Skills

Everyone has certain skills. Skills indicate what someone is proficient at. Skills are usually learnable, in contrast to personality traits and characteristics, which determine your style or attitude more than your skills.

Skills that suit you

It’s extremely common for us to be unaware of certain skills we have, as we often assume that a certain skill is universal, i.e. that everyone has it. However, this is not always the case. There are people who have absolutely no trouble organising a huge party. They send out the invitations, buy what’s needed and make sure there’s a party atmosphere. In other words, they’ve got organisational skills without necessarily knowing it. Other people might have a bit more difficulty doing all this. Which is inconceivable for some, for whom organising a big party is second nature.

Skills often determine how people view you. Within an organisation or club, people commonly make assumptions about the skills you have on the basis of the role you hold. But it could well be that you also have other skills that aren’t relevant (or are less relevant) to performing that role.

One can broadly distinguish betwezqen three types of skill. Social skills, fact-related skills and object-related skills.

1. Social skills

Social skills pertain to skills relating to people. Consider in this regard such things as cooperation, negotiation or entertainment. Social skills are sometimes also referred to as interpersonal skills.

2. Fact-related skills

Fact-related skills include such skills as analysis, copying or comparison. Often, fact-related skills are also called cognitive skills and occasionally academic skills as well.

3. Object-related skills

Object-related skills include such skills as doing precision work, operating a piece of equipment or setting something up.

Use the skills you have and enjoy using

Not every skill is equally complex. The more complex a skill is, the less competition you’ll usually have in terms of it. It’s a great shame if certain skills that you enjoy using don’t crop up much in your work. Which is why the challenge is to find some way of using the skills you enjoy using and that suit you. Whether or not you actually enjoy using a skill you’ve got is very much down to your personality.

The comprehensive competency test from 123test will enable you to get a picture of your skills and how good you are at them. The competency test will show how high you score compared to others on 16 work-related competencies.