Transferable Skills
Career Services

Transferable skills are skills you develop in a variety ways and take with your throughout your professional career. They are acquired through work, through volunteer projects, through campus activities, through classes, and in a variety of other ways. They are often taken for granted and overlooked by the job seeker, but they are very marketable to potential employers. It is important to know your reader and what they might be looking for in order to best highlight the relevant skills.Some examples of transferable skills:

• Interpersonal Communication
• Customer Service Organizational Skills
  Listening Skills
• Stress Management
• Written Communication Skills
  Decision-Making Skills
• Creativity
• Leadership Skills
  Time Management
• Problem-Solving Skills
• Analytical Ability

To identify your transferable skills:

• List out your work, volunteer experience, class projects or presentations, and student activities.
• For each experience, identify 3 primary responsibilities/duties.
• For each of those responsibilities, what skill did you use to be successful.
• Choose skills from the list that your next employer would be interested in knowing you have.

Example:

Activity: Served as a representative to the Roosevelt Student Government.

Duties: Talked with students on campus to find needs, attended student government meetings, verbally shared any student concerns or comments.

Skills for success: communication (talked to students), time management (had to balance attending meetings and class), public relations (had to present concerns in a diplomatic way to the rest of the representatives).
All would be of interest in a potential employer.

Now your turn:

1) Experience or activity:

2) 3 primary responsibilities/duties:

3) Skills for success:

4) Which would be of interest to your potential employer?

Career Services