Use your transferrable skills to pivot to your next role!
If you have found yourself in the job market through the Covid-19 Pandemic, there’s no doubt that one of the first things you did was dust off your resume and add your last role to the top of the list. Maybe you spruced up a few other details as well, crossed your fingers and hoped that would do the trick. The truth is, we don’t know many people who confess to LOVING the process of updating their resume. For most of us, it is simply a necessary chore to help us advance our career or secure our next job. In our experience, people avoid updating their resume because they are either uninspired by, or unsure of how to tell their own story. If you can’t get yourself excited about your career story, how are you going to garner the interest of a prospective employer? The secret is to stop focusing so much on your previous tasks and accountabilities and instead let your transferable skills take centre stage.
Your transferrable skills are at the heart of your career story. They are the skills that transcend a specific role or industry, and enable both your past and future success. They are the magic combination that only you bring to the table and your ticket to your next job opportunity.
When creating your resume, it is relatively easy to document your technical skills, degrees, certifications and key job responsibilities and accountabilities. These are the bricks and mortar of your resume and demonstrate to prospective employers WHAT you have accomplished throughout your career. Savvy employers however, will not only be looking for evidence of what you have accomplished, but they will also be keenly interested in how you have done it. For example, if an accomplishment from your last role was leading your organization through a significant change, an employer will want to know specifically what skills you applied to successfully manage the change, and how those skills might be of benefit in their organization. For example, did you leverage outstanding critical thinking skills to anticipate hurdles and stakeholder resistance? Or perhaps it was your superior communication skills that allowed you to effectively communicate the change, gain support and engage employees. More than likely, it was both of these skills, and more, working together to help you get the job done.
Let’s get a little more specific about what transferable skills really are. Also called “portable skills”, transferable skills are the skills that add to your success no matter what role you are in. It’s often hard for us to pinpoint our transferable skills because, in many cases we have been unconsciously honing them since childhood. They become part of who we are, and we start to take them for granted. So, how do you identify your transferable skills? Here are a few ways you can start thinking about your transferable skills:
- Think about all the feedback and inputs you have received over the years. This may include information from previous performance reviews, conversations with peers and leaders or feedback from school assignments. What common feedback have you received over the years?
- Make a list of all of your past jobs, volunteer positions, important projects in school and any other role you’ve played over the years. Document and reflect on each of your key accomplishments in those positions. Consider the actions you took that enabled you to achieve your goals. What were you doing differently or more effectively than those around you?
- Solicit feedback from people in your network. Ask them to think about when they see you operating at your very best. What kind of work are you doing and how are you contributing?
As you review the above, more than likely, you will notice that there are a few key skills that seem to rise to the top as having contributed to your success over time. Those are the transferable skills that should be front and centre on your resume.
Now that you have reflected and gained clarity on your transferable skills, the next step is to plan for how you effectively showcase them on your resume. There is no shortage of ways you can articulate your transferable skills. For the greatest impact, our tip is to boil your skills down to the most fundamental level and use common language. This will make your resume easy to read by any prospective employer and avoid the mistake of using organizational specific terms. For example, once again if one of your key skills is the ability to effectively manage change you can actually break this down into a few relatable and well-understood transferable skills including: communication skills, critical thinking and organization. Together, these skills allow you to effectively manage stakeholders by enabling you to assess and analyze your environment, organize the flow of information, training, etc. and effectively communicate. A quick google search will yield lots of other examples on transferable skills. Some of our favourites include: Communication skills (includes listening, verbal, written), Critical Thinking (problem solving, analytical thinking), Organization, Relationship Management, Project Management, Creativity, Leadership, Adaptability, Growth Mindset and Teamwork.
As a candidate in today’s market, differentiate yourself by showcasing more than a laundry list of roles and accountabilities. Focus on what you can achieve for your next employer by promoting your transferrable skills!
Purpose to Impact is a talent management consulting and career coaching company helping organizations create a culture where employees can have meaningful careers, and helping individuals align who they are with what they do. Subscribe now at www.purposetoimpact.ca for regular career advice and check out our services page for more information on how we can help.
