The Importance of Transferable Skills in Landing Your Dream Job
Making a job change may seem like you’re starting over for many individuals. However, this is not the case: you have transferrable talents. Most job searchers believe that the abilities they utilise for their present work only translate for that specific job title or sector, yet the fundamentals for functioning in most roles are quite universal.
Knowing your transferable skills—and how to emphasise them—can help you join or change professions or sectors, as well as pursue personal development and leadership possibilities outside of the workplace.
Here, we define transferable skills, present many examples, on how to highlight them in your next job hunt.
What Exactly Are Transferable Skills?
A transferable skill is one that you learned in one job or industry that you may apply to another kind of role or industry. Transferable skills may fall into a variety of areas and can stem from any knowledge or experience you have.
Some transferable skills are “superpowers you possess that would be desirable to any company,” such as excellent communication skills, which are useful in almost any kind of work. Others, like Excel expertise, are helpful in many settings even if they are not generally applicable—for example, across a broad variety of jobs or occupations. They may be hard skills, which are typically measurable qualities like functional or technical skills, or soft skills, which include personality characteristics and interpersonal ability.
Transferable skills may come from previous leadership positions, volunteer work, side hustles, communication and language ability, sports participation, interpersonal skills, hobbies, activities, and more. Your transferable skills aren’t limited to your most recent position. They are also essential at any level of your career: Transferable skills may help you advance in your present position, join a project or opportunity that interests you or promote yourself for a whole different career or sector.
What does not qualify as a transferable skill?
Speciality abilities, such as those relevant exclusively to certain employers. If you’re a dental hygienist, for example, cleaning teeth is a critical skill that won’t likely transfer to anything else.
A dental hygienist, on the other hand, may have a lot of skills that are transferable in the right context, a dental hygienist likely has amazing customer service skills and the ability to make patients feel safe and comfortable, which are highly transferable to a new role or industry.”
When Is It Necessary to Have Transferable Skills?
Individuals seeking to shift professions or industries should prioritise transferable skills. If you’re a volunteer leader for an annual charity gala, for example, you may utilise that leadership and planning expertise when applying for a project management position (particularly if you don’t have comparable experience from your present work).
They’re especially essential for entry-level applicants who are just starting out in their chosen profession but have transferrable abilities from previous life and job experiences. The abilities you learned as a resident assistant may be transferred to an entry-level HR position or the software you had to learn for courses can be utilised in professional positions as well.
How Do You Determine Your Transferable Skills?
Consider where you want to go and what talents are needed to be successful in that new job to narrow down on what transferable skills you may have. If you’re not sure, go through a few job descriptions for the kind of position you want and see what qualifications pop up often, or set up informational interviews with individuals working in your target sector and ask what skills are most essential. Remember them when you discover your transferrable talents. Where has your career, academic, or personal experience matched with the abilities required for your next opportunity?
Think about your technical and other hard talents. What procedures, activities, applications, and software are you familiar with?
Don’t forget to think about your interpersonal skills and other soft talents as well! Do you have a talent for public speaking or a lot of patience? These skills may be used in a teaching or training position, for example.
Taking some time to think about your abilities—and what you could accomplish with them outside of your present role—can also help you be ready to jump on a new opportunity or decide it’s time to make a shift. Everyone has transferrable talents that they should be aware of. You never know when you’ll need to use them for a project, a stretch assignment, or an unforeseen change.
How Do You Demonstrate Your Transferable Skills During a Job Search?
Transferable skills may be your passport to demonstrating that you’re the appropriate candidate for the position for job searchers. After you’ve identified the transferable skills you’ll need to be successful in your new career, you should consider how you’ve shown those qualities both at work and in your personal life, and plan to link them appropriately throughout the recruiting process.
Don’t be hesitant to demonstrate how you’ve learned and used these talents throughout your career, both within and outside of the workplace.
Including a skills section on your resume may help you in more ways than one. Giving transferrable abilities their own space on the resume will make it simpler for employers to use key search terms and put a focus on your areas of strength. She also recommends that soft skills, such as problem-solving and multitasking, be included as long as they aren’t too broad (e.g., “people skills”) and are relevant to the role’s needs. In the bullet points detailing your previous employment and other experiences, you should additionally elaborate on how you’ve utilised your transferrable talents.
Though skills sections are often found towards the bottom of a resume page, if you want to lead with your transferable abilities, you might consider putting yours to the front. You may also choose from a variety of resume formats. Entry-level and career switcher candidates may choose a combination resume (or even a functional resume) that places their talents front and centre, while applicants with relevant job experience may prefer a chronological resume style.
Smith also advises applicants to be strategic in their cover letters, which she believes are the ideal opportunity to tell a narrative about how you intend to use your transferable talents to bring value to the organisation.
You should also develop an elevator pitch that focuses on how you’ve shown your skills in the areas most important for your future job. For example, if you’re searching for a position that requires leadership, you might tailor your pitch to include examples of times you’ve shown that ability both in and out of the workplace. Utilise your elevator pitch at networking events or interviews. If you have a particular job description to refer to, you may tailor your elevator pitch to it.
What Kinds of Transferable Skills Are There?
Here are some examples to help you think about your own transferrable abilities. Remember that this is not a comprehensive list, and many talents may be transferred if they are applicable to the next stage in your career.
Communication Skills
Communication skills enable you to share information with individuals both within and outside your organisation. The ability to effectively communicate your message will be useful in any job that requires you to engage with others or produce or deliver material on behalf of or to your team or business.
- Content Writing/Development/Creation Editing
- Language Proficiency
- Writing a Phone Screening Proposal
- Speaking in Public
Interpersonal Skills
Interpersonal skills enable you to effectively collaborate with team members, managers, direct reports, clients, and stakeholders. These are likely to be very important if your work needs you to deal with people in any manner.
- Account/Client Management
- Collaboration
- Conflict Resolution and Management
- Customer Support
- Process Development for Partnership Development
- Sales Ability to Build Relationships
Leadership Skills
The methods in which you have shown your ability to manage and lead may distinguish you, but they are also industry-fluid.
- Company Culture Leadership Change Management
- Employee Development and Training Facilitation
- Mentoring Capabilities
- People Management Project/Program/Operations Management Strategy Team
Other Soft Skills
These skills and abilities may show your prospective employer where you excel outside of the job’s technical requirements.
- Adaptability
- Agility
- Detail Orientation Creative Thinking
- Setting Goals Independence/Self-Motivation Innovation
- Organisational Problem Solving Resourcefulness Multitasking
- Time Administration
Technical and Task-Oriented Skills
These are tools and activities in which you excel that may bring value to your future opportunity in any sector.
- Accounting
- Creative Suite by Adobe
- Bookkeeping
- Systems for Content Management (such as WordPress, Drupal, and Squarespace)
- Customer Relationship Administration (CRM) Computer software (such as Salesforce)
- Installation of Database Management Equipment
- Analytics by Google
- Design of Graphics
- Ideation & Concepting in HTML/CSS
- Office Suite from Microsoft: With such a wide range of applications, you may wish to define activities such as generating pivot tables, writing macros, conducting data analysis in Excel, or producing PowerPoint presentations.
- Software for Project Management and Collaboration (such as Trello, Asana, Airtable, Jira, Slack, and G Suite)
- Airtable, Jira, Slack, and G Suite)
- Reporting and Analysis Capabilities
- Scheduling and management of social media
- Designing a Website
- When your purpose and passion collide in your career—that is, when your job is aligned with your real interests—it may be very gratifying. This desire may seem a long way off, but you most certainly already have some of the things you need to get you there.
