Reframing, Identifying, and Leveraging the Skills You Bring to a Job
A modern guide to recognizing your strengths, translating your experience, and creating your own career opportunities
For much of my professional life, the whole concept of “skills” seemed murky at best.
As a first-generation college graduate, I was incredibly proud when I graduated from Brown University—and also pretty lost, because I graduated with a liberal arts degree and absolutely no understanding of how to frame my skill set. (Maybe you can relate!)
My skills felt like a useless, random, confusing tangle of vague concepts that failed to point me in a clear direction. I could do a little bit of a variety of things, but nothing particularly well.
This feeling peaked during a performance review early in my career, when my supervisor called me a "generalist." It hit me like an insult—like she was calling me a nobody.
I wondered: What was wrong with me? Why didn’t I have a "thing"? Where did I belong?
“If only I had a real skill set that pointed me on a real path,” I thought, “then everything would click into place."
At the time, what I longed for was specialized expertise—the opposite of being a generalist.
Why hadn’t I become an expert in 20th century labor history or a software engineer for educational technology!? I thought that having specialized skills was the ticket to knowing what I was good at, where to go next, and what steps to take.
But now, as a career and leadership coach who has worked with hundreds of clients in all different roles and sectors, I’ve realized that there is no golden ticket.
The folks who have the kind of specialization that I’ve longed for often feel stuck and pigeonholed in one type of work. Because of their narrow focus, professional opportunities seem more limited.
They wonder: Do I have to start all over again on a different track? How can I transfer these highly specific skills to a new setting? And how can I say that clearly so hiring managers notice me?
So whether you feel like a confusing blob of soft skills or an arrow of hard skills pointed in a specific direction, you’ve come to the right place.
You probably were never taught how to define and declare your skills as something marketable and valuable, and yet the truth is that skills are an important currency in today's workplace. While degrees and credentials still matter, it's your ability to identify, develop, and effectively communicate your unique skill set that will truly set you apart. This intentional skill awareness is essential for taking ownership of your career path, especially in a world where “forward and up,” linear career trajectories are increasingly rare.
Throughout this post, you'll discover a fresh approach to understanding your professional skills—one that works whether you're just starting your career, feeling stuck in the middle, or looking to redefine your professional identity even as an established leader. You'll learn to see beyond outdated categories of "hard" and "soft" skills to uncover the valuable expertise you already have under your belt but might not be claiming as your own.
Ultimately, the power of skills goes far beyond just helping you land your next role. This matters so much because when you truly understand and can articulate what you bring to the table, you transform not just the opportunities in front of you but your entire relationship with your career. You move from feeling like you're at the mercy of the job market to getting in the driver’s seat of a career path that’s fully aligned to you.
Understanding The Professional Skills You Bring to A Job
The New Skills Reality
For decades, we've been taught to think about professional skills in rigid categories:
Category 1: Hard skills (aka technical skills, or knowledge expertise) are presented as the ones that really count! They’re valued by others. They’re depicted as real, concrete, and masculine. You can point to them and clearly say: I can do this special thing.
Category 2: Soft skills (aka people skills, interpersonal skills, leadership skills) are presented as vague and fuzzy. They’re often viewed as overly feminized and relationship-based. And even if there’s a little more understanding out there that soft skills can be important, they’re still seen as hard to define and quantify, so it’s tough to make the case for how they can be applied in specific ways.
I’m bored by this antiquated, false distinction, and I propose that we throw out the labels of “hard” and “soft” skills altogether.
There’s too much packed into those labels that leaves us feeling limited rather than supported. My clients with specialized skills feel too stuck on a narrow path (Category 1), while my clients with generalist skills struggle to feel like they have nothing concrete to bring to the table (Category 2). Nobody feels good about where they are!
There’s some good news here, though—employers are increasingly tuned into what you can actually do (your skills!) rather than the names of your past titles or the credentials hanging on your wall. This shift is actually empowering for anyone who can clearly articulate what they bring to the table, regardless of their educational background.
