Why Transferable Skills Will Enhance Your Resume
Everyone wants their resume to look as desirable as possible, but not everyone knows where to start. One of the easiest ways to do so is to make your transferable skills very visible. Transferable skills are skills that you have acquired in other positions that you feel you could use in the position you’re seeking. Some people don’t think that transferable skills are important, but they could be the difference between your resume making the top of the pile or ending up in the recycling bin.
Let’s take a look at why transferable skills are so important, a few examples of transferable skills, and how you can add them to your resume elegantly.
Why Are Transferable Skills Important?
Having lots of transferable skills enhances your value as an employee no matter the position you want to fill. It shows that you can be used in more scenarios or assigned to a wider variety of tasks. It also shows a certain level of adaptability. Employees who have a varied set of skills will be better equipped to deal with certain emergencies and will not need to be constantly looked over. These are all things that are extremely attractive to an employer.
Transferable Skills Are Especially Important for the Inexperienced
There’s one group, in particular, that should make transferable skills a priority on their resume, and that is people with limited experience. Showing the skills you have been able to acquire in the few positions you have filled could help put you over the top if you have to compete against people with more experience.
Examples of Transferable Skills
In a broader sense, transferable skills can be any skill whether hard or soft that you had to learn or acquired while working. Soft transferable skills include things like communication, critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, and more. Hard skills include technical writing skills, database management skills, the use of tools like MS Office, MS Visio, and Photoshop, or marketing tools like HubSpot, just to name a few.
How to Showcase Transferable Skills on Your Resume Properly
The first thing you have to do is choose the right resume format for you. If you have very limited education or employment history, then you could go for a functional resume. They’re also called skilled-based resumes because they focus on skills first and don’t put too much emphasis on dates.
If you have a few credentials to back those skills, on the other hand, then you could go for a combination resume that showcases your skills and qualifications principally.
Another thing we strongly suggest you do is to hire a resume writing service. The best resume writing services out there will offer a resume review free of charge and will help you work your skills into your resume in the best way possible. They might also be able to give you advice regarding a few other things that you could improve on.
Now that you know a bit more about the importance of transferable skills, you should start taking inventory of them and adding them to your resume. Always work to make your resume better and don’t hesitate to ask for help if you don’t know what to do.
