What can you offer if you don't have the exact skills a job asks for? Building your transferable skills

Even years into a career, plenty of people read a job ad that asks for experience they don't have. The industry is different, or the title is unfamiliar. Sometimes the sector they built a career in has contracted, or the role they were good at no longer exists in the same form. It's a common position to be in, and it doesn't mean you have nothing to offer.

What you have is a set of transferable skills, and they are worth more than most people give themselves credit for.

What transferable skills are

Transferable skills are abilities that go beyond a particular job or organisation. They aren't tied to one employer or one industry. Strong people skills, for example, are valuable whether you’re a customer service representative or a carpenter, a senior executive or a new starter. They cover both hard skills, like technical knowledge or knowing your way around particular software, and soft skills, like active listening and negotiation You will sometimes hear them called portable skills, or transferable strengths.

You build them everywhere, not just at work. Study, volunteering, coaching a junior sports team, running the household budget, sitting on a committee. If you have researched a topic, written a report, or presented to a room, you have developed something you can carry into a completely different occupation.

Why employers value them

Many employers have moved away from hiring on industry experience alone. They are looking for the attributes that apply across roles and sectors, because those are the skills that get the work done.

Hiring someone with proven transferable skills means gaining an employee who can potentially :

·       Adapt quickly to new environments and challenges

·       Collaborate across diverse teams

·       Contribute value from day one, even when moving from another field.

The skills that come up most often in hiring conversations are leadership, teamwork, communication, reliability, organisation, active listening, problem solving, relationship building, adaptability, and working with information. Read that list again. Most people with a decade of work behind them can back up at least half of it.

The five groups

Transferable skills tend to fall into five groups. Working through them one at a time is a practical way to take stock.

1.     Organisation and execution skills. Planning, meeting deadlines, managing your own time, researching and using information, administration, handling budgets, selling, generating ideas, and picking up new technology.

2.     Communication skills. Listening and checking that you have understood, writing anything from an email to a formal report, and dealing with people face to face, whether that is running a meeting, negotiating, or presenting to a group.

3.     People skills. Getting along with colleagues, customers, and clients. Collaboration, patience, understanding someone else's position, and a willingness to change your approach when it isn't working.

4.     Leadership skills. Setting priorities, delegating, critical thinking and problem solving, and coaching, mentoring, and giving useful feedback.

5.     Financial skills. Budgeting, record keeping, forecasting costs, and managing resources against a target.

How to identify your own

Most of us sell ourselves short, so this takes some deliberate effort.

Start with your last three roles and write down what you actually did each week, rather than what the position description said. Then look beyond paid work: study, community roles, family responsibilities, projects on the side. For each one, ask what skill it required, and whether that skill would be useful somewhere else. If it would, it's transferable.

Be specific. “Good communicator” tells an employer nothing. “Ran weekly meetings for a team of 12 and resolved customer complaints” tells them a great deal.

Then look at the gaps. Knowing where you are short is just as useful, because it shows you what to develop next and what to look for in your next role.

How to talk about them

Identifying your strengths is only half the work. The other half is connecting them to the role in front of you.

About a third of graduates end up working in a field unrelated to what they studied. They get there by working out what they can do, then showing how it matches what the employer needs. The same approach works at any career stage, and it becomes more important the further you move from your original field.

When you write your resume, respond to selection criteria, or sit in an interview, don't leave the employer to work out the connection. Name the strength, give the evidence, and explain what it will let you do in their role.

Done well, this changes the conversation. You stop apologising for the experience you don't have and start talking about the capability you do.

Making the move

Changing industries is more common than most people think. The people who do it well take the time to work out what they are genuinely good at, and can explain it clearly. That work is worth doing before you start applying, not after.

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