Plus, that old line between "hard" and "soft" skills is becoming increasingly blurry. Leadership capabilities that used to be treated as optional extras are now seen as essential to meaningful work and organizational growth. You're likely already practicing leadership in your everyday work without recognizing or claiming it!
Think about the last time you facilitated a productive meeting, mentored a colleague through a challenge, or navigated a difficult conversation with care and candor. These are valuable professional capabilities that absolutely deserve to be acknowledged as part of your unique skill set.
Process Expertise is the New Specialized Skill set
The hard vs. soft skills illusion has also led us to think of skills purely as specialized content knowledge, like being an expert in software engineering or corporate accounting. Clearly, this doesn't necessarily serve, say, education majors who go on to do nothing whatsoever related to education and think, “Well, that was a waste of a degree.” (Remember how I felt when I graduated?)
But it turns out that there’s another category of skills that nobody talks about but is often where your most valuable, transferable, and marketable skills hang out: Process Expertise.
This is a more expansive way of looking at skills, because it’s not about knowing specific information or having a credential in one niched topic.
Process expertise refers to the set of steps that need to be taken in order to effectively complete a project. The project or content may change, but the process remains the same.
Take event planning, for instance—whether it's a small dinner party or a large and lavish fundraiser, the same key questions apply: Who is invited and how will we invite them? How will we set up the space? What are the goals of the event? This type of skill is about so much more than knowing where to rent tablecloths or how to set up an RSVP spreadsheet. Process expertise—literally, knowledge of how to approach and work through all of the steps of the process!—is essential here.
Project management is process expertise. So is research, program planning, meeting facilitation, strategic planning, budgeting, building a persuasive case, storytelling, synthesizing and presenting information, creating partnerships, and navigating cross-cultural teams… is this starting to sound familiar?
Interpersonal skills that center on working with people (abilities that might previously have been framed as “soft skills”) can also be thought of as process expertise—knowing how to facilitate collaboration, motivate others, and draw on their skills. Leadership doesn’t hinge on whether you’ve had a certain type of role or led a particular type of initiative. It’s process expertise!
The great thing about embracing your process expertise is that you can take this toolbox everywhere you go. Your methods of approaching different types of projects are key transferable skills that you can apply across jobs and industries. You can easily bring them with you from job to job, and they make you more adaptable to new work in our modern career landscape that’s full of rapid change.
Some jobs do require specific technical expertise—I'm thinking of a software engineer who needs to know SQL or Python—but more often, an employer can train you in the specific content or technology you need to know. For example, a nonprofit can teach you to track donors in the Salesforce database, but the tougher skill that they want you to bring from day one is understanding how to build relationships with donors. (Again, process expertise!)
So listen up, Liberal Arts majors, those of you who have gone on to do work that has nothing to do with your degrees, and folks who feel trapped by their limited special expertise: here’s your permission slip to think through your skills in a new way. You have a lot more to work with than you might expect.
A Simple Framework for Cataloging Your Skills
By now you’re probably thinking, “Okay, so how can I figure out what my skills actually are?”
One exercise you can try is to brainstorm or mind map your skills in three categories:
Content - What fields or areas do you know about?
Methodology - What processes are you practiced at carrying out?
Interests - If you could nerd out about learning something, what would it be?
This framework helps you see your abilities more holistically. Rather than focusing solely on your subject matter expertise, you'll begin to recognize the valuable methodologies and processes that you've mastered—skills that are often more transferable and in-demand than you might realize.
By taking time to explore all three categories, you'll discover connections between your content knowledge, methodological expertise, and interests that you might not have realized before. This personal skills inventory can really help you see your strengths and abilities in a new light. You don’t have to wish you graduated with a different degree or had a certification in some specific niche—instead, you can define and own the wide range of skills you already possess.
Developing Your Professional Skills
Once you've identified your unique constellation of skills, the next step is developing them intentionally. Whether you're looking to grow within your current role or pivot to something new, strategic skill development is essential for taking ownership of your career path.
