Use Transferable Skills for Switching to a New Career

Transferable job skillsMaking a career change is one of the biggest challengers that many jobseekers face. Since you are switching to a new career, the odds against landing the new job are also high. You also have a tough time creating a resume for the new career so that you can win over the hiring manager. Under these circumstances, one thing that can be a massive help is your awareness about your transferable skills. Even when you want to switch careers, you may carry many of the skills that are required for the new job.

If you are able to identify your transferable skills, you can use them to give your resume a big advantage over the competition.

Transferable skills, therefore, are those skills or abilities, learned in your previous jobs, which are required for the new role. Depending on your past roles, work and experience, you may have a range of transferable skills. But you can benefit only when you are aware of these transferable skills.

Here’s a quick look at a few examples of transferable skills –

Communication
Leadership
Team Playing
Creativity
Problem Solving
Budget Management
Multi-tasking
Project Management

All of these are soft skills. Usually, transferable skills are soft skills like the ones mentioned above. Technical skills vary from one field of work to another. That’s why it’s hard to apply your existing technical skills to a new career or job role. Now that you understand what transferable skills are like, you should start finding more of such skills in yourself.

When you are completely aware of all your transferable skills, you’ll also find it easy to choose a suitable new career while planning a career change. It’s not your job title that makes up what you are. If your limit yourself to your current job title or position, you won’t be able to identify your transferable skills and plan a successful career transition as per your requirements.

Tips to Identify Transferable Skills

According to career experts, there are several key questions that you can ask yourself to get started with the transferable skills identification process. If you do it appropriately, you shouldn’t have any trouble.

You should start with questions like –

What are my specific work experiences?
What were my accomplishments in the last few jobs?
What are my favorite activities?
What are my personal qualities?

While identifying your transferable skills, it’s not just your previous professional experience that needs examination. In fact, you can take a closer look at your entire life in the past. You can also consider your school and college days. The point is to identify all those essential skills that you can use in your new role and build a successful career all over again.

Resume Preparation

In order to beat out the competition in the new career you have chosen, you should create a winning resume. The transferable skills that you have identified in yourself can make your resume really worth considering. Not only in your resume, but you should talk about your transferable skills in your cover letter. While changing careers, a skill-based resume is what you need. And your awareness about your transferable skills makes this task easier.

Please feel free to share your opinions.

The following two tabs change content below.
Peter is a Senior Managing Consultant at Wenulima Pty, a broad-based consultancy company which specializes in social media, content marketing, hospitality, languages and business management. He's well known as a corporate and personal social media branding strategist. He regularly coaches individuals in key areas like leadership and management.

  1. Herschel Zucchetto

    I just couldn’t go away your website prior to suggesting that I actually loved the usual information an individual supply in your guests? Is going to be back steadily to check out new posts.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Herschel Zucchetto Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *