3 important transferable skills for your career

As a professional, it’s vital to continuously develop and enhance your transferable skills, even if you are currently content in your current role or actively seeking a new position in the same field.

In today’s unpredictable job market, particularly in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic, transferable skills are highly sought after by businesses. These skills enable you to adapt and thrive in new job environments, making you a valuable asset to any team.

With many companies experiencing layoffs due to the pandemic, the talent pool is becoming more diverse and competitive, making it essential to stand out by demonstrating a strong set of transferable skills.

According to Fast Company, there are several benefits of hiring someone outside of your industry, so organisations will undoubtedly take advantage of this when it’s time for them to hire again.

However, to leverage these developing job opportunities, you will need first to understand which of your transferable skills are in hot demand in the market and then know how to sell them on your CV and LinkedIn profile.

Related: How to negotiate salary: 8 tips you need to know

Transferable skills are innate abilities you’ve acquired in work environments and non-work situations such as volunteering, additional study, and education, groups, and clubs such as sports. They can also contribute to developing specific skills.

With people changing jobs and industries at a much higher rate than before, it is best to be aware of how your current and upcoming experiences at work will allow you to build up solid transferable skills. Doing so will put you in a much stronger position for future job applications.

Here are three important transferable skills you should focus on.

1. Strong, clear communication skills for workplace success

Strong communication skills – verbal and written – will get you ahead in your career regardless of what type of responsibilities your job involves. Why? Because whether you are conveying information internally (your manager, team, colleagues, and broader business) or externally (customers, clients and partners), being an effective communicator is critical to doing your job well.

Essential communication skills to continually develop are:

• Active listening and reading
• Speaking clearly and concisely
• Writing clearly and concisely
• Asking questions
• Understanding non-verbal cues

2. People management equals instant career growth

Understandably, getting into a traditional leadership or management position will take some time in your career. But suppose there are opportunities to lead a few team members in specific responsibilities or entire teams for projects.

In that case, it contributes to your people management experience, so be sure to put your hand up when these occasions arise.

Being a team leader means training, directing, and motivating staff members to reach a specific goal. This is where you’ll learn how to:

• Manage different personalities
• Communicate with several work styles
• Actively listen
• Delegate
• Supervise
• Problem solve
• Provide feedback and constructive criticism
• Deal with conflict resolution
• Time management
• Be adaptable and flexible
• Be patient
• Begin to develop your management and leadership style
• A better understanding of the dynamics of overall teamwork

Most jobs will require some element of people management, so you may move up faster with a promotion or be offered a more senior role to someone who doesn’t have the same skills. After all, these are developed through real-life experience.

Related: 9 soft skills employers are looking for

3. Research and analytical skills will get you ahead

In our fast-paced world of work, making business decisions could mean the difference between success and failure, no matter what function you play in your company.

Making big or small choices or running processes based on solid research and data is becoming more and more expected of employees. Why? Being able to interpret information to produce a well-researched outcome demonstrates that you have considered the factors that could risk failure.

For those who prefer to avoid looking at numbers in Excel spreadsheets or finding it difficult to interpret data in charts and graphs, find someone in your team or organisation who can help you.

The more you look at the numbers and understand how to communicate the data and information, the better you'll become at it.

Your current and future employer will be impressed that you invested in active learning to develop these skills because it is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Ready for your next big role to apply your transferable skills? Search our current opportunities, send us your CV or get in touch with one of our recruitment specialists at Michael Page.