Skill Development Approaches
There's no one-size-fits-all approach to professional growth. Different learning methods serve different purposes, and understanding which approach best fits your needs is the first step to effective development. Here are three powerful approaches to consider:
Education: Gaining Perspective
Education is about the bigger picture—understanding systems, context, and larger considerations. While many people immediately think "I need to go back to school" when they hit a career roadblock, it's worth examining your motivation.
Are you seeking further education from a place of purpose ("This perspective will open doors to opportunities I'm interested in!") or from a place of fear ("I'm not sure I'm enough, so maybe getting this diploma will make me feel ready")?
As coach Tara Mohr notes in her book “Playing Big” (one of my all-time top career book recommendations!) we often "look to an external qualification to give us a sense of internal permission to lead and create." But consider: How might you already be ready now?
Training: Building Specific Skills
Unlike education's big-picture focus, training loads your toolbox with specific, practical tools. Think certification programs, LinkedIn Learning classes, or workshops on specific skills like project management or data analysis. Training is typically less expensive and time-intensive than formal education because of its targeted nature.
When you’re considering training options, ask yourself: Where do you want to be, and what specific skills would help close the gap between your current capabilities and future goals?
Coaching: Integrating Perspective and Practice
Coaching helps you combine big-picture thinking with specific skill development. Working with a coach gives you the opportunity to rise above the day-to-day demands of your work and gain new perspective. A good coach helps you reframe limited thinking, identify specific areas for growth, and provides targeted tools and resources—plus the accountability to put them into practice.
The magic happens in partnership: you bring your real-life challenges, and your coach brings tools and questions to help you dig deeper, strategize solutions, and integrate new skills into your professional toolkit.
And these are just three of the many ways you can develop new professional skills! For even more ideas, check out the post Six Types of Professional Development & How They Can Serve You, where I share three additional approaches including "just-in-time" and "just-because" learning.
Creative Skill-Building Strategies
Professional development doesn't have to be expensive or time-consuming. Ideally, your employer would support your development with a continuing education stipend or other benefit, but you can bootstrap your own professional development, too!
Here are three strategies that have worked for my clients:
Take Targeted Classes
Professional development isn't just about enrolling in formal degree programs. There are tons of ways to grow specific skills with smaller-scale (and more affordable!) resources. This could be anything from self-study via YouTube videos to a certification program that earns you both skills and credentials. Platforms like LinkedIn Learning (with a free month trial), Skillsoft, Udemy, and edX offer courses on virtually every professional skill imaginable.
For example, one of my clients realized, after 15 years at the same job that here was a huge disconnect between her current role and what she saw as meaningful work. Rather than quitting impulsively or immediately enrolling in an expensive degree program, she found a free course on global poverty taught by an MIT professor on edX. This experience allowed her to explore a new field, connect with others, and thoughtfully confirm her interest before making a major career change.
Seek Out Mentorship (The 20-Minute Approach)
Asking someone to be your mentor can feel intimidating… but what about asking someone you admire for just 20 minutes of their time?
Prepare thoughtful questions, use their time well, and at the end of the conversation, say, "This has been so helpful. I really appreciate your mentorship. Would you be open to scheduling another 20-minute call in a few weeks to check in again?"
This approach makes mentorship manageable for both of you. The person will likely think, "That was mentorship? It was actually pretty easy." And they'll be more inclined to say yes to future conversations.
I first met my own mentor, Kate, at a local training event where she asked a question that caught my attention. While gathering our coats afterward, I simply invited her for tea. That initial conversation led to monthly meetings where we discussed work and professional growth. During one of these casual sessions, she reflected that she saw me giving people a new way to think about navigating their lives—a seed that eventually grew into Penney Leadership!
Become a Mentor Yourself
Here’s one you might never have considered: instead of just seeking a mentor, what if you became one? When you mentor others, you gain the opportunity to reflect on your own path, shape your professional narrative, and crystallize lessons learned. You'll be surprised by how much you have to share, and through supporting others, you'll develop your own professional identity and confidence.
