What are Job Skills?
Job skills can also be called transferable skills, since they are the type of aptitudes you acquire through work experience that can make you valuable to other employers, even in different fields from the one you currently work. Sometimes people refer to their job skills as a skill set, and it’s important to showcase your skill sets on resumes, especially if you are planning to seek work in a different field. Even if you don’t have tremendous experience in the new field in which you’d like to work, your knowledge and sense of what makes an employee more valuable can help you get a job. People may organize job skills around different areas of expertise. These can include things like excellent communication skills, ability to problem solve or troubleshoot, understanding the human relations aspect of jobs, leadership abilities, and basic knowledge or work skills. It may be difficult at first to figure out which of these skills you possess, but examples in each field make you more attracti
In the context of Social Security disability, the touchstone for job skills is Social Security Ruling 82-41. That Ruling states: A skill is knowledge of a work activity which requires the exercise of significant judgment that goes beyond the carrying out of simple job duties and is acquired through performance of an occupation which is above the unskilled level (requires more than 30 days to learn). It is practical and familiar knowledge of the principles and processes of an art, science or trade, combined with the ability to apply them in practice in a proper and approved manner. This includes activities like making precise measurements, reading blueprints, and setting up and operating complex machinery. A skill gives a person a special advantage over unskilled workers in the labor market. At a Social Security disability hearing, a vocational expert may testify regarding a claimant’s acquired job skills. In my experience, vocational experts can be cavalier about what exactly constitut
