Several times during my career, as I’ve listened across the interview table to an eager and aspiring job candidate, I’ve realized this person has very few skills that will readily transfer into the position I’m offering. They spent years working at their previous company. But how much work will immediately apply to our open position. And conversely, how much work will be required to get them up to speed? And in that moment, I mentally moved them to the bottom of my “viable candidates” list. Why? Because that candidate has too few transferrable skills.
As the name implies, transferrable skills are those that can readily transfer from one position or organization to another. Advanced Microsoft Excel or SQL skills are good examples. Most companies rely on spreadsheets or databases for various aspects of their business, therefore having these skills in house is always a plus.
Intermediate accounting and business finance skills are also readily transferrable, as are project management and critical thinking skills. Again, most companies value these skills on their staffs.
Current software skills specific to the position or industry tend also to be highly transferrable. For a reliability engineer, this might include fluency in the latest version of Weibull++ or XLSTAT; for the mechanical engineer, Solidworks or Ansys. The key here is current. Fluency in AutoCAD 11 or DOS 6.3 in not transferrable.
Communication skills, both written and verbal, are also highly transferrable. Afterall, what job ad would be complete without “Good oral and written communication skills required.” In fact, the whole range of soft skills—active listening, team building, collaboration, public speaking, etc.—are highly transferrable. These skills are tougher to illuminate on a resume, but become more apparent in an interview.
In a world where numbers and facts matter so much, it may seem like the need for soft skills like these are fading. But not so. A recent Harris poll of more than 2,100 hiring managers reveled a whopping 77% believed that soft skills were just as important as hard skills when evaluating potential job candidates; 16% said they were even more important.1
So how do you build and maintain your transferrable skills? There are no short cuts. You must re-invest some portion of your time, mental energy and money into developing these skills. If you ever find yourself abruptly competing in the open job market, you’ll wish you had.
Here are three tips to get started:
- Spend two hours per week at a minimum (five is better) reading blogs post, trade articles and news stories related to your job, industry or profession.
- Take one new class per month on one of the low-cost learning platforms like Udemy.com, Edx.org or Coursera.org.
- Develop a learning plan with specific, measurable and time-based goals (e.g. Read first 6 chapters of Schaum’s Principles of Accounting by March 15th.) Stick with it and become accountable to a “learning partner”.
You can also get started advancing your transferrable skills right away by signing up for one of the following online short courses from The Manufacturing Academy:
Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process
Return on Investment Analysis for Manufacturing
Footnote:
- “Overwhelming Majority of Companies Say Soft Skills Are Just as Important as Hard Skills, According to a New CareerBuilder Survey”, Jennifer Grasz, 2014.
