What are Essential Skills?

Essential skills are important to develop and showcase on your resume, but what exactly constitutes an essential skill? They are people, social, and communication skills combined with character or personality traits, attitudes, career attributes, and social and emotional intelligence quotients. These skills empower people to navigate their environment, collaborate with others, perform well, and achieve their goals. Combined with technical skills, essential skills are key in the workplace. They are also referred to as core competencies, core skills, or soft skills. 

The primary difference between technical and essential skills is how people develop and use them in the workplace.  Essential skills are more often seen as traits you may have developed throughout your life. Technical skills are studied and developed through education or specific training. They include competencies like how to use a certain machine, software, or another tool. 

Check out this article to learn more about career readiness competencies! 

Use strong action verbs on your resume to showcase your essential skills! Consider using the following strong action verbs to highlight your essential skills: