How to Evaluate your Transferable Skills
Before thinking about an alternative career path, it’s a good idea to think about what skills you currently have. This can help you understand whether there are some gaping holes that need to be addressed and what careers you might be suitable for that you hadn’t really thought about.
We can’t ask all the questions you might ever need to help you tease out your skills, however think about your day-to-day activities in four distinct areas of your life:
- Home Life - What responsibilities do you have to juggle? Do you have to look after an ageing parent or young children? Are you responsible for making sure that there is food on the table at a specific time?
- Working Life - What are your day-to-day responsibilities? How do you communicate with colleagues and customers/clients? What is your working environment like? How are your customers/clients? What do your day-to-day activities include?
- Volunteering/Side Hustle - Are there other places where you can add strings to your bow? What strings are these?
- Education - How are/were you assessed in your education?
You can then assess your level of each of the top employability skills. (We've also got some thoughts on what specific skills you'll need post-COVID).
How long have you been using that skill? Is your experience recent or out of date? We suggest that you tally all your skills based on the length of time you’ve been using it:
- No experience
- Beginner level - 1 - 2 years of using that skill
- Intermediate level - 2 - 5 years
- Advanced level - 5 - 10 years
- Expert - 10+ years
After the exercise you’ll then have a list of your skills. Some you’ll be an expert at and some you won’t have any experience of at all, but for the first time you’ll see where you need to improve to get yourself up-to-scratch and job-hunt-ready.
