Transferable Skills

In this highly competitive world, the demand for transferable skills is increasing drastically. Everyone needs people with skills that can be advantageous across different careers and sectors. 

Read this blog further to know more about transferable skills. 

What are Transferable Skills?

Transferable skills are such skills that are useful across all industries. The term transferable means that such skills can be transferred from one industry to the other. Sometimes also referred to as portable skills, such skills are highly valued in today’s world. These are such skills that stay with a person for their lifetime, once acquired. 

These skills can become really beneficial for someone looking to change their job to a different industry altogether. Since these skills are common and equally important to every industry, their importance is extremely high, especially in today’s competitive world.

What Skills Can be Transferable?

There are a variety of transferable skills which can be acquired by an individual over a period of time. However, employers seek some transferable skills over others depending on their requirements. So, the candidates should check before applying the skills required for the job.

Here are some of the most common transferable skills that are valued across the industries-

Communication Skills

Communication is required in every job across every industry. Every company needs effective communicators who can effectively convey their message. Effective communication helps in the healthy exchange of ideas and clears out everything without any misunderstandings. It helps in the process of working with teams. 

Communication in any form be it verbal or written is valued. 

Adaptability

Adaptability can be said to be one of the most important transferable skills. With the pace at which the world is changing right now, having adaptable employees in your company can become your biggest asset. No work is ever straightforward and it needs to be changed and adapted accordingly. 

Leadership Skills

Leadership is yet another really important transferable skill not only for a professional career but also for personal life. Leadership skills possess an individual’s ability to lead different teams and projects effectively. It is common in all industries and highly valued everywhere. 

Teamwork

Teamwork is another highly valued transferable skill that is required everywhere. Employees need to work with different people all the time. Teamwork refers to the ability to work with different people efficiently. Teamwork is a skill that helps people work towards common goals and employers value such people who can work with other people in harmony.

It also includes qualities such as listening, empathy, etc.

Why do Employers Seek Transferable Skills?

Employers understand the true value of transferable skills. People with these skills have something that other people don’t in that particular job. Such skills allow the employees to stand out in the eyes of employers as they have some skills above the skills required for the job. Such skills are not mentioned in the job description but are expected to have. 

Employers seek transferable skills since such skills help the employees in going above their job and increase their efficiency. All of these little efforts lead to the long-term growth of the company.  Also, since transferable skills are common in every industry, employers don’t have to waste any time training the employees for this. 

Why are Transferable Skills Important to Employees?

After establishing the fact that transferable skills are important to employers, let’s understand their importance to employees. 

It plays a key role in the growth of your professional career. Since all the transferable skills can be used across all the industries and stay with you for a lifetime, once acquired, they become really worth it. 

These skills are a way for you to stand out from the crowd. While everyone just focuses on the job-related skills, you focus on some really essential transferable skills. You can use these skills to leverage your position in any industry or sector on the basis of your prior experience. 

Also, this will help you a lot especially if you are switching between careers. While switching between careers, the only skills that you can take forward are your transferable skills. Also, these skills will allow you to get your foot in the door by proving some competency level of yours. 

For eg: A person works as a product manager for an e-commerce store. The person decides to switch their career and go into marketing management for an automobile company. Although these are totally different industries, the person would be able to leverage their leadership and management skills at the automobile company as well. This is how transferable skills work and allow the employees to make their way anywhere. Such skills increase the value of employees and help them in their overall growth.

We hope this blog helps you and maybe you can also try to acquire some. Till then, keep in touch with Xobin for more insightful blogs.