Career Reinvention &
Personal Brand Strategist

Identifying Your Transferable Skills

April 04, 2008
By: Randi Bussin-Career Coach, Personal Branding Specialist

Identifying Your Key Transferable Skills

If you’re interested in changing your career, the most important ingredients to have in your resume and cover letter are your transferable skills. Without emphasizing your transferable skills, your ability to switch careers and land that new job will be minimized.

First you need to identify your transferable skills before you can emphasize them. And, to do that, you need to define what a transferable skill is and which ones you possess. A transferable skill is a capability, talent, or experience that you possess that can be transferred or utilized in a different work environment. For instance, if you have managed personnel, this can easily be transferred to a new career/field. That’s because many of the responsibilities of a manager—such as managing a diverse group, mentoring new employees, or initiating new programs, seminars, and learning tools — are similar in different industries.

If you’ve been in your current job and/or profession for the last seven, ten, or 15 years, you don’t want a new employer to identify you for what you have been doing but rather for who you are and what you can become. So, sit down and write out what you do in a much broader sense.

Characteristics and qualities that you can feature as transferable skills are: being a quick learner, a successful collaborator, a productive employee, an efficiency expert, or your willingness to work on extra committees to improve efficiency or production. Any of these skills or activities can be transferred to a new workplace or profession, and focusing on them can show a new employer that you can make a difference in their company.

Also, focus on the job description for the position you are seeking, and adapt those terms and definitions in your resume and cover letter as your transferable skills. Communications skills, working well with others, accepting responsibility, and completing projects on time and under budget are often used in job descriptions. All of these can be featured as your transferable skills, showing how your qualities, characteristics, capabilities, and skills can easily transfer to a new position or career.

©2012, Randi Bussin, Aspire!

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