Defining Resume “Transferable Skills”

Let’s talk about how “transferable skills” actually work in your job search, especially if you are looking to change industry/fields of employment.

Transferable skills are *functional* and *applied* by definition. They may or may not be demonstrated by your innate attributes (“soft skills”). Some examples of transferable skills would be:

· People management

· Experience training other people

· Specific writing skills, like documentation, medical transcription, or journalism

· Customer service — dealing directly with customers who have paid for goods/services that you represent to solve problems and make for a better experience

· Project coordination/management of complex tasks

· Administrative skills like filing, scheduling, taking notes, arranging travel etc.

These are all used (and often trained) on-the-job and can be applied across various industries. For them to be relevant to inclusion on your resume, you must be able to give *specific examples* of how you consistently employed them in your job history.

Transferable skills do NOT take the place of specific industry experience. Just because you have ten years managing people in a retail setting, that does NOT necessarily take the place in a job that requires “five years of people management in a health care setting”. If you don’t have the crucial 5 years in health care, *then you are not qualified*. And in a significant number of companies and industries, potential employers LEGALLY cannot consider you without that industry experience if it is written as a hard requirement.

A “transferable skill” does not include things like punctuality, generic communication skills*, being a team player, or empathetic, or being ambitious/driven. Those are personality traits that you use when you are working in general, but they are not actual *skills*. (I emphasized generic communication, because — as in my writing example above — one needs the specific general attributes to develop the skills.) These are also what people refer to as “soft skills”.

Your resume is a tool for demonstrating your actual work experience — with specific examples of your work or training that show your professional expertise. Your soft skills are explored in INTERVIEWS and CONVERSATIONS with people. Make sure you have a hard hitting document that represents you in the best manner for potential employers.