“Transferable Skills” — what is wrong with this term?
Most job adverts I see bouncing around on LinkedIn or Indeed.com have three things in common:
- None provide enough salary information.
- All ask for attention to detail.
- Most ask for “transferable skills.”
The term “transferable skills” has probably reached its apex in my life when I was writing my personal statements — tailored to the bone to each university I so desired to be part of.
“You have to show them what transferable skills you have,” I was told by my personal tutors, who were also, in turn, pressured to teach us to follow religiously the stifled formalised processes of applications.
My young self played along though (who was I to challenge?), not really thinking about what garbage it all was. I tried to squeeze out the juice from a dried-up lemon; it was painful and virtually impossible.
If you think about it, what do people really mean when they ask you what “transferable skills” you have? I don’t think it has anything to do with a set of skills per se.
What they actually mean is:
Do you have the ability, proactive eagerness, the savvy instinct to learn as quickly as you possibly can, drawing from past and present experiences?
It’s that simple. And the truth is that we all do. And in knowing this fact — because it is a fact! — we can be empowered to do anything we want.
If you Google “what are transferable skills,” most likely you’ll land on Reed’s listing outlining the following:
- Time Management
- Delegation
- Prioritisation
- Research/Analysis
- Oh, and let’s not forget the big L, for Leadership
Now, if you land an interview, most likely is that the interviewers — forced by HR — will ask you to tell them of a time when you demonstrated…(any of the above). You will have to scavenge in your memory for illustrative situations where you’ve used these. Of course, they want you to refer to times at work. But cooking a Christmas supper for your entire family is an undeniable example of “time management” and “prioritisation.” But they don’t want to know that.
My problem with the HR jargonized list above is one: they’re all just skills, because, by default, if it isn’t transferable, it can’t be called a skill in the first place.
So, have we reached the point in our human evolution where we need to always be stating the obvious, or as Shakespeare would say, making “much ado about nothing”? If so, why and what does that do to our creativity?
What can we learn from writers on this?
Now, let’s turn to writers. Yesterday, I was watching Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass lesson on storytelling and he said something rather interesting when he evaluated why his short stories at the beginning of his career were being rejected; he just didn’t know enough about the world.
He put himself out there as a journalist, which is arguably the perfect job for a writer in that it opens a world of possibilities to experience and learn on an ongoing basis about other fellow humans and their footprint (social, political and environmental) on the world without having to necessarily live 1,553 different lives.
It goes without saying, that the most skilled writers out there have had a great deal of exposure to different things, even to an expert level. Writers are by nature researchers. They’re constantly observing everything, and like mad scientists, they collect data wherever they go. And this is because, in every situation, there lies the opportunity to learn. They have that button switched on!
But there would be no point in having all this experience if the writers didn’t have the proactive eagerness to apply whatever they had learnt to their own work. There’s a purpose behind putting themselves out there.
Additionally, the publishing industry isn’t going on about writers having to have “transferable skills.” Imagine, a New Yorker critic praising Margaret Atwood on her outstanding transferable skills! Instead, everyone focuses on what really matters: creativity.
More importantly, they couldn’t care less about what writers read in their undergrads. They care about their ability to apply whatever knowledge they have in innovative, convincing ways.
Now, going back to university applications…I got a lot of funny looks when I said that I wanted to study Classics and Ancient languages. People challenged me, “why don’t you do something useful?” or “more hireable.”
I am glad I stuck with what I was interested in, because at the end of the day, what sustains that eagerness to “learn as quickly as possible” is motivation. If you’re not interested, you’re not motivated. If you’re not motivated, believe me, you don’t want to learn. If you don’t want to learn, boy, your creativity will suffer.
And without creativity, who are we?
Be as ruthless on your job hunt as the job advertisers themselves:
My one piece of advice is this: steer away from jobs adverts that are floppy and careless. Be ruthless. It is for your own benefit.
If an employer hopes for a candidate who is a quick learner, you know that they are:
- Realist: everyone who starts a new job needs to learn things quickly, they don’t expect you to know it all.
- Honest: you will have to stand on your two feet, just like you have done in all other aspects of your life.
And if the advert praises creativity over transferable skills, you’re on the right track!
But don’t be fooled, creativity is on the brink of turning into an HR term, just as storytelling has become a jargonized, business, buzzword.
