Transferable Professional Skills for Your Job Search

Identifying your transferrable skills will improve your career search

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 50% of professionals will completely change industries at some point in their career. Having faced the desire to make a career pivot myself, I understand the uncertainty associated with making a leap. Starting a mid-career job search can be overwhelming, and many in this situation find themselves wondering if the skills and qualifications they have earned throughout their career would have any value.

As with many things in life, there are two sides to this topic. If you are looking to enter a highly specialized or technical field that is entirely different from where you have gained your professional experience, you are likely going to need some training or education. For example, if you have spent your career in sales and decide you want a career in nursing, you are going to need to get certified. Yet, even in this type of career transition you will have several transferrable skills that will help you in your new career. Understanding how to identify and communicate these skills will improve your chances of success in your career search.

What Are Transferrable Skills?

Transferrable skills are the knowledge and abilities you have a developed that can be applied to many careers and industries and are not tied to specific roles. Lived experience, when paired with a learning and growth mindset, refines and sharpens these skills over time. Examples include communication, leadership, problem-solving, adaptability, teamwork, time management, organization, emotional intelligence and many more.

Identifying your transferrable skills will allow you to better understand how prepared you are for a position when reviewing a job posting. The communication skills and adaptability you developed in your sales role will likely be beneficial to you in a nursing role.

How to Identify Your Transferable Skills

1.        Reflect on Your Professional Experience – Take your resume (or briefly write your work history if your resume has not been written yet) and expand on the work you performed and the skills that you learned. Many resumes have achievements and responsibilities listed (which is fine!) but are missing some of the hard and soft skills that were acquired and developed. For example, your very technical IT position may have had end user interaction that required you to develop solutions that met their business requirements. These experiences could have developed your customer service, problem solving, and communication skills.

2.        Review Job Postings – Do you have an idea of what field interests you? Or perhaps you are considering multiple fields and paring down your options? Look at several job postings and compile a list of requirements versus your transferrable skills. This will help you identify transferrable skills you might not be thinking of and identify areas where training or education may be required.

3.        Work With a Career Coach – A career coach can assist with a skills analysis and help connect your interests and skills to possible career paths. Career transitions involve risk and uncertainty. Hiring a coach helps improve your odds of finding a satisfying, rewarding, and sustainable career. High quality career transition preparation will yield high quality results.

4.        Seek Feedback – Check in with trusted colleagues, mentors, past supervisors, and review past performance evaluations. We are often our harshest critics, seek out information about how others perceive your strengths.

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Before beginning your career search, be sure you can effectively communicate your transferrable skills. Here are a few ways to ensure you are clearly articulating your value to recruiters and hiring managers:

1.        Resume & Cover Letter

·      Be sure to include transferrable skills in your summary and in your work experience bullets.

·      Connect your transferrable skills to your professional achievements. Example: connect achieving a sales quota to organization, emotional intelligence, customer service, and communication skills.

·      Connect your transferrable skills to specific job requirements in your cover letter.

·      Share other transferrable skills outside of job requirements when you can connect them to success in the role.

2.        Be Prepared for Interview Day

·      Create a list of your strongest transferrable skills with specific experience examples that demonstrate your competency. You will not want to use this list during the interview, but writing and reviewing it ahead of time will keep these examples fresh in your mind.

·      Connect your skills to the goals of the position and company. Help the interviewer understand how these skills are valuable to the company.

3.        LinkedIn & Networking

·      Update your profile with the transferrable skills you have identified.

·      Connect with professionals in the field(s) where you have interest and review how they communicate their skillsets.

·      Reach out to those professionals and ask them what traits they find beneficial to success in their field.

Do not sell yourself short! Professional experience is a great teacher, so reflect on the lessons you have learned and the skills you have earned and leverage those skills in your career transition. Even if your experience is in one industry and highly specialized, you have acquired many skills that can be useful in other professions. As you work through identifying your transferrable skills, allow your confidence to grow and know that you can find success in many other industries.

Reach out if you would like some support with your career transition. We can discuss your skills and interests, and develop a strategy that will position you for success!