How to Identify Transferable Skills Beyond Your Job Title

Someone asks what else you might like to do. You begin with your job title. A few sentences later you’re describing an almost identical job, in a slightly different building.

The title was useful when somebody needed to put you on an organisation chart. It has a smaller vocabulary than your working life.

To identify your transferable skills, start with situations in which someone relied on you. What was happening? What did you do? What became possible because of it? Specific examples can show capabilities that your title barely hints at.

Notice what people bring you

Think of the requests that tend to find you.

Someone brings you a draft that technically says everything but leaves the reader with no idea what to do. A colleague asks you to join a meeting because two groups keep talking past one another. A client sends you three conflicting sets of notes and asks if you can make sense of them.

The request may be an official part of your role or something you’ve picked up over time. Either way, it offers a clue about what people expect you to be able to do.

Write down three requests you remember clearly. Look for one that felt so ordinary you might leave it out of a résumé.

Describe one piece of work in plain language

“Communication” covers everything from writing a useful subject line to getting a group to agree on what it’s deciding. The more clearly you describe what you did, the easier it becomes to see where else it might apply.

Imagine a production coordinator who keeps getting invited to meetings where a decision has stalled. In one meeting, the client is worried about the delivery date, the designers are worried about quality, and the people doing the work are worried that nobody has agreed on what’s included.

The coordinator draws three columns. Each group describes its concern. The group can now agree on what has to be ready for launch and what can follow later.

The coordinator could describe this as “good at meetings.” A more useful description is “I helped people with competing priorities agree on what had to be delivered first.” That describes an action with a visible result.

For a guided way to work through these steps, see The Next 10 Days.

Try the situation, action, result exercise

Choose three situations from different parts of your working life. Use these questions for each.

1. Situation. What was stuck, unclear, or needed doing? Who depended on the outcome?

2. Action. What did you personally contribute? Describe something a colleague could have seen you do.

3. Result. What changed? What evidence do you have? Where did others contribute?

The result can be modest. A new colleague could handle a process without asking the same questions every week. A client could compare two options. A handoff became easier because someone wrote down what had previously travelled by corridor.

If you can’t establish a result, record what you observed. “The team used the diagram in the next meeting” is stronger than guessing how many hours it saved.

Read the three examples together. See whether you can find a common action, such as making a process teachable, translating between groups, or turning a vague request into an agreed brief.

Ask where the skill would have to change

A capability can be useful elsewhere while depending partly on the conditions in which you learned it.

Facilitating a difficult discussion among colleagues who trust you may draw on years of relationships. Doing it as an outside adviser involves earning trust quickly and clarifying who can make decisions. There is a skill in common. There is also new work.

Choose a setting that interests you and ask someone familiar with it what they would look for. Share one concrete example. Ask which part sounds useful there and what else the work would require.

That conversation can help you distinguish an ability you can already demonstrate from a capability you would need to develop further.

Decide which strengths you want to carry forward

You may be very good at rescuing a project in its last week. You may also prefer work where the planning happens in the first week.

Put a mark beside the capabilities you would enjoy using more often. Add a condition where it matters. You might enjoy teaching when you have time to prepare, or guiding a project when you have authority over the decisions you’re expected to own.

Finish with one sentence you could use in a conversation. “One thing I can do is ____. For example, ____.”

Then write a second sentence for yourself. “I’d like to use that ability in work where ____.”

The first gives somebody evidence. The second gives you a reason to explore a particular direction.

Developed by Thomi Sechehaye, with ChatGPT assisting in drafting and editing for clarity and readability.