Why Care About Your KSAs? Your Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities are key to getting hired
When employers write their job requirements they use Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities. Showing that you have the required KSAs makes you a strong candidate.
So what are Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities? Let's dive into some examples that you might find on job postings.
Knowledge is what you understand from education or experience. Such as working in Construction requires knowledge of materials, methods, and tools. While office work needs knowledge of procedures and recordkeeping.
Skills showcase what you're good at. There are two types: technical skills and soft skills. Technical skills are job-specific like cooking, flying a plane, or teaching. These skills are mentioned in job listings to describe tasks. Soft skills are useful in many jobs. They include communicating, being on time, and teamwork.
Abilities are personal traits that allow you to do certain things. Such as stamina for physically demanding jobs or the ability to work under pressure. Do you know your best skills? Or can you name your strongest skills?
Use CareerOneStop's Skills Matcher to create a list of your skills and match them to careers. Or find different careers that use the same skills and experience as your past jobs on mySkills myFuture.
Learn more about KSAs CareerOneStop.org/KSAs