What are durable skills?

The short answer

Durable skills are the human skills people use in every job they’ll ever have: communicating clearly, thinking critically, working with a team, leading, staying calm under pressure and owning their mistakes. They’re called durable because they don’t expire. A technician’s tools, operating systems and certifications will change many times over a career. The ability to explain a fix to a frustrated user, or brief a manager during an incident, carries from job to job.

For IT and cybersecurity students, durable skills are often the difference between knowing the answer and being trusted with the work. In computer and math job postings, 61% ask for three or more durable skills such as communication and problem solving (America Succeeds and Lightcast, Durable by Design, 2025). And 59% of cybersecurity professionals report soft skills gaps on their teams, led by critical thinking and communication (ISACA, State of Cybersecurity 2025).

Durable skills and soft skills: what’s the difference?

They describe the same family of abilities. The difference is in how people think about them.

	“Soft skills”	“Durable skills”
What the name suggests	Nice to have, secondary to the “hard” technical skills	Lasting, valuable in every role and every industry
How they’re treated in class	Often left to chance, or covered in one career-readiness unit	Taught on purpose, practiced and given feedback like any technical skill
Can they be measured?	Usually assumed to be a matter of personality	Broken into behaviors you can observe, practice and score

The newer name puts the focus where employers put it: these skills hold their value longer than any single technical skill, and students can build them with practice.

Durable skills examples in IT and cybersecurity

Here is what each of the ten durable skills in our courses looks like on the job, in our own words.

Durable skill	On the help desk	In the security operations center (SOC)
Communication	Explaining a fix to a user without jargon	Turning an alert into a two-minute briefing a manager can act on
Leadership	Taking ownership of a ticket nobody has picked up	Coordinating teammates when an incident starts
Metacognition	Planning the order to tackle a full ticket queue	Reviewing your own investigation for gaps before escalating
Critical thinking	Separating the real problem from what the user thinks is wrong	Telling a true threat from a false positive
Collaboration	Handing off a ticket with notes the next tech can use	Sharing findings across shifts and teams during an incident
Character	Admitting a mistake that caused an outage	Reporting a policy violation even when it’s awkward
Creativity	Finding a workaround when the usual fix fails	Working an attack nobody has seen before
Growth mindset	Learning a new system without being told to	Keeping up as threats and tools change
Mindfulness	Staying calm with an angry caller	Staying composed when an executive pushes back
Fortitude	Getting through a long outage day	Holding the line on a security decision under pressure

How to teach durable skills in an IT or cyber class

Durable skills are learned the same way technical skills are: by doing them, getting feedback and doing them again. A lecture on communication changes very little. Practice does. A few approaches that work in IT and cybersecurity classrooms:

• Put the skill inside a real job moment. Teach communication through a ticket conversation or an incident update rather than as a separate topic. Students see why it matters when it’s attached to work they want to do.
• Have students say it out loud. Role-play a call with a frustrated user, or have a student brief the class as if it were the CIO. Speaking under a little pressure builds the skill faster than writing about it.
• Give specific feedback on every try. “Be more professional” doesn’t help. “You told the user what was wrong before you acknowledged their frustration” does.
• Let them try again. The second attempt, right after feedback, is where most of the learning happens.
• Close with reflection. A few minutes on what worked, what didn’t and what they’d do next time helps the skill transfer to the next situation.

Quick classroom activities that need no special tools: a five-minute “angry user” phone role-play in pairs, writing ticket notes for the next shift and swapping them for review, or a short tabletop incident where each student owns one update to leadership.

How to assess durable skills

Durable skills can be graded when they’re broken into behaviors you can see. Instead of scoring “communication” as a whole, look for specific actions: Did the student acknowledge the user’s concern? Did they explain the next step in plain language? Did they confirm the user understood? A short rubric with observable behaviors, used on role-plays, written updates and reflections, gives students clear targets and gives you evidence of growth across a term.

Where durable skills fit in your program

Most IT and cybersecurity programs are already full of technical content, so durable skills work best when they fit around what’s there. Common options:

• Alongside a technical class, such as a PC hardware, A+, networking or Security+ class, with durable skills lessons woven into the same weeks.
• As a short standalone class, often for one credit.
• Spread across several classes in a pathway, a chapter at a time.

Many states now expect career and technical education (CTE) courses to include employability or workplace readiness skills. Virginia’s Workplace Readiness Skills and Texas’s employability standards for CTE are two examples, and Utah’s CTE strategic plan makes durable skills one of its four goals. Durable skills taught inside IT and cyber scenarios are one way to cover those expectations without losing time from technical content.

How AbilityArc teaches durable skills

AbilityArc offers two durable skills courses built for IT and cybersecurity programs. They aren’t built around certification exams: they teach the skills that sit beside the technical ones.

• Durable Skills: PC Technician: eleven chapters set in IT support, about 15 hours.
• Durable Skills: Cybersecurity Analyst: ten chapters set in security operations, about 14 hours.

In each chapter, students learn from working industry pros on video, then practice in REACTOR, our AI roleplay simulations, where they talk with a frustrated user, a manager or an incident team by voice or chat and get feedback after every try. A reflection closes each chapter.

Frequently asked questions

Are durable skills the same as soft skills?

They cover the same abilities, such as communication, teamwork and problem solving. “Durable skills” is the newer term. It stresses that these skills last a whole career and that they can be taught, practiced and measured.

What are examples of durable skills in IT?

Explaining a technical fix in plain language, staying calm with a frustrated user, handing off a ticket with clear notes, owning a mistake, and thinking critically about what is really causing a problem. In cybersecurity, add briefing a manager during an incident and holding firm on a security decision under pressure.

Can durable skills be taught?

Yes. Like technical skills, they improve with practice, specific feedback and another try. Role-plays, simulations and reflection are some of the most effective ways to build them in class.

How do you assess durable skills?

Break each skill into behaviors you can observe, such as acknowledging the user’s concern or explaining the next step clearly, and score those behaviors with a rubric on role-plays, simulations, written updates and reflections.

Do durable skills replace certifications like CompTIA A+ or Security+?

No. Certifications show technical knowledge. Durable skills show how a person uses that knowledge with other people. Employers look for both, and our courses are designed to sit alongside technical classes, not to prepare students for certification exams.

Where does the term “durable skills” come from?

The term has spread through workforce and education research over the past several years. America Succeeds has published some of the most widely cited labor market research on durable skills. The ten skills in AbilityArc’s courses were inspired by that research.