinds travel. A statistics package is as useful in a public agency as in a bank, and so is the habit of stating your main point first. Seeing this saves you two mistakes: listing the same skill twice under two labels, and leaving out an interpersonal skill because you never thought of it as transferable. ## Getting more out of a skills search A few habits separate a list of matches you can act on from one you cannot. Pair the general with the distinctive. Basic skills belong on your list, but add the specific tools, methods and situations that set you apart, or the results will be too long to use. Put an example behind every skill. Name the skill, the situation and the result. This keeps your self-ratings honest and gives you something concrete to say when an employer asks. Use the label the employer uses. If a job ad describes something you can do under a different name, that is a translation problem, not a gap. Describe your skill in the ad's terms. Treat the matches as options, not a verdict. A matching tool compares skills and nothing else. It does not know what you want from work: the values that matter to you, the kind of tasks that give you energy, the workplace where you would do your best. The shortlist still has to pass through your own priorities. And when a match appeals but calls for a skill you do not have yet, you have not hit a wall; you have found [the next thing to learn](/knowledge/improve-skills/learning-new-skills-and-knowledge/). ## What makes the matches worth having Look across those habits and a pattern shows: the tool does the matching, but what goes into it, and what you do with what comes out, is up to you. **Building Self-Awareness** is where an accurate list comes from. It means telling what you are genuinely good at apart from what you can merely do, by looking at how you work on a task, how it feels and what results follow. Asking a project partner or a manager for specific feedback then brings out strengths you would not have named yourself. The result is a list you can rate honestly and search with, and one that grows as you do. **Setting Goals** decides which matches deserve your time. A wider field of options only helps if you can filter it, and the filter that holds is your own: work that plays to your strengths and fits your work values, whether those are security, the people around you or room to express yourself, rather than a title that sounds impressive or the path others expect. Treat a first role as an experiment over six to eighteen months, judged by what it teaches you. **Networking** reaches the openings a search never shows. A filter only finds jobs that someone advertised and described in skill terms. People from your studies and past workplaces already know what you can do, and they are the ones who pass on an opening or an introduction that fits. That works best when the relationship exists before you need it and runs both ways: sharing what you know, connecting people, helping when you can. When a match you want calls for more than you have today, the free Job Skills Test can help you [find the skill to build next](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/). It looks at these three alongside **nine more workplace skills**, and every one of them can be learned. Some of this may already be part of how you work. If you have ever explained to someone why a group project went well, you were describing skills you could put on a list today. The ones you have not built yet are not fixed gaps, only things you have not learned so far, and learning them does not ask you to become someone else. A technical skill often opens the first door, while the way you work with people and manage yourself counts for more with each step after it, so an early, honest picture gives you time to work on what matters. The useful move now is to see that picture in one place. ## Know what you are searching with The only thing left is to find out what belongs at the top of your list. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: in 7 minutes it shows where you stand across twelve skills that count in almost every job, and which of them would make the biggest difference to work on next. Your strongest skills become your search terms; the rest become your plan. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, results shown instantly.* ## 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 search finds work by what you can do, not by job title. Learn the four types of skills, how to name yours, and how to turn matches into options. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Setting Goals, Networking. ### 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/networking.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-search/ Preferred summary: "A skills search finds work by what you can do, not by job title. Learn the four types of skills, how to name yours, and how to turn matches into options." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.