What Are Technical Skills?

Technical skills are the specialized knowledge and expertise required to perform specific tasks and use specific tools and programs in real-world situations. Every role requires technical skills. For instance, many entry-level positions across industries require cloud computing in Google Drive or spreadsheets like Excel or Google Sheets. Examples of more advanced technical skills that a job might require include programming languages, technical writing, or data analysis. 

In this article, we'll discuss more about technical skills, including some of the key skills you'll need to succeed in popular jobs. One high-income skill you can develop across roles is a familiarity and understanding of generative AI (GenAI). Get started today with Google's Prompting Essentials course, where you'll learn five key steps to write effective prompts.

What are technical skills?

Technical skills are the abilities and know-how unique to a specific job role. Unlike workplace skills (sometimes called soft skills), such as communication and time management, technical skills often require specific education and training to acquire. 

Technical skills examples

Technical skills, sometimes referred to as hard skills, involve the practical knowledge you use to complete tasks. Examples of technical skills include:

• Data analysis

• Web development

• Computer programming languages

• Financial management

• Bookkeeping

• UX design

• Graphic design

• Writing

Technical skills tend to be things you can learn in traditional educational or professional settings. If you want to enhance a specific technical skill, consider signing up for an online course or completing hands-on projects related to that skill.

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What technical skills are employers looking for? 

Some common technical skills that appear across job roles include:

• Spreadsheet software, like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, can be used in roles that require organizing information, tracking projects, analyzing data, or creating charts.

• Project management is valuable in any role that requires developing and executing projects.

• Writing is beneficial for roles that rely on communication, whether that's via email or social media, or longer form reports, analyses, or projects.

• Scheduling and calendar management is important for roles with heavy collaboration, relationship management, or administrative support.

• Budget management can be important for roles that develop, monitor, assess, and work within budgets, for example in business, project, or people management settings.

Often, the specific technical skills employers are looking for will depend on the job role. It’s important to monitor how your field or industry evolves and which new skills will help you enter the workforce, perform better at your current job, find new career opportunities, or explore a new field.

Let's take a closer look at some examples.

Technical skills examples for in-demand jobs

Here are some guides outlining in-demand technical skills for specific job roles:

• Customer service skills

• Cybersecurity analyst skills

• Data analyst skills

• Data engineer skills

• Data scientist skills

• Health care skills

• IT skills

• Machine learning skills

• Management skills

• Marketing skills

• Project management skills

• Software developer skills

• UX design skills

To provide examples of industry-specific technical skills that employers are looking for, we researched job postings and general career insights. Here are some examples of in-demand industries and their related technical skills:

Cybersecurity

To get hired as a cybersecurity analyst, you may need skills in:

• Incident response

• Operating systems

• Data security

• Endpoint protection 

With these and other cybersecurity technical skills, you could help protect a company’s networks from cyber attacks and investigate actual security breaches.

Read more: 15 Essential Skills for Cybersecurity Analysts

Data science 

To get a job as a data scientist, some organizations may require you to be skilled in:

• Machine learning

• Statistics

• Programming languages like Python

With these and other data science technical skills, you could build machine learning models, analyze data patterns and trends, and recommend courses of action that help companies achieve their goals.  

It’s important to note that data skills are valuable in a range of careers, from marketing and sales to human resources and finance.   

Read more: Your Guide to Data Science Careers (+ How to Get Started)

Finance 

To get a job as a financial analyst, some organizations may require you to have skills in:

• Financial modeling

• Modern portfolio theory 

With these and other financial technical skills, you could help a company track its financial performance and stay abreast of investment regulations and policies. 

Read more: What Can You Do with a Finance Degree? 7 Career Paths

Marketing 

To get a job as a social media marketer, some organizations may require that you know how to:

• Create advertising campaigns on Facebook and other platforms

• Develop paid ad assets

• Design content 

With these and other marketing technical skills, you could help a company build a social media presence and brand recognition, and increase paid ad effectiveness.

Read more: What's a Social Media Manager? And How to Become One

User experience

To get a job as a UX designer, some organizations may require that you be able to:

• Navigate Adobe Creative Suite

• Conduct UX research

• Create wireframes 

With these and other UX design technical skills, you could help companies improve their users’ experiences when navigating websites, mobile apps, and other platforms.  

Read more: 9 Essential Skills for UX Designers

How to improve your technical skills 

Now that you have a better idea of the technical skills that are in demand across industries, you may be thinking about how to improve your skills or learn new ones to enhance your career. It’s important to plan your next steps so that you prioritize the skills you most need and find the right training programs. 

Follow these steps to streamline this process:

1. Identify your career goals.

Write down exactly what you’d like to experience in your career. While the job market can be unpredictable and there are no guarantees, gaining clarity can help you achieve your goals faster. Start with these career goal examples and add your own details:

• Enhance performance in your current job

• Get a promotion within the organization you work for

• Pursue a career in a new field with better pay

• Pursue a career that supports the lifestyle you want

2. Identify the technical skills you need.

Once you know your goals, you’ll need to find out which technical skills can help you achieve them. Search career-building sites like Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Indeed for actual job postings in your desired field. Pay close attention to each job description:

• Which tasks, projects, and responsibilities would you love to take on, either in your current job or a new one?

• What kind of lifestyle would these jobs support? 

• What are the required skills, education, and other qualifications that show up in job listings? 

You might find it useful to create a spreadsheet to keep track of technical skills that employers require and gauge which ones you should prioritize.  

3. Review your current skills and look for opportunities to improve. 

For this step, get into a reflective and exploratory state of mind and ask yourself: 

• Which of these skills matches the requirements of the jobs I want? 

• Which required skills do I need to get?

• How can I rank them in order of importance?

Read more: How to Create a Goal-Oriented Career Development Plan (Template + Tips)

4. Build new technical skills.  

There are several ways you can build career-specific technical skills, from taking a course or training program to getting certified in a particular skill or pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree. Find the program that best fits your goals and lifestyle by investigating each program’s details:

• Course syllabus: What are the required readings? Will you get to complete any career-focused, hands-on projects, gain experience in real-world situations, and explore what it would be like to work in your desired field? 

• Expected outcomes: What specific skills does this program teach? 

• Career potential: How do the program’s expected outcomes relate to the skills and qualifications that employers in your field require? Does this program offer certifications or credentials that employers ask for?

How to list technical skills on a resume

As you build new technical skills and improve upon existing ones, a very important thing to do is to update your resume with your latest information. This section goes over how to describe your technical skills, so that you feel confident that you are presenting your technical strengths in the most advantageous way.

Adopt these standard resume best practices: 

• Tailor your resume to each job you’re applying for by lining up your technical skills and experience with job requirements. 

• Use action words, such as “managed,” “implemented,” or “developed,” to describe the tasks you performed or projects you completed in previous roles.

• Emphasize quantifiable outcomes.

• List the names of specific training, courses, and certifications you’ve completed, along with the topics and skills each one covered.

Read more: How to Feature and Format Key Skills on Your Resume

Examples of technical skills on a resume

For listing your technical skills, follow these three career-focused examples:

Cybersecurity analyst

• Implemented a backup system to add a layer of security company data

• Reduced data loss from cyber attacks by 20 percent

Social media marketer

• Increased Facebook conversion by 30 percent 

• Designed visual content to increase brand awareness

UX Designer

• Increased user satisfaction by 23 percent

• Created intuitive user interfaces 

Keep building your technical skills on Coursera

Continue working on your technical skills with Coursera. Learn job-ready skills from industry leaders like Google, Microsoft, and IBM with a Coursera Plus subscription. You’ll get a certificate for every program you finish, which you can add to further enhance your resume.