Search

Get A Better Job: Transferable skills

by Rod Ashley

Given the movement towards employability and the need for nimbleness in transferring between employment sectors and settings, transferable personal skills are crucial.  Graduate employers, in particular, are aware of the need for such transferability between an organisation’s different activities. 

Examples of transferable skills include: communication skills, problem-solving, working with others, and improving own learning and performance.   Traditionally, these skills have been seen as ‘soft’ skills, they didn’t carry any accreditation and were seen as somehow absorbed by osmosis, rather than actively developed aspects of education or work-based development.  Such a haphazard approach may have varied according to an individual’s employment or educational history and, as such, sometimes disadvantaged those who were outside the formal employment market.  In particular, the multi-disciplinary skills of carers, home-makers and others were simply ignored or under-played, sometimes contributing to their difficulty in re-entering the labour market.  Today, we are more enlightened and many employers offer courses or opportunities for colleagues to upskill, based on the assumption that ‘you don’t have to be bad to get better’.  Teach Yourself Getting a Better Job provides a toolkit for identifying in a structured manner your own skills so that you can gain confidence from having these and focus on ways to enhance less developed skills.



<< Back to home
No books are available for this article.

Related Articles

Finance for Non-Financial Managers: What shouldn't I put on my CV? This could make for a very long list...
Obvious things not to include are personal details, such as age, marital status, sexual orientation, race, etc. as these do not affect your ability to do a job and could be used, consciously or unconsciously, to discriminate against you.
Get That Job With The Right CV: Should I include all of my exam results on my CV? The answer depends on two things:
- how relevant your exam results are to the job you are applying for, and
- whether they will help or hinder your chances of getting an interview.
Get That Job With The Right CV: In what order should I show information? Every CV should start with your name, followed by up to date contact details.

Summaries (like Profile, Key Skills or Objective) should go near the top as well, because these help readers to get a feel quickly for who you are and what you offer.
Get That Job With The Right CV: What sort of paper should I print my CV on? Good quality paper. First impressions count.

When someone’s hand closes on good quality paper, its thickness, texture and weight will count positively (within reason!) towards the image they will build of you. It is worth spending a little extra to ensure that the CV you have slaved over is presented as well as possible.
Get That Job With The Right CV: How far back should I go with the information I put on my CV? It depends on how relevant any older information is to the job you are applying for. Recent information tends to carry more weight, but relevance is essential for a powerful CV.
Finance for Non-Financial Mangers: UK Accounting Bodies The ’profession’ is represented by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (there are separate bodies for Scotland and Ireland) – mostly these are auditors, but experienced Chartered Accountants will seek to become partners and may specialise in specific financial matters eg taxation, mergers, or even move into industry.
Improve Your Project Management: What is a project? Projects certainly aren’t a new ‘thing’– they‘ve have been around for a long time. The Pyramids, Hadrian’s Wall, the Parthenon and Stonehenge – all of these were, once upon a time, projects. Contemporary projects include the Channel Tunnel, the 553-metre high CN tower in Toronto and the 3910-metre long Akashi- Kaikyo bridge in Japan. But what do these and the millions of modern-day projects that we see in our lives have in common?
Improve Your Project Management: Activity on Arrow networks A project network is a flow chart that sets out to show the sequence in which a project's activities are to be completed. One of the two main project networks in popular use, the Activity on Arrow (AOA) network, uses arrows to depict activities. The direction of the arrow indicates the direction of time and the activity durations are attached.
Improve Your Project Management: Activity on Node networks A project network is a flow chart that sets out to show the sequence in which a project's activities are to be completed. One of the two main project networks in popular use, the Activity on Node (AON) network, uses nodes to depict activities. It’s also often called a Precedence Network. When this is used to generate a full AON network what you get is the sort of network that’s shown below.
Improve Your Project Management: Building a project management team Project teams are unusual. Unlike most of the other sorts of team that you’ll see in your organization, they are transient and short lived – they only exist for the duration of the project. Nevertheless, like other teams, they consist of people who provide a variety of specialist services to the team leader – the project manager. In order to do that – and do it effectively – they need to work together collaboratively and in ways that involve negotiated answers to conflict, decision taking and problem solving.
Improve Your Project Management: Leading a project All project managers are leaders. They lead teams of people who are involved in a project. These people are in the project team – on a part-time or full-time basis – because of their particular skills, interests and abilities. But they will only stay in that team for as long as their skills and knowledge are needed. On small or medium projects, these team members will often have a ‘back-home’ location outside the project and will have a career investment in that ‘home’ location.
Improve Your Project Management: PRINCE2 PRINCE is an acronym that stands for Projects In Controlled Environments. It’s a management method that covers the management, control and organization of a project. PRINCE2 refers to the second major version of this method and is a registered trademark of the UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

