Life Lessons in the Truth About Transferable Skills
Here's the truth: you're thinking about transferable skills all wrong. The truth is that you already have them; you don't need to work to develop them. What you need is to better articulate those transferable skills to stand out to employers.
You have transferable skills that employers expect in their highest paid and most impactful employees. How you position yourself as an expert currently using those skills is key.
1. Marketing and messaging - Chances are you've written copy for emails, fliers, or newsletters. That effort starts by understanding your audience and your offer well enough to know what points to make to drive an action in others. That action may be to buy something or to RSVP for an event, and your ability to communicate to key audiences is a skill that you may also use to develop stakeholder reports and presentations. Stop downplaying that.
2. Public speaking - I am sure some of you are better public communicators than you realize. People often think of public speaking as giving speeches to audiences of thousands of people, from a stage or microphone. But most of us are good at speaking to a room of five or seven people at work. Your ability to speak to a group and drive them to a specific decision is the level of public speaking needed for most jobs.
3. Supervision - Whether you oversee volunteers or a small staff of one or two people, your ability to lead is a highly sought-after skill. Helping others integrate into the organization and training them while providing direction and support is a huge responsibility. As we shift our ability to speak to the impact and outcomes of our supervision, we shift from being seen as someone who helped under someone else's leadership…to being seen as the leader ourselves.
4. Customer service - Too often we downplay our early customer service jobs, thinking they aren’t worth mentioning along with other responsibilities we have held. But the truth is I’ve taken that high impact customer service strategy into every job that I've ever had. The basics we learned in food service, retail, or reception will be our examples of how we excel at client relationship management.
I'm here to tell you that there is value in what you already have — knowledge, talent, expertise, degrees, credentials, certifications, and years of experience — and all of it is transferable. My job as a mentor is to help you learn how to articulate and transition your skills to higher-level, higher-paying roles. If you want that kind of support, I'm excited to share it with you.
Check back each week for the newest blog post from Mentor Me!