How to identify your transferable skills

Start with achievements, not adjectives

Do not begin by listing communication, leadership, teamwork and problem solving.

Almost everyone writes those.

Instead identify actual situations from your career. Ask:

• What was difficult?
• What was I responsible for?
• What did I change?
• Who did I have to work with?
• What decision did I make?
• What problem did I solve?
• What became better?

Then work backwards to identify the capability.

“I redesigned an escalation process across three teams and reduced unresolved cases.”

Possible transferable skills:

• process improvement
• stakeholder alignment
• root cause analysis
• change implementation
• cross-functional collaboration

Now you have evidence.

Use the problem, capability, evidence method

For every important experience capture three things.

For example: a team repeatedly missed delivery deadlines because ownership was unclear. The capability required was process design, stakeholder alignment and prioritisation. The evidence is that you introduced a new ownership model and operating rhythm that reduced unresolved dependencies.

That is far more valuable than writing “good stakeholder management.”

Look underneath your job title

Two people with the same title can have very different capabilities.

And people with completely different titles can possess very similar ones.

A Customer Operations Manager and a Project Manager might both use:

• prioritisation
• risk management
• stakeholder communication
• planning
• problem solving
• facilitation
• performance tracking

The context differs. The underlying capability may transfer.

Your capabilities belong to you.

Examine five areas

Review your experience through these lenses.

1. 01

   Problems

   What kinds of problems do people repeatedly trust you to solve?

2. 02

   People

   Who do you know how to work with, influence, lead or support?

3. 03

   Decisions

   What types of decisions have you learned to make?

4. 04

   Systems

   Which processes, technologies or operating environments do you understand well?

5. 05

   Outcomes

   What have you consistently improved, built, delivered or protected?

Patterns will begin to appear.

Separate capability from industry knowledge

Some experience is highly context-specific. Other capability transfers easily.

Knowing a particular insurance regulation may be industry knowledge. Being able to interpret complicated requirements and turn them into an operational process may transfer far beyond insurance.

Knowing a particular CRM is tool-specific. Understanding customer workflows, data structures and adoption challenges can transfer to many platforms.

Ask what is specific to the environment, and what is the deeper capability underneath it.

Create an evidence bank

For every major transferable capability, capture at least one strong example. Use:

• Situation
• Challenge
• Action
• Outcome
• Learning

For example, the capability is influence without authority. The evidence is that you aligned three teams with competing priorities around a shared implementation plan despite having no direct authority over two of them. The outcome is that the decision was made, ownership was clarified and the project launched on schedule.

Now that capability can support your CV, LinkedIn, networking conversations, applications, interviews and career exploration.

Compare your capabilities with target roles

Now look at actual job descriptions for the roles you are considering. Highlight repeated requirements.

Create three groups:

This is much more useful than asking “Am I qualified?” You are discovering the degree of overlap.

Do not underestimate combinations

Sometimes your advantage is not one skill. It is the combination. For example:

• operations + customer knowledge + AI
• HR + data + change management
• finance + communication + programme management
• leadership + process improvement + technology

Combinations can make an experienced career changer more distinctive than someone following a perfectly linear career path.

Translate your experience into the language of the destination

Never fabricate experience. But do translate it.

If the target role uses different terminology for a capability you genuinely possess, learn that vocabulary.

The purpose is not to pretend you have done a job you have not done. The purpose is to stop hiding relevant experience behind language only your previous industry understands.

If you are considering a broader transition, read career change at 40: how to change direction without throwing away your experience.

A simple transferable skills exercise

Then highlight capabilities appearing repeatedly.

Those are likely to be some of your strongest transferable assets.

Your experience is larger than your job title

The goal of transferable-skills work is not to prove that you can do absolutely anything. It is to understand more accurately what you can already do.

Once you can see that clearly, career change stops looking like old career versus new career. It becomes what I already have, plus what I need next.