Necessary PVP Skills

In game, every sub-capital ship has a show-info tab called prerequisites and another called recommended. Prerequisites tells you what you need to fly the ship bare minimum, and recommended tells you which certificates give you the ability to fly the ship with reasonable ability. The certificate system is not a great favourite feature amongst some pilots, but it really gives you the correct direction to train after the bare minimum skills are trained.

If you fly a ship with the bare minimum skill set, you are unlikely to be able to do much with it, but if you have the recommended certificates too then you are usually much better skilled than most others flying the same ship. Especially if you take the training slightly further and train the next certificate level for each recommendation.

Be warned, some of the certificates are difficult to earn, such as core competency - the certificate allows most fitting flexibility, but has a lot of underlying certificates and skills (210d training for core competency elite in a brand new pilot!)

I want to make it clear, though: PVP skills are not really fitting, gunnery, navigation, etc. There are all sorts of skills the player must learn themselves, such as keeping transversal up so that you can hit, but the other pilot can not hit you, or the ability to dictate range, or even the basic skills of being able to find a target! For these skills I would recommend a respected university course, such as those offered by Agony Unleashed, EVE University or OUCH, or maybe enrolment in a junior mercenary corp (e.g. Noir. Academy) or pirate gang (e.g. Black Rabbits Academy).