I was asked to become a mentor before I felt ready. At 29, my alma mater invited me to join a program pairing female alumni with college seniors. My first thought was, "They think they can learn from me? I don't even have my own career figured out!" Now I understand that mentoring isn't about having all the answers—it's about asking powerful questions, together. This year marks my tenth year mentoring in the program.
Looking for even more creative ways to develop your skills? Read Six Creative Ways to Develop Your Professional Skills for additional strategies including leveraging virtual conferences and serving on boards and committees.
Remember that skill development isn't just about acquiring new capabilities—it's about connecting with others and growing through relationships. The most effective professional development combines learning with community, allowing you to expand both your toolkit and your network simultaneously.
The key is to get in the driver's seat of your own growth instead of waiting for your organization to direct (or fund) your development. By taking an intentional, creative approach to skill-building, you'll not only advance your career but also discover new dimensions of your professional identity along the way.
Communicating Your Skills Effectively
One of the most common challenges I hear from career coaching clients is, “How do I talk about the marketable skills I bring to the table?”
After all, knowing your skills is one thing, but clearly getting them across to a hiring manager or new connection is another.
The Language of Skills
So why is talking about our skills so challenging? (I have a whole post on that right here!)
But to sum it up, these are the three common issues I see:
First, there's a disconnect between how we experience our work internally and how others see it externally. What feels like "just doing my job" to you often represents valuable expertise that others don't have. You're so close to your own capabilities that you can't see their strength, or the fact that they might be rarer than you realize.
Second, we often undervalue the skills that come naturally to us. We assume that if something is easy for us, it must be easy for everyone. This couldn't be further from the truth. Your natural abilities are often your most marketable ones precisely because they're not universal.
Third, we struggle to translate our experiences into compelling professional narratives. It's not enough to list what you've done—you need to help others see the underlying capabilities that made your achievements possible and how these translate to future value.
Articulating your skills effectively requires looking beyond job titles and responsibilities to identify the core capabilities that you bring to any role. It's about crafting a cohesive narrative that connects your past experiences to future opportunities.
Communicating Your Skills On Your Resume, In Job Applications, and in Interviews
Showcasing your skills effectively takes more intention than just saying, “I’m a problem solver,” or including a line in a cover letter about being a team player. Let’s talk about how to take full advantage of opportunities in resumes, job applications, and interviews to clearly convey what you want people to know about your skills.
Resumes and Profiles: Tell Your Future Story
The word "resume" can spark some dread in even the most accomplished professional—but I believe we can approach it in a way that's both authentic and strategic.
Your old approach might have looked something like this:
Seeing the page as a set of facts about where you've been and what you've done
Copying and pasting bullet points from past job descriptions
Stressing about squishing it all into 1-2 pages
Crossing your fingers and hoping the hiring manager sees you as the right fit
But here’s a different approach you can try on:
Seeing your resume as a story about where you're going, not where you've been
Taking control of shaping your own narrative
Highlighting skills that connect to the professional future you want
Showing the hiring manager what they'll get when they get you
Your resume is not a document of facts about where you've been—it's a story about where you're going and what you're bringing with you. And you get to tell your own story.
Applications and Interviews: Connect the Dots
Instead of hoping a hiring manager will intuitively understand why your experience is relevant, you need to connect the dots for them. In cover letters, job applications, and interviews, break down your past roles into their component skills and explicitly show how these translate to the new opportunity. This is especially important if you’re hoping to make a career pivot, or applying for a role that might seem disconnected from your previous experience.
For example, a nonprofit hiring a fundraising associate probably isn’t on the lookout for a bartender to add to their team. But if a bartender applied and highlighted how they’ve developed their abilities in:
Building rapport quickly with diverse individuals…
Managing competing priorities in high-pressure environments…
Listening attentively to identify needs…
Creating positive experiences that encourage people to return…
… now they’re starting to look like a great-fit candidate! After all, these are precisely the skills needed for effective fundraising—but the connection wouldn’t have been obvious without putting in the work to make it explicit.
