Making the most of your talents

What are the top transferable skills - the ones that will help you in any job? ALICE SHOPLAND finds out.

Transferable skills are a hot topic for job seekers, potential employers and career advisers alike.

Many skills and talents - including the ability to organise, interview, write and negotiate - are not job-specific or even industry-specific. They're invaluable to almost every employer.

But there are pitfalls.

Wilma Hansen is a career consultant at Career Services' Takapuna Career Centre.

She says the inclusion of transferable skills on your CV is a good idea only if you take the time to show the specifics.

"If someone puts 'communication skills' on their CV, then I ask them, 'So what? Everybody has communication skills. Why should an employer get excited about that?'

"If you're applying for a factory job and you want to make your communication skills work for you, then you can be specific and say, 'I am good at taking instructions and will tell you if I don't understand'.

"Now that's some benefit to the employer because they know you'll do your job properly and not wear out the machinery through using it incorrectly."

If you're applying for a job in a cafe, Hansen says, then you should emphasise your talent for conversing with a wide range of customers and supply written references or verbal referees to back up your claims.

"You have to think about what is involved in this specific job and how your skills can be applied to the employer's benefit."

She says that skills need not have been acquired in the workplace to be relevant to a position you are seeking, and cites the example of someone who says he or she is very good at organising.

"If they backed that up by saying they came from a large family and they were always the one chosen to organise family weddings, and they'd organised a dozen weddings successfully, then that's a very valid claim."

Hansen encourages people to make the most of such a talent in their job application or interview preparation by thinking about a challenge met in the course of, say, organising a wedding and explaining how they solved the problem.

Annette Sleep, managing director of O'Neils Personnel, puts people skills and team skills at the top of her list of transferable skills.

"You can have the best resume in the world, but if you don't know how to get on with your work mates then your qualifications are entirely academic," she says.

"We aren't all born with the right attitude, but you can learn it and develop it.

"So instead of insisting on going for morning tea at the regular time when an urgent request has come up, the team player who wants to add value to her job will smile and say, 'Yes I can do that now'."

Mary Kayes of Career Services Manukau City agrees that team skills are usually top of the list, closely followed by analytical and problem-solving skills and creativity.

The ability to analyse a situation is hugely valuable to employers, she says.

Also desired are the communications and interpersonal skills which allow you to gather information, sort it - whether in your mind, in a company's system or on a computer - and deliver it to the right place.

If all these desirable skills sound overwhelming, take heart from Kayes. "Employers keep saying to people like me that the big thing they want is people's ability and willingness to commit to life-long learning."

Top Ten

Careers website JobStreet published the following list of most coveted transferable job skills:

1. Budget management.

2. Supervisory skills.

3. Public relations skills.

4. Time management.

5. Negotiation/arbitration.

6. Speaking (with individuals and groups).

7. Writing.

8. Organisation and management.

9. Interviewing.

10. Teaching.

Alongside the "soft" personal skills certain practical skills are useful in virtually any role, such as a driving licence, computer literacy, touch-typing and, increasingly, a second language.