Career pivots, part 2

Let’s pick up the career pivot thread again.

Hopefully you’ve already figured out the ideal work/roles you'd like to move to. (If not, check my earlier post). But, can you make the pivot? The next step is figuring out your transferable skills. 

It’s easy to look at your current job title and think that’s all you are. 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝘀, 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗷𝗼𝗯 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀 - 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲. You just need to shine a light on them. You need to invest an hour or two to really build an inventory of your skills - a skills audit if you prefer.

So stop thinking about your day-to-day tasks and start identifying the functional skills you use to execute them. I'm talking about both hard skills and soft skills, because both matter. For example:

💡 Report building: Are you always the one summarizing the monthly sales report and providing insights to management? That’s data aggregation, visualization, analysis, and critical thinking right there. Plus, whatever tools you used to wrangle it all - Salesforce CRM, Excel, Power BI etc.

💡 Product Management: Did you shepherd a solution from concept to roll-out? That’s project management, stakeholder engagement, and collaboration — huge assets in any industry. Oh, and if your product experience is anything like mine was, don’t forget to add conflict resolution to the mix...

💡 Training/Mentoring: If you on-boarded new staff or patiently explained a complex process, you have teaching, mentoring and communications skills.

𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗱𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻-𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗲𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿. We all have it! For example, if you know the nuances of regulatory compliance in the chemical industry, that’s immediately valuable to dozens of new vendors or consulting firms who sell into that space.

Your transferable skills inventory is the secret sauce. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗷𝗼𝗯 𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗲. You'll win with phrases like: "Reduced delay in monthly reporting by 20% using data aggregation techniques" or "Leveraged cross-functional collaboration to deliver two major product releases ahead of schedule."

If you need help to think this through, use the button at the top to setup a free 20 minute chat, $0 charge.