Skill Transferring: Exploring your hidden talents
Many people who work with me yearn to shift gears and switch up their careers or positions, but they’re afraid it will be too difficult or mean a major financial setback. It can certainly feel daunting to set out on a new course. Questions and doubts arise: Will I have to go back to school for a degree – or another degree? Will everything I’ve learned in this field go to waste? Do I have to start again at entry level? What I want my clients and you to know is that we are usually more well-equipped than we realize. That’s why I bring up the concept of transferable skills.
Transferable skills are abilities and talents that are relevant to a wide range of professions and jobs. Communication, time management, and working well on a team are a few that come to mind immediately and may even be found within job descriptions. There are others that don’t find their way onto job descriptions but are at least as valuable:
Adaptability: being able to roll with whatever gets thrown your way with ease and maybe even some positivity. Being able to easily shift timelines, priorities, and approaches when needed without losing focus or traction.
Listening: a highly useful, but often overlooked skill that can help problem solve, gain clarity on what is needed to complete a task, improve productivity, and resolve conflicts, especially when it’s combined with empathy or emotional intelligence.
Creativity: painting, writing, and drawing are typically labeled as creative skills, but creativity can also mean being able to think outside of the box in any endeavor, which in turn can help find solutions and provide alternative ways of going about tasks.
Transferable skills can come from any area of your life, beginning quite early, even in elementary school. The skills you picked up while working at a fast food restaurant when you were sixteen can most definitely assist you as you embark on your first job out of college. And the skills you develop at that first job out of college can help to propel you forward if, but more likely when, you decide to shift gears down the road. I’ve had clients who are exploring something new, maybe something that didn’t even exist as a career fifteen or twenty years ago, who realize that a paper they wrote in college or a project they did over a summer is something they can draw on for their new role or new industry.
Transferable skills came up recently in a conversation with an associate of mine who had shifted from their first career choice to their vastly different second one. After graduating as a veterinary assistant, they worked at an animal shelter, followed by a veterinarian clinic for three years. After feelings of “maybe this isn’t for me” seeped in, the possibility of pursuing their lifelong passion for writing seemed like a much better fit and use of their energy.
This person told me about the self-doubting thoughts that crept in. Am I capable? If I switch things up now does that mean that I have wasted years of my life? For them, this career shift did mean going back to college. But upon easing into their first job as a writer, they found that they were way more equipped to transition to this new line of work than they had originally anticipated.
Fielding phone calls and emails professionally and proficiently for a wide range of clients and needs at the veterinary clinic had given them the tools they needed to communicate with different personality types, all with different communication styles. Triaging and organizing appointment types, from emergencies to routine exams, aided them in assessing what tasks should take priority and how to handle unexpected hiccups and curveballs. They found that learning how to ask precise, at times difficult questions to see a project through had also transferred over. Without being conscious of it, they had built their communication, adaptability, time management, and listening skills and brought those with them on their new career journey.
Everyone has skills they have acquired in one specific role or situation that turn out to be useful or essential later on in very different cirumstances. The key is to bring to your awareness those skills which you have come to take for granted I work with my clients to recognize and value the ability to think on your feet, the capacity to “translate” between scientists and business people, or the blend of tact and decisiveness needed to deal with anxious people who want you to drop everything and solve their problem right now. I invite you to reflect on your past jobs, volunteer experiences, and formal and informal education where the seeds of communication, team building, or creativity may have been planted. Maybe you’ve already experienced a transition from one immensely different career path to the next, unconsciously packing up and taking transferable skills with you. Chances are, you’ve carried more strengths with you through life than you realize.
If you’d like to explore what transferable skills you may be hiding in your back pocket, explore my services or contact me today.