Basically there are three kinds of skills, and it is useful to think of them in three categories: verbs, nouns, and adjectives. ADVANCED: What You Offer the World
Transferable or Functional Skills
Some of your skills are verbs, things you do. Like: healing, sewing, constructing, driving, communicating, persuading, motivating, negotiating, calculating, organizing, planning, memorizing, researching, synthesizing, etc. These are your Transferable or Functional Skills. They are also called talents, gifts, and “natural skills.”
They are called your Transferable Skills because they can be transferred from one occupation to another and used in a variety of fields, no matter how often you change careers.
These skills are things you are good at doing in one of three universes: people, things, or data/information/ideas. Most of us lean toward preferring work that is primarily with either people, things, or data. And why? Because that’s where we use the skills we most love to use.
Personal Trait Skills
Adjectives or adverbs are the third kind of skills. Like: accurate, adaptable, creative, dependable, flexible, methodical, persistent, punctual, responsible, self-reliant, tactful, courteous, kind, etc.
These are your Personal Trait Skills. Traits are the ways you manage yourself, the way you discipline yourself. They give a style to your transferable skills. Often these are developed only through experience.
Subject Skills or Knowledge Skills
(Technical Knowledge - Tools & Methodologies) Some of your skills are nouns, subjects and objects you acquire and understand well. Like: computers, English, antiques, flowers, colors, fashion, Microsoft Word, music, farm equipment, data, graphics, Asia, Japanese, the stock market, etc.
These are called your Subject Skills or Knowledge Skills. They are subjects that you know something about and love to use in your work. They are often called “your expertises.”
You have learned these, over the years, through apprenticeships (formal or informal), school, life experience, or books, or from a mentor. Which ones do you absolutely love to use? This is the second set of skills you have to offer the world.
How you combine these three kinds of skills is what makes you unique.
It is important, then, that you figure out what kinds of jobs need the transferable skills, and the expertises, and the traits that you most like to use.