There are lots of different ways to categorize skills. The U.S. Department of Labor separates them as skills with ideas, skills with people, and skills with things. Some career specialists divide work-related skills into other general categories, such as those that follow. Any career is going to require some combination of these types.

Basic Work Skills

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and change. The workplace of the twenty-first century is a rapidly changing environment. The work skills required today bear scant resemblance to those needed even 50 years ago, in the days before personal computers, the Internet, and photocopiers.

Today's basic skills for any job, from sales clerk to CEO, programmer to playwright, are varied and many faceted. These basic skills are the ones employers seek most often in their employees.

• Communication: the ability to convey information effectively, convincingly, and clearly

• Reading: the ability to comprehend and interpret information, signs, symbols, documents, instructions, policies, diagrams

• Writing: the ability to compose and understand correct standard English in forms, documents, letters, reports, and other printed matter

• Thinking: the ability to use logic and reasoning to solve problems, identify the strengths and weaknesses in alternative solutions, brainstorm, and be creative

• Mathematics: the ability to produce and understand financial documents, budgets, tables, graphs, measurements

• Learning Strategies: the ability to select and use new information and understand its implications to your field

• Time Management: the ability to organize and perform tasks effectively and efficiently

Technical Skills

These include skills that are specific to a particular career and can include anything from using a certain piece of equipment to managing and scheduling a complicated project. Perhaps last year's Earth Day inspired you to become an environmental scientist. You'll need more than a deep and abiding love for the planet.

Depending on the specialty area you choose, you will need many skills in, for example, scientific reasoning and methods and using all sorts of equipment, from anemometers and pH meters to air samplers, flowmeters, and radon detectors. You might need to test soil, take core samples, monitor groundwater, or measure toxic mold. You may need to know how to use a global positioning system, aerosol spectrometer, noise dosimeter, and ionization chamber.

Back in your office you will need to be able to understand the literature in your field and be proficient in the use of a desktop computer, which is probably loaded with software for analyzing data, creating maps, managing databases, tracking emissions, compiling spreadsheets, managing projects, and writing presentations.

Interpersonal Skills

Every job means interacting with other people and this requires some proficiency in interpersonal skills. Some careers require a lot more than others. Remember that career as an environmental scientist that you desire so passionately? It involves more than hugging trees and communing with chipmunks.

You are going to need to be able to listen actively to colleagues and give them your full attention, understand what they say, and ask appropriate questions. You might need to persuade them to change their minds or behavior. You'll want to be aware of others' reactions and understand why they react the way they do. You will need to gather data from others to make sure your work meets their requirements or needs.

As you are coordinating your actions with those of the people you work with, you will need to be able to communicate information through conversations, presentations, or written reports. If you manage a project or a department, you will need to know how to lead and motivate people effectively in order to get the results you want while keeping harmony in the workplace.

But most skills you can learn. Like a box full of specialized tools, you can add to them, sharpen them, and take them with you from job to job.

Research shows that people derive satisfaction from their career when they have the necessary skills and abilities to perform well.

Skills Employers Demand Most

In a 2005 survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), employers rated the most desired employee skills on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “extremely important.” Here are the skills most in demand.

How do you measure up in these areas? You'll have a chance to find out when you take the following test.