If you know your transferable skills, you can show recruiters that you are a good fit for a job, even if this is not obvious from your professional experience. This is helpful when making lateral moves into new roles and industries. The best example of a client getting his dream job this way was 20 years ago.
In 2003 – I was a personnel consultant – a man came to the consultancy with the wish to join the fund research department of a bank. Fund analyst was a new job description and there were only a few bankers with the relevant experience. The client had a university degree in finance and a CFA. He had been covering the financial markets for a business newspaper for two years.
I told him that I saw no possibility of finding him a job as a fund analyst. Since I had tried several times without success to place candidates in this field, I knew that banks required experience in equity analysis.
You know yourself best
My client was not deterred and asked me what the tasks of a fund analyst were. Without waiting for my answer, he explained to me that he had two main tasks to fulfil: he had to interview fund managers, assess their expertise and offering by critically questioning them and quickly get a comprehensive picture. Gathering information through interviews is one of his tasks as a business journalist, albeit with other market participants. And then the fund analyst has to process his findings and write fund reports. This editorial activity is his core competence as a journalist. And he has the necessary financial knowledge due to his studies.
Recognising the transferable skills
I was speechless: he undoubtedly had an ideal qualification profile. With this convincing reasoning, I approached several banks and he was finally able to choose between two job offers in fund analysis.
If he had not known his transferable skills and matched them with the job requirements of a fund analyst, he would not have made it into fund research. Neither I as a personnel consultant nor the recruiters noticed the match. This is not visible at the level of tasks and roles as described in job advertisements and in applicants’ job references. It is only at the level of individual activities that the transferability of previous experience to the new job becomes comprehensible.
My client therefore had to analyse his previous professional experience down to the level of individual activities. And in discussions with fund analysts, he also researched their job requirements down to the level of individual activities.
20 years ago, he did what I recommend to my clients today: Personal and professional assessment to identify one’s own skills and job research to learn about job options.