Session #4 Post: Advice and Career Corner

Importance of Building your Transferrable Skills

Transferable skills are the versatile abilities that stay with you no matter where your career takes you, making them invaluable in today’s dynamic job market. Skills like communication, problem-solving, teamwork, adaptability, and time management are as critical in the workplace as they are in your university experience. 

Building these skills can start in:

• The classroom through group projects, presentations, and leadership roles in student organizations
• Internships, volunteer work, or even part-time jobs also offer opportunities to hone these abilities
• Any part-time job gives you skills that you can leverage and talk about in interviews. Eg.Waitress jobs give you interpersonal and time management skills. 
• Research assistant jobs give you excellent attention to detail and teamwork skills. 
• Lastly, actively participating in school clubs not only help you improve soft skills, but also built your grit, goal-oriented mindset and resilience, which are fundamental, high-demand traits that make a person more reliable.

The beauty of transferable skills is their adaptability—they allow you to pivot between industries, take on new challenges, and stand out as a well-rounded professional. Focusing on these skills now will set the foundation for long-term career success. 

Practical advice: make a T table on excel; one side of the table has the job titles and tasks completed in te past, the other side has the skills learned and developed. Next time you apply for an internship or a job, refer back to this T table and think how your learned skills can be leveraged in the new internship/ job position.