Skills refer to a combo of talent and knowledge needed to complete a task or job. Let’s say you work as a website developer, your skills make up HTML, CSS, Javascript and libraries such as Jquery, Angular, Parsley (a javascript form validation library not the herb) and Bootstrap. On the other side, you may work as a kitchen commissary and your skills are various knife cuts, mise en place (preparation), cold kitchen, hot kitchen and costing. 

When you change careers and you found using the same skill in your new job, then that’s a transferable skill. Even if you go for a career change such as from Statistician to Search Engine Optimizer and vice versa, you’ll still use one or two more of your skills. 
 

Why know about transferable skills

Knowing transferable skills allows you to:

• Identify your strengths and weaknesses
• Improve your skills set
• Capitalize on that skill for use in the second job 
• Categorize your skill
• Make career change decisions

Two kinds of transferable skills: Hard and soft skills

Hard skills

Hard skills are easily quantified because they are measured by educational measurement tests such as matching type, true or false, and reading comprehension tests. They are also called technical skills - specific language, device, computer programming languages, and software.

Soft skills

Soft skills, although they can be gauged by some personality tests, are hard to measure, because they are abstract quantifiably vague. They are skills that are not usually taught in classrooms or included in a curriculum.

How Hard and Soft skills become transferrable

Your soft and hard skills become transferrable when you found yourself using them in a second job/career. Your soft transferrable skills are always transferrable in jobs that need human interaction, even on the internet and home-based work and among different types of jobs (bartender, web developer, cook, foreman, engineer, welder). 

Your hard transferrable skills are specific in one job (inventory control for warehousemen and cooking for cooks. Hard skills become more transferrable across related or partially related jobs and industry (IT-Staff vs Warehouse IT Staff, Web developer vs SEO Manager).

Hard transferable skills between partially related jobs

In this illustration, a person who is an IT staff can apply the same skills in the second job as shown by the skills set in red and vice versa. The skills set in black are specific to that work while those in red are hard transferable skills. If you apply in a second job that is more related or partially related to your previous job, it’s more likely that you’ll use most of your hard skills and all soft skills.

Soft Transferable skills between two unrelated jobs

Employers value soft skills since they are always sought in a work that needs human interaction or team building. Organizations use soft skills across different types of jobs. The texts in red are soft skills, those in black are hard skills. For example, if you change careers, such as from cook to a web developer or vice versa, you can apply the same soft transferable skills and spreadsheet skills (food costing for cooks).