Transferable Skills: When Might They Matter?

Ever since my working career started, and even prior to that in college, I've heard so much about 'transferable skills'. As a recruiting professional, it may be the most often used phrase, second only to 'I know I'm a perfect fit for the position.' 

Now, to be sure, transferable skills are absolutely essential to any employee's success - mailroom to executive. What has become abundantly clear, at least based on the candidate selection and hiring record of my clients, is just when those skills are the most valuable. It's not in the positions or companies you might think. 

Based solely on my experience, the value of transferable skills appears to fall into three phases or categories - school, tenured employees, and larger corporations. 

School: A great GPA is a reflection of a student's ability to achieve excellence in a variety of subjects. You can't achieve a 4.0 without being able to read, write, speak, compute, deduce, etc. When hiring managers look at new recruits, higher GPA's matter. I've not yet met a corporate recruiter who was interested in a graduate who excelled unbelievably at geophysics but couldn't write an intelligent report. While some may argue this doesn't apply to IT 'geeks', it certainly does apply when considering those 'geeks' for management positions. I say this with all due respect to 'geeks', especially since I've read that bumper sticker - 'Be nice to that IT geek because you'll likely be working for him some day.' Transferable skills honed in school are vital in getting that first real job after graduation. 

Tenured Employees: While it's increasingly less common to meet candidates with 20+ years at the same company, successful long-term employees enjoying a consistent track record of corporate growth in responsibilities and compensation, have done so because of their demonstrated transferable skills. Employers seeing aptitude, attitude, loyalty, skills and results are more likely to take a chance on an internal candidate, often calling it a career enhancement or 'rounding out' opportunity. Armed with a few successes, this employee becomes even more valuable to other hiring managers within the company. 

Larger Corporations: Larger corporations tend to plan a bit better for the company's future growth. They also frequently employ layers of professionals performing identical jobs in the same department or similar work in different departments. Whatever the case, they're more interested in diversity on a much broader scale than simply gender or race. It's management's job to pool the intelligence, experience and ideas from their employees to make the department better or to develop and implement that next great idea. That diversity comes from the collective transferable skills of the employees. A typical large CPG firm's market analysis group may have professionals from beer, candy, soft lines or pharmaceutical industries. They're all accustomed to reviewing data, albeit from different sources, deducing and making marketing recommendations. The manager takes the best and moves on. If one or more members of the team isn't a great match, management has much greater flexibility to make changes without significantly impacting the final results. 

When They're Not as Valued: From a recruiting standpoint, unless the position is planned well in advance, we're called upon to fill a relatively immediate need. The client does not usually have the time or wherewithal to bring a candidate with transferable skills 'up to speed' on the ins and outs of their particular industry or company. We're expected to present candidates with as close to the exact set of skills and experience as possible relative to the vacant position. 'Hit the ground running' is used as much on the client side as my opening phrase is on the candidate's side. The company's size, the position's importance, and the urgency usually dictate there's not much room for error. 

Perhaps it's a case of Marketing 101: The customer (client) will only pay what they think it's worth.