Initially developed in 1989 and used as a UK government standard for information systems (IT) project management, PRINCE was soon in regular use outside the IT environment. PRINCE2 was released in 1996 as a generic project management method and is scheduled for review in 2008/09.
Improve Your Project Management: Project Management Institute Founded in 1969 with the aim of advancing the practice, science and profession of project management throughout the world, the Project Management Institute currently has over 260,000 members in more than 171 countries. From its ‘Global Operations Center’ in Pennsylvania, USA, and offices in China, Singapore, Belgium and India, the PMI also supports some 250 member chapters in over 70 countries.
Improve Your Project Management: Project management qualifications The idea that project management is a profession has been gaining increasing recognition for some time now. As a result, there are a number of formal project management qualifications that you can study for.
Improve Your Project Management: Project management software There’s a wide range of computer software available to help you manage your project. The sorts of things that these programs do range from scheduling project tasks through to project administration systems. They also include software designed for cost control and budget management, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication, quality management and project documentation.
Improve Your Project Management: Project management training When the word ‘training’ gets used in the workplace it almost always refers to the process that is followed when you or I set out to acquire the KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS and COMPETENCIES that we need to carry out our workplace roles. The ways in which we do that can vary enormously. They can, for example, involve on-the-job training that takes place in the workplace, or off-the-job training that takes place remote from normal work situations.
Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: Self-sabotage – Overcoming our scripts Many of us are driven by our unconscious behaviour to self-sabotage ourselves. It is as if we were handed a script of pre-ordained self-sabotaging behaviour in childhood and that we are compelled to act out our role – even though it does not serve our own purpose.
Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: NLP in a nutshell NLP is a set of tools and techniques designed to help people reach their full potential. The original work developed from modelling how people with exceptional talents got their outstanding results. Once a skill can be described it can be taught and learnt.
Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: Negative thinking Negative thinking is a form of self-talk we use to mentally beat ourselves up for our shortcomings. If our default setting is set to ‘negative’ then a small event that upsets us like missing a bus or forgetting to post a letter can be the trigger that sucks us into a spiral of negative thinking.
Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: Confidence building and raising self-esteem Research in America indicates that 80 per cent of children enter school with high self-esteem, yet by the time they leave only 5 per cent still value themselves. Self-esteem, our opinion of ourselves, is what makes us feel good about ourselves, worthy of happiness, and capable of meeting life’s challenges.
Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: Inspirational voices Who are the people who inspire you most, the ones whose words still ring in your ears? Often their words reframe the way you have been thinking about your life and influence you to aspire to greater challenges.
Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: Goal setting and skills-building success Use NLP strategies for setting goals when you undertake new projects.
Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: Work-life balance You might dream of escaping a stressful work and travel situation and changing your lifestyle. But have you thought about how you might actually achieve it?
Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: The pink bubble meditation We deal with stress by using imagery, and the movies we create in our ‘minds eye’ determine the quality of our lives. Before we succeed or fail at anything we run through scenarios for success and pinpoint possible crisis points.
Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: Build energy and flow in your life If you were doing all the things you really wanted to do – what would make your heart sing? If you have felt the presence of energy and flow in your life before you will know that the experience is exhilarating, yet often fleeting. When we work with a purpose in mind, make plans and set goals that stretch us to go beyond our boundaries then the feeling we get is one of energy and flow.
Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: Question limiting beliefs Much of the NLP change work is based on helping people to recognise their own limiting thoughts and to challenge them. Here is a tip on challenging your limiting beliefs. Think of a belief you hold that stops you from getting the achievements you want. It may be: ‘I am not good at…something’, ‘I am not meant to be…something. Reflect on the following questions and listen to what your inner voice tells you.
