Transferable Skills and How to Find Them: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide

Posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2017

If you’re applying for co-op placements as a student or jobs as a recent grad, you may find yourself struggling to show what experience you have. Chances are you haven’t worked in your industry yet, and you may be having a hard time proving that you have relevant work experience.

Maybe you’ve worked at a fast food restaurant or shoe store. Maybe you spent your summers working at a summer camp. You’re very confident dealing with the public and working in a team, but that doesn’t apply to professional jobs, right?

Wrong! As it turns out, you do have relevant experience—you have transferable skills.

What are transferable skills?

Transferable skills are the abilities you have that can be used in various situations, environments, and jobs (as opposed to hard, industry-specific skills). They are the kinds of skills that you take with you from position to position. They’re the skills that show employers that not only are you capable of doing the basics of the job, you can also go above and beyond by incorporating everything you’ve learned in prior experience.

Transferable skills are every bit as important as hard skills, and they are massively marketable.

These kinds of skills set you apart from everyone else in your class and everyone else in your industry. These abilities are things you’ve learned outside the classroom and carry with you in your everyday life—your own personal toolkit of expertise that will help and benefit whichever organization you work for.

Transferable skills differentiate you from the competition and put you above the rest. You need them on your resume.

So how do you find yours? Here is a step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Think about a typical day at work.

You may be surprised to find out that a lot of the day-to-day activities at your service industry job are actually great examples of your transferable skills in action. Start off by thinking about what a typical day would look like for you.

For example, let’s say you worked in a pet store. You sold dog food and mopped the floor and closed the cash at night. If you’re looking for a professional job, you may think that this experience isn’t relevant, but it absolutely is—you picked up some awesome transferable skills.

You worked in a team to meet shared goals, you instructed new staff in workplace expectations, you built client relationships, you accurately and safely managed money, you delegated tasks to your team, you advised customers on appropriate purchases…the list goes on and on.

Check out this list of transferable skills. How many of them did you deal with in a day? Write them down.

Step 2: Pick your best and favourite tasks.

Now take a look at your list. Out of all those skills, which were your favourites? Which ones were you best at? Put a star next to those ones—these are going to form the basis of your personal brand.

Your brand is incredibly important to your job search. It will define what you are known for. By choosing your favourite and strongest skills, and representing those in all your work-related documents (from your resume to your LinkedIn), you take control of your reputation. You choose what you’ll be known for.

Once you’ve chosen your best transferable skills, try to narrow your list down to three. For this exercise, let’s say that your absolute best skills (and your favourite ones to exercise) were:

  • Training new staff
  • Motivating your coworkers
  • Talking with customers

Great! Now you’re ready to move to your next step.

Step 3: Put it on your resume.

Now that you have your top skills from this position listed, you can write a super effective description for your work experience.

Remember, you should always include some powerful action verbs on your resume. These will help you write effective descriptions that grab an employer’s attention.

For every job listed, you should have 4 to 7 bullet points describing what kind of work you did and what skills you picked up while doing it. And each of those bullet points should have an action verb, skill, and the outcome of your work—basically, why having this skill made you a key part of your team.

(Quick note: if you do have industry-specific experience, these bullets are you show what hard skills you picked up. But don’t skip the transferable skills, even with relevant experience! They’re still a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition.)

Writing Your Work Descriptions

Earlier we decided that your best transferable skills from your pet food store job were:

  • Training new staff
  • Motivating your coworkers
  • Communicating with customers

You want to lay those skills out with this formula:

Action Verb + Skill + Outcome

Combining your transferable skills with an action verb and the outcome of your work makes for some powerful work descriptions. Here’s how our three examples could look:

  • Training new staff becomes: Administered (action verb) training programs for new staff (transferable skill) to ensure incoming employees were comfortable and knowledgeable (outcome).
  • Motivating your coworkers becomes: Fostered (action verb) a motivating environment (transferable skill) to encourage coworkers to work towards shared sales goals (outcome).
  • Communicating with customers becomes: Advised (action verb) clients on purchases (transferable skill) to guarantee customer retention and satisfaction (outcome).

Voila—your non-relevant work experience is now relevant.

Transferable skills will change your job hunt game.

They are the key in building a strong, impressive resume. They tell the employer why you are the best hire, and what factors you bring with you to benefit their organization.

Sitting down and figuring out your transferable skills in this way will make you more confident in your whole job hunting process, up to and including your interview. They’ll set you apart and help you build your professional reputation. Incorporate them into your job search and watch your prospects grow.

If you would like to learn more about the Algonquin College co-op program, please visit our website at https://www.algonquincollege.com/coop/, connect with us at coop@algonquincollege.com or call us at 613-727-4723 Ext.7623. You can also follow us on Twitter @AlgonquinCoop.


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