Skip to content
Tab thru menu links. Enter key for site map.

Transferable Skills

Simply put, transferable skills are skills that you have acquired throughout your life that are transferable to things that you will be doing in the future. They are non-job specific skills which can be used in a variety of occupations. You may have learned them through course work, class projects, jobs, internships, volunteering, leadership roles or just plain life experience. Transferable skills are important skills that all employers seek from potential job candidates.

There are several categories of transferable skills:

  • communication
  • research and planning
  • human relations
  • management and leadership
  • work ethic
  • data experience
  • creativity

On your resume, under work experience you typically list bullets highlighting your duties at each position you have held. To make your resume even more attractive, go into more depth in order to highlight your transferable skills instead of simply listing your duties.

For example, if you work as a Customer Service Associate at Mast General Store, your first instinct may be to list What you do:

  • Ring up purchases
  • Arrange merchandise on store shelves
  • Clean store front

Those duties are all true, but to showcase your transferable skills you could give more detail about your business skills, communication skills, management/leadership skills, and work ethic:

  • Handle monetary transactions for individual sales
  • Assist customers with finding specific merchandise
  • Train new employees on company policies and procedures
  • Ensure store displays are neat and attractive to entice customer purchases

Before you would communicate your qualifications to a prospective employer, it is vital for you to review your experiences, contemplate the competencies gained and strategize how to convey each of your transferable skills through a resume and in an interview.

  1. Identify the skills you have using the Transferable Skills Checklist (.pdf)
  2. Identify the skills the employer is seeking
  3. Learn how to communicate the skills you have