Get A Better Job: Biography - Rod Ashley Rod Ashley owns Ashley Consult (www.ashley-consult.co.uk), which incorporates Ashley Associates and CATS.  It provides consultancy and training services to a wide range of clients, such as local authorities, the BBC, universities, private companies, the European Commission and the Welsh Assembly Government.
Get A Better Job: Changing labour markets The labour market constantly changes in response to evolving needs.  The job of central and local government, as well as other agencies, is to map and predict trends in order to plan for identified employment demands and to prepare people for these.  In a rapidly-changing world this can bring some difficulties. 
Get A Better Job: Knowing yourself Many people don’t want to work for an organisation ….. they want to work with it.  In other words, they want their own skills, aptitudes and experiences to be recognised, used and developed.  But if you don’t know what you can offer, how can you expect others to do so?
Get A Better Job: Identifying your skill-set I run many courses for bright, active, engaged people, often with higher degrees.  But I’m constantly surprised by how many people find difficulty identifying their own skill-set or even understanding the concept.  
Get A Better Job: Networking Getting to know others in the same professional field or the field you want to move into can be really valuable. It helps you to make contacts, open doors, understand the jargon and feel the atmosphere.  So, get to know the professional or sectoral groups – the associations, societies, clubs and so on – in your own field.
Get A Better Job: Applying for a job Traditional letters of application and CVs are still used widely but have morphed into incorporating electronic approaches, e.g. posting your details on job websites.  In reading through job advertisement details, certain requirements will stand out – the qualifications, experience and qualities sought.  Matching qualifications should be straightforward but, increasingly, employers seek relevant experience or a broader range of appropriate, yet transferable experience which can be honed to the needs of the job.
Get A Better Job: Interview skills The face-to-face interview with a panel of interviewees, each perhaps focusing on different strengths, remains the most consistent – and, for some, the most worrying – aspect of the recruitment process.
Improve Your Project Management: Motivation With clear evidence that we all need to work for longer in order to support increased longevity in society, why should we not do the sort of work which gives us the greatest satisfaction? 
Get A Better Job: Marketing yourself How do people get to know about your skills and abilities?  Internally within your own organisation, there will be both formal and informal opportunities to keep people up to speed with what you are working on.
Get A Better Job: Improve your employability If your employer provides continuing professional development (CPD), this will help you identify your own motivations.  I remember in my first job that CPD was seen merely as a series of events on two consecutive days in a year.
Get A Better Job: Multiple choice questions 1. How would you define ‘employability’?
a.    Being ‘job-ready’ in terms of job-specific skills.
b.    Retaining your attractiveness to employers by developing and displaying those abilities and attitudes in demand.
c.    Making a good impression at interview.
d.    Having the basic skills and qualifications to be able to apply for a job.

Answer: b – as defined by William Bridges in his book Jobshift.  The previous Labour government and Jobcentres tended to use (d), NVQs can focus narrowly on (a) and not respond rapidly to changing conditions. (c) alone is not enough.  Employability is explored more fully in Chapter 1 of Teach Yourself Getting a Better Job – and throughout the book readers are given clear steps on how to develop their employability skills.
Get That Job With The Right CV: How long should a CV be? Ask ten people and you may hear ten different answers. One page, two to three pages, maybe more for certain industries … it can be quite confusing.
Get That Job With The Right CV: What if I haven't had much work experience yet? It can feel quite daunting to write a first or second CV with little or no work history. How can you prove your worth to an employer with no evidence?
Get That Job With The Right CV: Should I show hobbies and personal interests? Some recruiters completely ignore hobbies and interests, while others appreciate any additional insights they could give into the person whose CV they are reading.
Get That Job With The Right CV: Should references be included? As a rule, they should not. The best approach is to keep references separate from your CV and to provide them to recruiters only when asked. References are normally not taken up until an employer has made you a conditional job offer or at least put you on the final shortlist.
Site produced by MMT Digital