Know the Different Types of Skills

If there's one word in a resume that every prospective employee looks for and every applicant mentions, it is 'Skills'. That's proof enough to show how important it is for one to know his /her skill set and to expand it to include the ones that are required but missing.

There are different types of skills which can be broadly classified into the following categories:

• Foundation Skills:
  These skills are a must for any employee. They are classified as Basic, People, Thinking and Personal Qualities. They all fall into the following two categories.
• Marketable Skills:
  These are skills which are useful to your employer. They include
  • All the different types of skills mentioned in the foundation skill set above.
  • All the skills that the employer has specified in the advertisement for the job.
  Other than these two sets, any extra skills that you have, which are of absolutely no use to the boss are unmarketable skills. For example, singing a song backwards no matter how good you are at it!
• Transferable Skills:
  These are the skills that are useful in more than one kind of job. The more you develop these, the more are your chances in the job market. An employer might be attracted to your profile even if he has no immediate use for your extra skills, if he foresees any use for them in the future. The most common skill in this category is computer literacy. Armed with this, one can be a typist, a helper in a store, a document writer and a variety of other things.
• Motivated Skills:
  There is a saying that goes like this 'Find a job you love and you will never have to work a single day'. This is what motivated skills are all about. Things that you want to do, not things you have to do.