Identifying Transferable Work Skills For Career Change
How to find Your hidden transferable work skills
for career change resume?
So if you are set on changing your career,
you don’t just throw away all your past experience even though it might
not be in the same field.
You have to pull out all those skills that
you spent long hours polishing on your previous jobs, shine them up and
present them as valuable work experience relevant to your new line of
employment. These skills that you bring with you from one career or
employment to the next are called transferable skills… these are universal
skills that can be applied across a wide platform of the work
environment.
They have nothing to do with your paper
qualifications, these are skills that are more on the ‘learned or acquired
through actual work experience' side of things.
List / Examples of Transferable Skills
/ Transferable Skills Analysis:
To come up with a list of transferable
skills that can be taken from your past work experiences and presented as
an attractive hook on your resume for your new career, You need to Analyze
the actual duties performed in each of your previous positions. Hence your
transferable skills analysis work sheet will basically comprise three
columns outlining:
-
Duties in each of your previous positions
-
Description of Actual Work steps taken to
accomplish each of those duties.
-
Identify actual skills used to accomplish
those tasks
Here is an example of a transferable
skills analysis:
For example if in your previous job you
were an engineer and you are now changing your career to administration:
An analysis of
Some skills you could bring along from your old job to your new work are:
Sample of Transferable Skills Analysis
WorkSheet :
| |
Duties in Your
Previous Position |
Work Steps Used in
Accomplishing this Duty |
Acquired /
Applicable Skills Used |
| 1. |
Cost Estimates for
Various Projects |
- Gathering cost data from
market
- Analyzing / using Database /
other tools for estimates
- Preparing Estimates spread Sheet
|
- Money Management
- Softwares for Spread Sheets and
Database
- Actual Market Research
|
| 2. |
Planning & Overseeing
Execution of Projects |
- Planning work
- setting time frames
- keeping track using
project management software.
- Following up
|
- Organization Skills
- Project Management Skills
- Time management skills
|
| 3. |
Feed Back & Problem
Solving |
- Talking to people
- Getting feedback
- Resolving problems
|
- Good Communication Skills
- Negotiation skills
- Problem Solving skills
- Listening skills
- Persuasion skills
- Telephone skills
- People skills
|
| 4. |
Preparing Reports ,
Writing Letters and making presentations |
Writing and presenting
data |
- Writing skills
- presentation skills
- public speaking skills
|
List of Transferable skills identified
in this example :
Good Communication skills...
Since you
spent a lot of time talking to various handyman, workers, labourers, other
engineers , designers etc…. you have got a set of good speaking /
Communication / Negotiation / Interpersonal skills
that you can take to your next career.
Customer Service skills…
Since you
spent such a lot of time talking and dealing with various categories of
workers and people in general… these can be transferable as customer service skills.
Writing skills…
since you spent a lot
of time writing up progress reports etc… these can be presented as good
business writing skills.
Problem solving / Negotiation /
Dealing With Difficult People skills…
since you
probably spent time working out problems in various work settings, or
dealing with various work men issues , these can be transferable as
problem solving or Negotiation skills.
Organization skills...
Since you did
a lot of planning and organizing things in your project designs and executions, this can be
presented as good organization skills.
Money Handling / Management...
you probably
spent time on financial planning of projects, or work estimates… these can
be presented as money management skills.
Multi-tasking skills...
Since at
your previous work, you performed a lot of different activities related to
your work… these can be transferable as multi-tasking skills.
Computer skills...
You probably used
various computer programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel etc… these can be
transferable as good computer use skills. These computer programs can be
used in various other jobs / positions.
Telephone skills...
You probably
spoke on the phone a lot… these can be presented as good telephone skills.
Research skills...
You have probably
spent time on the internet googling or in the library searching for
information… these can be presented as good research skills.
In fact, what ever your previous job or line of work,
you can identify at least a dozen or more acquired transferable skills
hidden inside you waiting to be uncovered and presented on your resume for
a solid hit at your new career or job.
So when writing up your resume for that new
job or for a career change, don’t just rely on paper qualifications, or
the hard and dry past work experience. Put up your fine transferable
skills upfront. A lot of employers pay attention to those fine skill sets
that can only be acquired through long hours of applied perfection.
More Transferable skills and Career
Development Articles :
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