Some skills you may acquire throughout your professional career are tailored to specific roles or perhaps are specific to certain companies. While other skills developed can be implemented in every role and every organisation. Transferable skills are developed throughout your professional career. It’s important to note your transferable skills and how you can develop and improve these transferable skills in order to maximise your career progression.
Here are some of the most sought after transferable skills:
Motivation and enthusiasm
Think about it logically, your next employer is basically investing in you so you need to show them that you are passionate about your career. They need to be sure that you are motivated and enthusiastic about the work that you do, otherwise why are they going to spend money in order for you to work for them? If you lack motivation then this will reflect in the quality of your work, ultimately reflecting badly on the organisation.
Initiative
Working off your own initiative is a highly valuable skill to have in the workplace. Employers do not want to hire someone that is going to require “spoon feeding”, they want people that can stand on their own two feet and actually think for them self. Be careful when trying to develop this skill, there is a fine line between showing initiative and over stepping boundaries. Do not act outside your authority.
Planning
Be organised. Time and task management are key skills that can be applied to every job you will do in your life. This one definitely takes a little bit of time to master if you are not a particularly organised individual but once you have gotten the hang of it, it can be a complete game changer. This skill will make life so much easier for you, when you consider the amount of tasks that you have to complete in a working day, once everything is organised and scheduled it just falls into place.
Communication
Strong communication skills can be applicable to any job. Make records and document times when you overcame complex scenarios by clarifying things with some of your work colleagues. Employers are interested in knowing if you are able to express your own thoughts and opinions to anyone in their company and also able to digest and understand other individuals point of view. See things from another perspective.
Teamwork
Employers want to know if you are capable of working on group projects or if you prefer to work solo. The idea behind this is, they are interested in finding out if you can join forces with other members of staff in order to complete a task that has been assigned to you. Develop this skill by taking opportunities to work in with your colleagues and other individuals from various departments of the company to show the employer that you can communicate and work with various people effectively to deliver the results.
Problem Solving
Problem solving comes down to real life situations. You can be the top of your class in college and graduate with a first class honours degree but may have no idea how to deal with an occurring problem in work. Problem solving is a fantastic skills to have under your belt but will only be developed and improved by gaining some real life insights or experience. Throughout your career it’s important to recognise moments where you had to come up with a solution to a problem in the workplace. Ideally you should be noting these particular moments in your career and you can bring them up as evidence in future job interviews.
Flexibility
Generally speaking, the more flexible you are in the workplace the better. Employer’s generally have a preference for flexible employees as they tend to throw their hand at any task they are given. They are the type of people that will do their best to help someone out and do what they can rather than tell them “No, it’s not my job”. Having a basic understanding of your colleagues departments will enable you to work better with them and increase the over all quality of work.
Self-awareness
The ability to recognise your own strengths and weaknesses is an invaluable skill to have. You’re employer needs to be aware of what your strong points are as well as your weaknesses to see if you would be a suitable fit for the organisation. Again, it all comes down to the idea of an employer essentially investing in you. They need to know how you can further develop the company, they need to be aware of how you can become an asset to the business.