Remember that effective skill communication isn't about exaggerating or inflating your abilities. It's about thoughtfully translating your experiences into a clear, shared language that helps others understand your value.
When you can clearly articulate what you bring to the table, you help others to recognize your potential—and you empower yourself to continue creating the career path you truly want.
Leveraging Your Skills for Job Growth and Fulfillment
Understanding and developing your skills is important, but the real power comes when you learn to leverage them strategically for both professional advancement and personal fulfillment.
Skills As Solutions: A Future-Focused Approach
Keep in mind that skills aren’t just your natural abilities, or the strengths you bring with you from job to job, or even items on a checklist that an employer says they’re looking for. You can view your skills instead as solutions.
This is a completely different perspective than looking at a job posting, scanning the bullet points and asking yourself, “Can I do all of the things they've listed? Can I check off every box?”
Making the case that you're the right fit for a position isn’t about what you've done in the past. You don't need to prove that you can and have done each and every responsibility required. Instead, you can make connections between your past experience, the skills that you've built along the way, and what you believe is important about HOW you go about the work.
The next time you’re considering an opportunity or looking at a job posting, try this exercise:
Take a close look at the description. Print it out and get out your pens and highlighters! Mark up:
The key strengths required for the position
The areas of the work or skills that they mention again and again
Look over what you've marked up and identify the top three skills they’re looking for in a candidate. Imagine if they were saying, "We have this problem/need."
What are the key challenges that the position is there to solve?
Look at yourself through the lens of those needs.
How can you connect the dots between your core skills and their needs?
What evidence can you draw on to show that you are ready to take on the challenges they outlined?
And, for that matter, are those challenges things that you're actually interested in?
This “problems and solutions” reframe transforms the conversation for both yourself and potential employers. For you, this shift moves you out of that anxious, "Do I have enough of what they want?" mindset and into a place of clarity and confidence. Instead of trying to cram yourself into someone else's pre-defined box, you're showing up authentically and saying, "Here's how my unique approach can help move your work forward."
And for the organizations and teams you're hoping to work with, you're making their decision easier! Rather than leaving them to connect the dots between your past experiences and their current challenges, you're drawing a clear line for them. You're not just telling them what you've done—you're showing them how you think, how you approach problems, and how your skills will directly address what they need right now.
This approach isn't just for job applications, either. It's a mindset you can bring to your current work, too. Take a look around at the challenges your team or organization is facing. Which ones align with your natural strengths? Where might your unique approach help move things forward? By volunteering your skills as solutions to high-visibility problems, you shift how others see you. You become known not just as someone who completes tasks but as someone who solves meaningful problems. And that shift opens doors to new opportunities in a way that simply carrying out your job description rarely does.
What I love most about this approach is that it creates better alignment between who you are and the work you do. When you focus on how your natural abilities and learned skills solve real problems that matter to you, you're more likely to find yourself doing work that energizes rather than depletes you.
Transferring Your Skills for a Successful Pivot
And what happens if you want to pivot your work into a whole new field or role?
Pivoting is not a mistake. It's not starting over. It's a normal part of career development, and doesn’t have to involve starting over.
Here are four ways to pivot into a new career path from right where you are now:
1️⃣ Translate Your Skills
Remember the “bartender applying for a fundraising job” example we talked about? A pivot usually involves the need to connect the dots for a new employer and tell a cohesive story about how your skills translate.
For example: A retail store manager might not be an obvious choice for a role in healthcare administration. But retail management involves coordinating team schedules across varying shifts, managing inventory systems to ensure supplies are always available, creating positive customer experiences during high-stress situations, training staff on complex procedures, and more. This candidate could reframe their experience and highlight the transferable process expertise that’s been part of their role.
2️⃣ Develop Your Skills
Sometimes it's necessary to acquire new skills in order to prepare for your career pivot and show that you're right for the job. You can do this by taking a course or earning a certification in specialized skills, taking on a project to grow your portfolio, or moving into a position that will foster your growth in a specific area. Each of these strategies offers a way to develop your skills, grow your experience, and demonstrate that you’re ready to take on a new role.
