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Career Basics #8: Transferable skills
Transferable skills may sound like unintelligible HR-speak, but they can be the key to opening up a wide variety of jobs or even other sectors that you may not have considered.
1. It's what you can do not just what you've done
When you're considering moving jobs make sure you spread the net wide enough - your options aren't necessarily limited to the sector or industry in which you currently work. You have skills that might span different jobs - transferable skills. These are competencies and experience that you have that could add value to any organisation.
2. For example...
The list of potential transferable skills is vast but the sorts of things we're talking about might include:
- Resilience
- Motivational abilities
- Leadership
- People management skills
- Communication skills
- Strategic thinking/planning
- Budgetary management
Think about the role that you perform on a day-to-day basis and the skills you use in order to perform them and make a list - chances are that many of them would be just as valuable in other sectors.
3. Soft vs Hard
These developed abilities are what you might call 'soft' skills, which are distinct from technical or 'hard' skills such as qualifications or proficiencies specific to the role, sector or even employer for which you work.
They're very important of course and should be mentioned on your CV but because of their specific nature are less transferable to roles outside of your current sector.
Somewhere between soft and hard skills lie the numbers: in retail, numbers really count; the number of people you manage, the turnover of your store or department, the number of sites you manage - all of these count as relevant data that might help you land a comparable role irrespective of the industry or sector.
4. A possible match
Once you have made a list of your possible transferable skills, have a think about where else they might be applicable.
This is where those numbers might well come into play; if you're working in a large turnover/volume environment in discount fashion, for example, there could well be scope for crossing over to a similar scale operation in a different product sector.
In some roles the sector in which the business operates is also less relevant when it comes to recruitment - if you're an HR manager for a major retailer, for example, there's very little in your way for a move to a similar role with a hospitality business. `
Of course it might not be immediately obvious where your skill-set might be transferable to, in which case you might consider calling in some professional help such as a recruitment consultancy. But by having a clear understanding of what your transferable skills are and communicating them, you'll be far less likely to undersell yourself or be undersold.
5. Be realistic!
This heading appears frequently in the Careers Basics series! In this case, you need to be realistic about just how far your transferable skills will stretch.
The more reliant on hard, technical skills the role, whether you are looking to move into it or away from it, the less likely it is that transferable skills will be a factor in recruitment.
If, for example, you're a store manager and decide you'd like to try your hand at garment technology there are a number of barriers in your way - specifically the lack of specific experience, knowledge and qualifications. Likewise if you've been running a gym for five years, you are unlikely to have the right profile to start as a sous chef at the Savoy!
That said it's hugely important, particularly in these difficult times, that you don't dismiss recruitment opportunities just because they aren't in your sector.
Cast your net widely and shout your qualities from the rooftops.
