Know Your Worth: Hunting Down Your Dream Job


Picture the scene. Two people are having a conversation, they don't like their careers but are scared to push the boat and chase their dream jobs, because they don't have any experience in those sectors. They are talking as if they have been confined to a life sentence in a role they loat, it's sad to hear, but there are millions of people across the world who find themselves in this horrible prison, and are having the exact same talk right now. Yet, more often than not, every career comes with transferable skills. It might be that you’re stuck in a sales assistant job and want to become a personal trainer, or maybe you’ve been staring at a website that says something like become a letting agent here but you’re scared to because you’ve never done anything other than knock on doors trying to palm off plumbing equipment. Whatever it is, chances are you have the kind of transferable skills that will make this dream a reality; you have everything you need to make your self-improvement ambitions attainable, here's how. 

1. The Importance Of Transferable Skills
You’ll be amazed at how incredibly valuable these kinds of skills are to an employer and that’s because most transferable skills are soft skills, the sort of things that make you a good fit in a team. Sure, you may be looking at a job description that mentions technical skills you haven’t acquired, but the emphasis on these is getting less and less and that’s because skills like this can be taught - personality can’t, and that’s what transferable skills influences most. They help potential employers understand what you will bring to a role other than the obvious things; it helps them understand what extra value they will be getting for their money. 

2. Transferable Skills Employers Love
There isn’t enough paper in the world to write a complete list of transferable skills that employers love, but there are still plenty to write home about and we’re 100% sure you’ll have more than one, two or three of these in your locker. They’re things like leadership skills, motivational skills, good time-management, being able to prioritise and delegate, listen and communicate, perform analysis and do research. Once you know which of these you possess, it just becomes a matter of which ones will carry the most weight when looking at a job description. The good news is, most employers love explicitly stating what they want from a person, including softer skills. So, read what they want and put forward the transferable skills you have for them to put a tick next to. 

3. Using Them On Your Resume
Everyone has an arsenal of transferable skills they can call on. The tricky part is knowing how to display them on your resume when applying for your dream job or career. Our advice: sell yourself in the best light by choosing the skills you can go into deeper detail about; the ones you can demonstrate you have. The reason for this is quite simple when you think about it: saying you’re a good leader is one thing, but it won’t set you apart from the crowd. But demonstrating a time when you were a good leader will. It could be something you did at your current job or something you did outside of work; so long as it backs up your claim you’ll find it working in your favour. Basically, instead of saying. “Yeah, I’m a good leader”, try saying, “I’m an excellent leader, something I discovered when I led a group of seven people on a three-day hike of Kilimanjaro for charity.” A huge part of self-improvement is just self-belief. That’s all. That’s the first step.