For Example: A high school teacher who wants to become a human resources manager is already driven by a purpose to help others grow. They could pivot by earning a certification through the leading professional organization for HR managers or developing a training series for their peers at their school.
TIP: To find credible courses and programs that will both prepare you properly and help you stand out, start by (1) seeking out the professional organization of the role you'd like to move into (for the example above, the Society of Human Resources Managers or SHRM would be a great first step) or (2) conducting informational interviews with someone who has the role or skill set you're seeking to find out what training they see as helpful for getting in the door. Don't make assumptions about the training you do or don't need! Too many of us count ourselves out of opportunities before finding the real answer to the question of how to develop your skills—it might be easier and cheaper than you think!
3️⃣ Audition Your Skills
If you have a clear understanding of how your skills transfer, create an opportunity to show those skills in action. You'll be able to establish a track record, demonstrate your know-how, and prove that you have the chops to take on the new role.
For Example: A pharmaceutical researcher who wants to pivot into science communications could write a few sample blog posts or outline a communications strategy for their potential employer. They could also take matters into their own hands by starting a podcast and managing the show's presence on social media.
4️⃣ Line Up a Skills Sponsor
Social connections are often the key to landing a new position, especially for a career pivot. A colleague with connections can vouch for your transferable skills and the value that you'd bring to the team. Don't be shy about asking someone to put in a good word—it's a resourceful and strategic move, two qualities that any employer would want in a team member.
For Example: A financial advisor applying to an operations role might ask a networked colleague to connect with a decision maker on their behalf. The goal of this outreach is to call attention to their application and underscore the transferable skills that make them right for the team.
The art of transferring skills across roles, industries, and contexts requires looking beyond the specific content or subject matter of your work to identify the underlying processes and methodologies that you've mastered. Remember our discussion of process expertise in Section 1? This is where that concept really shines. Your methodologies—like project management, problem-solving, or relationship building—are often the most transferable across different professional contexts.
And to Leave You With One More Thing About Skills…
Throughout this guide, we've explored how to identify, develop, communicate, and leverage your professional skills in ways that serve both your career growth and personal fulfillment. We've challenged outdated categories of "hard" and "soft" skills, discovered the power of process expertise, and learned strategies for communicating our value in different contexts.
But at the heart of all this work is something even more fundamental: the strength that comes from truly knowing yourself.
This strength is magnetic. Every single time I have the honor of supporting a client as they articulate their marketable skills, something happens to me: I fall in love a little bit.
I can't help it. To see someone up close, to recognize the shape of their unique approach and the skill set that they have to offer, to bear witness as they put that into words and feel the strength of knowing themselves—it's really beautiful.
We all have such different constellations of skills! I recently worked with a client who loves to negotiate government real estate deals that provide a benefit for the public. I thought to myself, “Thank goodness there's this person who cares about community interests in transportation real estate!”
Another client loves helping organizations create awesome, equitable cultures. That's critically important! Yet another fosters curious and confident young learners through science education. And thank goodness for that!
In this great big world, we all have our own unique part to play. Your skills aren't just about landing your next job—they're about creating a life and career that feels meaningful to you. Finding that sweet spot where your natural abilities align with work that matters to you creates a sense of purpose that keeps you going.
Whether you're using your skills to solve problems where you work now or pivoting into something completely new, you bring a unique approach that no one else can offer. By continuing to grow your skills, talk about them effectively, and apply them thoughtfully, you become the author of your own professional story.
Ready to Put This Into Practice?
If you're feeling inspired to take the next step in identifying your professional skills, Skills That Stand Out is exactly for you. It’s a two-week sprint designed to help you capture and convey your marketable skills with confidence.
This e-course cuts through the confusion around "hard," "soft," and "transferable" skills to help you explore your experiences, articulate your strengths, and get clear on what you really bring to the table. And did I mention that it only takes 10 days?
I hope to see you there!
