Transferrable Skills 101: Why They Matter in Your Career
Jobs are forever changing. From new advancements in technology to the introduction of AI, how we work is transforming. Staying competitive in the job market when you don’t know what will happen next can be challenging.
So, how do you make sure you keep up with the times? The answer is transferrable skills. Learning transferable skills that are in demand will help you find the right jobs to achieve your career goals, no matter the changing landscape.
It’s important to continuously learn and stay current to keep progressing in your career. Transferable skills make that possible. We’ll go through what transferable skills are, common examples, and how to learn them.
What Are Transferrable Skills?
Transferable skills are:
“Skills that you can take from one job to another, in multiple industries or roles.”
Consider the jobs you’ve done in the past; the common skills you used are likely transferable. Common ways you can gain these skills are through past roles, school, and volunteer experiences. As long as you can carry them from job to job, it’s likely a transferable skill.
Why Are Transferable Skills Important?
The job market is uncertain. At one point, data entry was on paper and pencil, then it moved to a computer, and now AI can do it all. Transferable skills are typically evergreen, meaning that they are always needed. To keep a competitive edge, learning key skills that you can bring with you to any job is important.
Organizations specifically look for transferable skills in professionals. These skills help you create innovative ideas and go beyond your job description. Transferable skills show that you are flexible, which can help you grow in your career.
Top 10 Transferable Skills
Transferable skills are generally soft skills rather than hard skills. However, they can be either, as long as they’re relevant in different careers. Hard skills are skills needed for specific jobs or industries, such as bookkeeping, coding, or shipping/receiving. But if you think about customer service, data entry, or heavy lifting – these are hard skills that could be considered transferable.
We will focus on soft skills since they can be carried across more industries. Here’s a list of our top ten transferable skills:
Leadership
You don’t necessarily have to be in a management role to learn leadership. Although it often includes managing groups and delegating responsibilities, you can also develop leadership through leading a project or coming up with solutions to problems. Being a strong leader also means holding a lot of the following transferable skills.
Teamwork
Teamwork isn’t about showing up and doing what you’re told. It’s actively collaborating with your team to help accomplish goals. You must make positive contributions, help others, and share ideas to earn teamwork skills.
Communication
Communication is valuable in any career. This is your ability to clearly share ideas, progress, or any other information. This limits misunderstanding so your team can stay on-track and focused. To improve your communication, you can ask how much and in what format your manager would like you to update them or ask questions.
Dependability
Dependability isn’t only about doing the tasks you say you will, but also in the timeframe you promise. Organizations can rely on you to do what you say and trust you with new projects. It’s important not to cut corners and complete the tasks as intended. To practice dependability, set expectations and do your best to deliver on time.
Organization
Companies prefer professionals that are organized. Whether it’s planning tasks so you know when you can complete them, keeping your files in order, or remembering important information about projects. It’s important to stay organized in your day-to-day. You can achieve this by establishing procedures that work for you and your team and abiding by them.
Time management
Time management requires a degree of organization. Organizing your tasks in order of priority and to match your capacity is a useful skill. This is important to organizations since it shows you can juggle multiple duties. You can block off time for tasks in your calendar or create to-do lists to make sure you have enough time to finish your responsibilities.
Conflict resolution
Conflict resolution can be customer-facing or colleague-facing. If a customer has an issue or there’s a conflict between coworkers, it’s important to handle it quickly so it doesn’t snowball. Managers often deal with the colleague side, but any customer-facing role can encounter conflict. To learn this skill, if a customer has an issue, you can propose solutions to help them have a positive experience.
Critical thinking
Critical thinking is taking information and using it to choose the best course of action. Instead of hearing a potential issue and agreeing that it could be an issue, it’s evaluating what’s being told to create a plan. It also includes making a judgment call on whether the information is more opinion or fact.
Relationship building
Relationships can be outward and inward facing. It’s just as important to have positive relationships with colleagues within your organization as with vendors or customers outside of it. Otherwise, your cross-department communication will be lacking. To practice relationship building, check-in and talk to multiple people in different departments within your organization.
Adaptability
Roles, deadlines, workflows, or anything else may change suddenly in any job. When this happens, you’re expected to react and create a new plan to cater to those changes. Whether you’re changing the due dates of projects or a whole new procedure in how you do things, adaptability will help you respond positively.