Job seekers need to market all of their abilities and skills. Transferable skills are skills that a job seeker has acquired from past jobs that can be used in other positions. While the jobs you performed in previous positions may seem unrelated, the actual skills you used to perform them are not. These are your transferable skills; such as being able to prioritize, follow directions, break down projects to tasks or delegate.

These are important to a job seeker because they link the applicant to jobs that they might not have done in the past. In this day and age more and more job seekers are looking to change professions. When you do that you are often starting at the bottom of the ladder in the new profession. After getting used to a certain amount of respect, not to mention pay, it may be a hardship for you to do that. By marketing transferable skills you may be able to skip a few of those bottom rungs.

Many times employers will not want to hire someone when it appears they have no experience in the new job field. Once you learn how to identify and market the skills that you have been using for years into a new job the employer will see the benefit of hiring someone with “limited” experience.

Some other examples of transferable skills are being able to manage money, organization of yourself and projects, speaking in public, being detail oriented, taking inventory and the list goes on and on. Use the Onet http://online.onetcenter.org/ and find out the skills needed for the job you want, then match them to the ones you already have. Good luck and happy job-hunting!