Transferable skills: how to name what you bring to your next job

Transferable skills are the ones that do not belong to a particular job. A nurse who becomes a project coordinator brings the habit of staying calm while five things go wrong at once. A student who ran a volunteer group brings the experience of getting people to show up without paying them. These skills are easy to overlook in yourself because they never appear in a job title.

They matter most at a turning point: changing careers, applying for a first job, or preparing a talk with your manager about where you want to grow.

Six areas

Our Transferable Skills Test asks about six areas, with three statements each:

• Communication: explaining a complicated idea so people understand it, writing so your point lands the first time, and listening instead of preparing your reply.
• Problem solving: breaking a big problem into steps and finding the cause before reaching for a fix.
• Adaptability: getting comfortable with new tools and keeping going when plans change at the last minute.
• Organisation: planning work to meet deadlines and doing the important tasks first.
• Leadership: stepping up when a group is stuck and giving honest feedback in a way people can accept.
• Learning: finding a way to learn a skill you need and asking for feedback so you improve.

The statements are our own. It is a self-rating checklist: you rate yourself, nobody tests your skills, and it is not a validated instrument.

How far a self-rating goes

People are only moderately good at judging their own abilities. In a review of dozens of studies, Michael Mabe and Stephen West (1982) found an average correlation of about .29 between people's ratings of their own ability and measured performance. Most of us know roughly where we stand, but with a wide margin.

That is why the result is a starting point. A high score tells you where to look for evidence. A low score tells you either where to grow, or where you have been modest.

From a rating to an example

An employer will not take "good at problem solving" on trust. They will believe a short story. For your two or three strongest areas, write one example each with three parts:

1. The situation. What was going on? One sentence.
2. What you did. Your actions, in the first person, not the team's.
3. What changed. A number if you have one: time saved, people reached, errors avoided.

Example for organisation: "Our student society had six events in one month and no shared calendar. I set one up, gave each event an owner and a checklist, and we ran all six without a clash." That sentence does more in an interview than a self-rating of 90 per cent.

Examples count from anywhere: paid work, study, volunteering, caring for a family member, a club you organised.

Where to go next

The skills you have are half of the career question. The other half is what you enjoy doing. The Holland career test (RIASEC) matches your interests to types of work, and the strengths profile looks at what gives you energy. For an overview of career tests, read what career is right for you?.