Skills: Definition, Types, and Tips to Improve Skills

Table of Content

• What is a Skill?
• Types of Skills
• Differences in Skills and Competencies
• Tips to Improve Skills

What are Skills?

Skill is a person's specific ability to do work based on their interests, talents, and knowledge. With skill, someone can pour their ideas and creativity to make something more meaningful and generate value from the work.

Types of Skills

In general, there are two types of skills, namely hard skills and soft skills.

1. Hard Skills

Hard Skills are technical abilities that a person has through life experiences including education and careers taken in his life.

Here is an example of a hard skill.

• Multilingual
• Programming languages
• ​​ability Statistical analysis
• ability Marketing SEO/SEM
• capability Database
• capability Network security capability
• Etc.

2. Soft Skills

Soft skills are habits that shape the way a person works, both individually and as a team. Soft skills are needed to create a positive and productive work environment.

Here are examples of soft skills.

• Adaptability
• Effective communication
• Integrity
• Creativity
• thinking Critical
• problem-solving
• Organizational
• Etc.

Differences in Skills and Competencies

Skill and competence are two different things. Competence has a broader meaning than skills because it includes not only skills but also character and behavior to be able to carry out an effective job. 

• Skills are related to ideas and creativity in work, while competence requires a test to prove it. 
• Types of skills include hard skills and soft skills, while competencies include intellectual, physical, personal, social, and spiritual competencies. 
• What affects skills are motivation, experience, and expertise, while competence is influenced by knowledge, skills, motives, character, and self-concept.
• Skill indicators include technical skills, management skills, entrepreneurial skills, and personal maturity skills. Meanwhile, competency indicators include aspects of recognition, understanding, assessment, feedback, and job applications.

Tips to Improve Skill

1.  Make a Skill List

First, you have to write down the list of skills that you want to improve. You have to make skill targets for you to achieve, be it skills in work, education, or your career in life.

2. Investing in Learning

Learning does take time, energy, and thought, but it will all be paid off with new abilities that you will get later. You have to motivate yourself to improve your skills, so you can invest in developing your new skills.

3. Setting Goals

Next, you must set your goals by making a realistic plan. So you can achieve the target according to your ability with the time and portion you set for yourself. That way you will not feel heavy to do it and the target you want to achieve is more leverage.

4. Finding the Right Mentor

Training your skills will usually be more difficult, therefore you need the right mentor to help you succeed in improving your skills.

5. Improving Skills

You must continue to motivate yourself to be able to achieve the skills you are targeting so that you master them.

6. Attending Training

If you are not able to learn self-taught, then you can take part in training both offline and online. You can take classes according to your interests so that you can study systematically with professionals in their fields.

7. Building Networking

If you join a community or people who have the same goals as you, it will make you more motivated to achieve your skill targets. You can also get a lot of experience from your community.

8. Monitoring Progress

You need to monitor your progress in achieving your goals and record all the progress you experience regularly to determine your level of success in mastering certain skills.

9. Asking for Feedback

Ask for feedback from your mentor or friend about the progress of your skills, so you know the extent of your abilities.

10. Enjoying the Process

Learning a new skill is a lot of fun. If you enjoy the process, then you will be motivated to stay motivated to achieve it. You have to make it a valuable and enjoyable experience so that you will more easily achieve it.

That's the understanding, types, and tips to improve skills. Hopefully, it can be useful and increase your knowledge. See you in the next article. Edukasit.com.

Recommended Reading : Entrepreneurial Characteristics