# A List of Hard and Soft Skills, With What Each Looks Like in Practice Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/list-of-hard-and-soft-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/list-of-hard-and-soft-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 A list of hard and soft skills with examples of each, what employers weigh most, and how to show both on your résumé so the soft half doesn't sound generic. ## Key facts - Title: A List of Hard and Soft Skills, With What Each Looks Like in Practice - Category: What Are Soft Skills - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Communication, Professional Behaviors - Primary keyword: list of hard and soft skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/list-of-hard-and-soft-skills/ ## What this page covers - A list of hard and soft skills with examples of each, what employers weigh most, and how to show both on your résumé so the soft half doesn't sound generic. - Practical guidance for list of hard and soft skills - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation A list of hard and soft skills has two halves. Hard skills are the technical, teachable abilities a job calls for, such as programming, data analysis, a foreign language or software like Microsoft Office, and you can prove them with a test, a certificate or a portfolio. Soft skills are how you work with people and manage yourself, such as communication, teamwork and resilience, and they only show in what you do. The hard half usually fills itself in, because a course, a tool or a language level already has a name. The soft half is harder: "good communicator" reads the same on every résumé and says nothing about what you actually do. [Every soft skill can be learned](/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/train-soft-skills/), though, and each one breaks down into behaviors you can point to. Once you see what those behaviors are, the second half of the list stops being guesswork. ## Hard skills vs. soft skills: what separates them The real difference is visibility. A hard skill can be checked from the outside: either you can write the query, translate the contract or build the page, or you can't, and a test or a finished piece of work settles it. That is why hard skills can be stated directly on an application, ideally with a level or a certificate attached. A soft skill shows only in behavior, and only over time: in how you explain a problem, keep a commitment or handle a colleague who disagrees with you. Some soft skills are interpersonal, about working with others. Others are self-regulatory, about managing yourself when work gets demanding. No exam settles them, so they have to be backed by examples rather than simply claimed. Employers weigh both, and they weigh the soft side heavily. In the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, a survey of more than 1,000 employers across 22 industries and 55 economies, the top-ranked core skill is analytical thinking, which seven in ten companies consider essential. Next come resilience, flexibility and agility, and then leadership and social influence. None of the three is a tool you can be certified in. They are about how people think, cope and work with others, and most jobs expect them on top of whatever technical skills the role names. ## Hard skills list There is no complete, universal list of hard skills, and there can't be: every profession has its own, and there are far too many to collect. The hard skills that belong on your list are the ones named in job ads for the role you want. The five below recur across a wide range of fields. ### 1. Programming and web development Coding in languages such as Python or Java, and building or maintaining websites, are classic hard skills: taught as defined content, testable, and easy to prove with something you made. A small portfolio of working code says more than a course title. Whether this belongs on your list depends entirely on the field. In a software or data role it is the entry requirement; in many other roles it is a bonus that sets you apart. ### 2. Data interpretation Reading a dataset, summarizing it in a spreadsheet and drawing a conclusion someone else can follow is a hard skill with a soft edge. The method is technical and checkable. Deciding what the numbers mean, and what they don't, is judgment, which is why this skill sits so close to the analytical thinking employers rank first. On a résumé, name the tools and methods you used, and point to one analysis whose result someone actually acted on. ### 3. Software and tool proficiency Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite and the specialist systems a role runs on all belong here. List them with an honest level: "advanced Excel, including pivot tables" tells an employer far more than "computer skills." This is also the part of a skills list that ages fastest. Employers surveyed for the WEF report expect 39% of workers' core skills to change by 2030, down from 44% in the 2023 edition, so treat the tools half of your list as a snapshot you will keep updating. ### 4. Technological literacy, AI and data skills The WEF report names AI and big data, networks and cybersecurity, and technological literacy as the skills growing fastest in importance. Technology is also one of the eight [career readiness competencies](/knowledge/employability/career-readiness-competencies/) NACE sets out for the move from education to work. For an entry-level candidate, this does not mean becoming an engineer. It means working comfortably with the tools a role is adopting, AI tools included, and being able to say concretely what you have used them for. ### 5. Foreign language fluency A language is one of the most portable hard skills: measurable, certifiable and useful in any role with international customers, colleagues or suppliers. State it with a recognized level rather than a vague "fluent," so an employer knows exactly what you can do with it, whether that is small talk, negotiating or writing reports. ## Soft skills list Soft skills are rarely on a syllabus. Most people pick them up once they start working, often without realizing that is what they are learning. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work described her student job like this: > I would feel a week had gone by without working on anything relevant to my degree — but I was learning other things. How to behave at a workplace, how to write a professional email, how to greet someone far more important than yourself, how to book a meeting. Not much academically; it's everything around it I learned. Her degree still mattered. What the job added was the other half of the list, and employers look for that half explicitly. NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, defines eight career readiness competencies for graduates: career and self-development, communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, teamwork and technology. Seven of the eight are soft skills, and NACE calls them competencies precisely because they can be measured and developed. The six below come up in nearly every role, each with what it looks like when you actually do it. ### 1. Communication Communication is on NACE's list, and it is the soft skill through which all the others become visible. In practice it comes down to a handful of specific behaviors: putting your main point first, writing an email someone can act on without a follow-up question, listening until the other person has finished, and speaking up in a meeting when you have something useful to add. Each of these leaves evidence. "Wrote the weekly update for a six-person project team" proves more than "excellent communication skills" ever will. ### 2. Teamwork Teamwork, another