What Are Transferable Skills and How Do I Get Them?

Become the ultimate candidate.

If you’ve ever worked a casual job before or participated in extracurricular activities, you’ve probably picked up some pretty sweet skills without even realising it.

You could be a whiz at making coffee, serving customers, keeping on top of assignments, working in a team or even making food behind the scenes. While all of these skills are great, you might be wondering how they’re going to help you in your future career.

Well, thankfully transferable skills exist, and they’re some of the most valuable things that you can learn at school or the workplace.

To give you all the info you need to know, we’re going to break down exactly what transferable skills are, why they’re so useful, and how you can get them for yourself.

What are transferable skills?

According to SEEK, transferable skills are a set of abilities that are useful at way more than just one particular job, activity or organisation. Essentially, you can use them in almost any role and they help you find a job when you’re looking for work or even a career change.

These kinds of skills are often things that come with experience rather than specific training and include skills like communication, organisation, teamwork, adaptability, leadership, tech literacy, time-management, creative thinking, and so much more.

For example, if your previous work experience was at a fast-paced café making coffees with other staff, taking orders, serving food and keeping the shop clean, you might have picked up transferable skills like teamwork, customer service, organisation and adaptability.

Transferable skills are great to know—not just for your own personal understanding—but also for when you’re aiming to apply for new roles outside of your current industry or if you don't have a tonne of previous experience.

Essentially, they look awesome on your resume, and they can tell potential employers that even if you might not have all the skills or experience needed for a particular role, you have heaps of other skills that are valuable.

Why are transferable skills so useful?

Aside from looking sweet on your resume, they’re a great help for when you finally land a new role.

Think back to the first job you ever had. Unless you had already gained some transferable skills from extracurricular activities, it likely took you a little while to decipher the ins and outs of your job and how to be a confident employee.

With transferable skills at your fingertips, you’re way more likely to start a new role with clarity, confidence and learn day-to-day tasks much quicker.

Plus, if you've never had a job before, school is the perfect place to start developing some transferable skills (you're basically flexing your time-management skills every day!). 

It’s also awesome to have loads of transferable skills if you don’t wanna be tied down to one specific career your whole life.

If you’re someone that loves variety in their work, transferable skills are what will give you that edge when you wanna go from a graphic design job to a teaching role.

Okay, but where's the best places to get transferable skills?

Short answer: pretty much anywhere.

You can pick up loads of awesome skills that will help you in future jobs, roles, and sometimes even relationships though life experiences.

Why not start out at school? Try picking up some team building skills by playing a sport or public speaking skills by joining a debate team. 

You could even start your own side-hustle and learn management and organisational skills.

Alternatively, you could upgrade to Student Edge Plus and get access to fun, easy-to-follow learning experiences made for students by industry experts. Our courses range from leadership and problem-solving to emotional intelligence and resilience. 

The great thing about transferable skills is that they’re so easy to develop! 

Keeping track of what transferable skills you have and how they've helped you throughout your work will allow you to hone in on what you’re great at, and show employers what you’re made of.

You can start developing transferable skills with Student Edge Plus. You got this. 

Header Image: Ketut Subiyanto via Pexels