What are transferable skills, anyway?
Candidly, one of the most agonizing professional struggles in my career was making the transition from private practice at a law firm into the public interest/nonprofit sector. My agony mainly came from my complete inability to identify my transferable skills—to explain that what I had already done equipped me to do what was coming next. I dug myself into a deep mental hole, where I could not comprehend how to talk about the professional experiences I’d collected or figure out what throughlines and themes were present in those same experiences. I genuinely thought job interviewers would be confused by the pivot, or would reject me outright. Luckily, I had the benefit of a phenomenal partner who dragged me out of that hole and helped me honestly assess what I bring to any professional role.
Since that trying period, I have come to understand and appreciate that I have successfully made the jump to and from professional roles that could not be more different, often at organizations or in environments that could not be farther apart conceptually and logistically. As I continue looking back on my career so far, I now believe that a few habits and practices in my arsenal, carried with me from role to role, are my true “transferable skills.” I hope reading about them might help you identify or develop your own!
I prioritize finding my workplace allies and confidants. Having people you can trust at work, whether they are on your immediate team or not, is essential for survival. I do not have a quick guide to how you can identify these people (it’s deeply personal!), but in every professional role, I have taken the time and effort to suss out who my allies and confidants are as soon as is realistic and through delicate trial and error. I consider allies to be people who will get to know me and my work, and who will advocate for or defend me whether I am in the room or not (some people call these folks “sponsors”). I consider confidants to be people in whom I can—you guessed it—confide about the ugly or tough realities of working. It likely goes without saying, but these relationships are reciprocal: I offer myself as an ally and a confidant to others in the workplace in return. These ally and confidant relationships have helped me navigate toxic workplaces or maneuver around complex coworkers or managers without losing myself entirely.
I have unlearned any hesitance or resistance to asking for help. I used to believe that I needed to struggle for a certain amount of time before I had “earned” the right to ask for assistance with work assignments. I also used to believe that I could start every project from scratch, as though that would earn me a medal of achievement or additional praise. Now I say a hearty “No” to both misguided beliefs. I have delivered my best work performances when I have asked, upfront and thoroughly, for templates or exemplars. I do not need to read my manager or assigner’s mind, and I frankly refuse to. That being said, I do exhaust my own resources and options before seeking additional levels of help, but I am no longer wary of asking for concrete guidance from the very start. Doing so has made me a better informed and more efficient professional.
I value talking to seasoned people at work about the bigger picture, and I continuously find secondary or tertiary reasons to do so. I am very much an introvert, but I cannot overstate how much I value talking to long-term employees at every job I have held. These people are often taken for granted, and may rarely be asked what they think or what they have figured out in their time at a workplace. Whether I have a “legitimate” reason to or not, I prioritize getting to know these people and asking them probing questions (but using my best judgment about when to do so). Talking to seasoned employees can give you the missing piece of very confounding puzzles, bring the bigger picture into clearer view, give you insight into the psychology of other coworkers or leadership, or walk you through how an organization got to a certain place. Conversations like these have been invaluable in ways that continue to show up long after the conversation has ended.
I work quickly and memorialize as much as I can. I tend to be a quick study in any role, which has been a major benefit to me alongside my training as an attorney (we become soft experts on disparate, wide-ranging topics in short order because we must!). On top of that, institutional memory is extremely important to me. I have been onboarded so very many times, with varying degrees of quality and thoroughness, and more often than not for roles that did not exist before I arrived. I pride myself on leaving roles better than I found them, usually with a detailed transition memo and well-organized online workspace/library for the next person to benefit from—allowing them to start with a toolbox to improve upon instead of nothing at all. I do not keep most of my workplace processes in my head or locked away where no one else can find them. I believe I am important, but not so important that my work should grind to a halt when I am absent or depart from an organization. Given that, I memorialize as much about the work I did and how I did it as possible, sometimes using step-by-step guides. This practice comes in handy both for transitions and for performance reviews.
I hope reading about my “transferable skills” might help you discern which practices, skills, and priorities have made you successful in your workplace, or in your career at large!