NACE competency, shows in what you do for the group rather than for your own grade: doing what you committed to, sharing what you know instead of guarding it, and disagreeing openly before backing the decision the team makes. It is not the same as going along with everyone. Group assignments, part-time jobs, sports teams and volunteer work all produce real examples, and that is where your evidence for this one will come from. ### 3. Professional behaviors NACE calls it professionalism; in practice it is the unwritten conduct colleagues rely on. Being on time, treating everyone with the same respect, showing genuine interest in other people's work, handling confidential information properly, and steering clear of passive or chronically negative behavior. Hardly anyone lists these on a résumé, yet they shape how colleagues see you from your first week. ### 4. Resilience The WEF ranks resilience, flexibility and agility as the second most important core skill. At work, resilience means recovering from a setback by putting your energy into what you can actually control, noticing when an automatic thought like "I always get this wrong" is distorting the picture, and talking problems through with people you trust. It is not about never being knocked back. A project that went wrong, and what you did next, makes a stronger example than any claim to be "stress-resistant." ### 5. Influence Leadership and social influence is third in the WEF ranking, and NACE lists leadership among its competencies. Early in a career, this rarely involves a title. It means building a reputation for delivering, taking the initiative to volunteer for the task nobody else picks up, and persuading people by understanding what matters to them instead of relying on authority. The evidence is usually small and concrete: an idea you pitched that a team adopted, or an event you organized because someone had to. ### 6. Self-awareness NACE's list opens with career and self-development, and self-awareness is where that starts. It means knowing what you are genuinely good at, not just competent at, and seeking out feedback that shows you what you can't see from the inside. It rarely appears on a résumé as a named skill. What it does is let you write the rest of the list honestly, because it tells you which soft skills you can back with examples and which you are still building. ## How to use a list of hard and soft skills on your résumé The two halves go in different places. Hard skills belong in a skills section, each with a level, a certificate or a project that proves it. Soft skills belong in your [experience descriptions](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/soft-skills-resume-examples/) and [interview answers](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/soft-skills-interview-questions/), as short examples of what you did and what came of it. "Teamwork" and "communication" as bare words add nothing, because anyone can type them. This matters more than it used to. In NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey, 64.8% of employers said they use skills-based hiring practices for new entry-level hires: they assess what a candidate can demonstrably do rather than relying on the degree alone. For a graduate, the skills you claim, and the evidence behind them, are increasingly what gets screened. Two habits keep the list useful. First, tailor it to each application: match the hard skills to the ones the job ad names, and pick the two or three soft skills the role clearly depends on. Second, treat the hard half as something you update and the soft half as something you build. Tools change, while the ability to communicate clearly, work in a team and recover from a setback carries into every job you will hold. If you can't yet tell which soft skills you could back with a real example, the free Job Skills Test gives you a quick read on the [soft skills you can claim](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) today. Every one of them can be developed, so a thin spot is something to work on, not something to hide. ## What turns a skills list into a strong application Look back over both lists and a difference in what they ask of you shows up. The hard half rests on what you have learned. The soft half rests on whether you can see your own behavior clearly, put it into words, and show it day to day in front of other people. **Building Self-Awareness** is what lets you sort the list honestly. A strength is not just something you can do; it is something you do well, that gets you good results, and that tends to give you energy rather than drain it. Asking a teammate or supervisor for one specific piece of feedback, such as what they would want you to keep doing on the next project, often surfaces a strength you had never thought to list, and now and then a blind spot that is better caught early. **Communication** is how any skill on the list reaches an employer. The habits that make you clear at work make you clear on paper too: lead with the result, keep it brief, be specific. "Coordinated three departments to move a launch date" is communication in action and evidence at the same time. It runs the other way as well, because listening closely to how a job ad or an interviewer describes the role tells you which of your skills to bring forward. **Professional Behaviors** are the part of the soft list that gets tested in person rather than on paper. Punctuality, respect for everyone regardless of role, genuine interest in colleagues' work and discretion with confidential information are small signals, but they are how a new colleague earns trust before any real results exist. Because they are concrete behaviors rather than personality, you can practice them deliberately, starting in a student job or an internship. The **free Job Skills Test** scores you on these three and on **the nine other work skills that sit alongside them**, so you can [spot which skill to build first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/). Each of them is learnable, so a low score simply marks your starting point. ## Starting from what you already do Some of the soft list may already be part of your week under other names. If you have kept a group project moving after someone dropped out, or noticed that you explain things better face to face than by email, you already have raw material for two of the skills above. The ones that aren't there yet are built the same way, through small repetitions, and you get to pick which one comes first. Early on, the hard half of the list is what gets you considered; a few years in, the soft half increasingly decides what you are trusted with next, and that half keeps growing in every job you hold. A clear picture of where you stand now makes the next step an easy one. ## Put a score next to the soft half You have both lists and know how to show each half; the only thing left is knowing where you actually stand. The Job Skills Test is a **free**, 7-minute self-assessment of the twelve work skills behind the soft side of a résumé, and it points out which of them would add the most to your next application. ## 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 list of hard and soft skills with examples of each, what employers weigh most, and how to show both on your résumé so the soft half doesn't sound generic. ### 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/what-are-soft-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/what-are-soft-skills/list-of-hard-and-soft-skills/ Preferred summary: "A list of hard and soft skills with examples of each, what employers weigh most, and how to show both on your résumé so the soft half doesn't sound generic." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.