Are there crucial skills you’ve collected outside of school or work experience that you may have left out of your CV or job application that could give them a serious lift? You probably have the skills, but are you using the right language?

Think about the every day

Some skills will have become second nature – so you may not realise you’re already using them. Thinking about the things you do every day could help improve your chances of impressing employers.

Think about how you describe your skills

Describe your skills and the things you’ve done to get them. Be as specific with your examples as you can. Something like ‘I use email and the Internet on a daily basis, have good knowledge of Microsoft Office and have built my own website’ is much better than ‘Using computers has given me IT skills’.

Use the right terms

How are your skills described by employers and in the workplace? Especially when applying for jobs, using the right terminology to describe your activities could help communicate them more clearly to the people you want to impress.

Use The Dictionary of Skills to see how many of your hidden skills you can unearth.