Transferable Skills: What They Are and How to Use Them
Alison Green draws on extensive experience discussing workplace situations, management, and professional relationships. Her practical knowledge focuses on communication, common challenges at work, and the choices people face throughout their careers.
Quick answer
Transferable skills are general abilities you can carry from one job to any other. Examples include communication, critical thinking, and time management. They differ from technical skills, which only apply in one type of job. They are very useful when you switch careers or start your first job.
What transferable skills actually are
A transferable skill is a general ability you carry from one role, employer, or field to another. Think of it as the opposite of a job-specific technical skill. Operating a particular piece of machinery only applies in certain workplaces. Active listening, by contrast, is useful whether you work in retail, healthcare, or software development.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET program groups these general abilities into two broad families: social skills and thinking skills. O*NET is a free online tool that lists and describes work-related skills. Both families cover the skills people need to work well with others and think clearly on the job. That definition comes directly from O*NET, which is maintained by the Employment and Training Administration.
Technical skills are “easily quantifiable unlike soft skills, which are related to one’s personality,” according to the Wikipedia article on skill. That contrast is useful. Technical skills show up on a certification or a test score. Transferable skills show up in how you behave on the job over time.
The skills O*NET says employers value
O*NET lists specific transferable skills in two groups. Knowing the names matters because employers often use this same language in job postings.
Social skills
- Coordination: adjusting your actions based on what others are doing
- Instructing: teaching others how to do something
- Negotiation: bringing people together and settling differences
- Persuasion: changing others’ minds or behavior through reasoned argument
- Service orientation: actively looking for ways to help people
- Social perceptiveness: noticing others’ reactions and understanding why they respond as they do
Thinking skills
- Active learning: understanding how new information applies to future problems
- Active listening: giving full attention to what someone says, asking clarifying questions, and not interrupting
- Complex problem solving: identifying difficult problems and evaluating options before acting
- Critical thinking: using logic to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of different solutions
- Judgment and decision making: weighing costs and benefits to choose the best action
- Learning strategies: choosing the right method for learning or teaching in a given situation
- Monitoring: tracking your own performance and others’ to spot areas for improvement
- Time management: managing your own time and, when relevant, the time of others
You can use O*NET’s free Soft Skills Custom List tool to pick the skills you already have or want to build. It also shows example behaviors for each skill.
Why these skills matter more when you change fields
If you are switching industries or applying for your first professional role, you may not have the exact technical background an employer wants. Transferable skills fill that gap. People need a broad range of skills to contribute to the modern economy. Research suggests that well-rounded people with many general skills can offset the advantage of someone with more narrowly focused experience.
For career changers, years of experience still build real, nameable skills. Managing a restaurant team, tutoring students, or coordinating volunteers all build skills like time management, instructing, coordination, and service orientation. The task is translating those experiences into language a new employer recognizes.
For entry-level candidates, transferable skills can substitute for direct work history. You can build them through coursework, internships, part-time jobs, or extracurricular activities. Learn more about building a resume when you are starting out in our guide on writing a resume with no experience.
How to identify your own transferable skills
Start with the O*NET list above and ask yourself: in which of these have I produced a concrete result? A result is something you can describe in a sentence: a project finished on time, a conflict resolved, a new process explained to a colleague. If you can name a result, you have evidence of the skill.
A practical self-check: for each skill you claim, write one sentence starting with a past-tense action verb. End it with a measurable or observable outcome. If you cannot finish the sentence, you need more practice or a different example before listing that skill on a resume.
Putting transferable skills on a resume: a before/after example
Listing a skill by name alone tells an employer nothing. The skill needs to appear inside a bullet that shows what you did and what happened as a result. The example below is illustrative and hypothetical.
Weak bullet (skill named, no evidence):
Good at active listening and time management.
Stronger bullet (skill shown through action and outcome):
Conducted weekly one-on-one check-ins with five direct reports, identifying blockers early and keeping a six-week product launch on schedule.
The stronger bullet shows active listening, time management, and monitoring without ever using those words. Active listening means giving full attention and asking good questions. Employers can infer the skills just from the behavior described.
When tailoring bullets for a specific posting, scan the job description for skill names or their synonyms. Then match your bullet language to those terms.
For guidance on structuring interview answers around these same skills, see the STAR interview method.
A common misconception: transferable skills are fixed personality traits
Many people assume that because transferable skills involve personality, they cannot be learned. That is not accurate. O*NET invites users to select skills they “plan to work on developing.” A skill is a “learned or innate ability,” so learned ability comes first. Interpersonal and thinking skills improve with practice, feedback, and reflection, just like technical skills do.
This matters practically: if a job posting lists critical thinking or active listening as requirements and you feel weak in those areas, you can build them. Facilitating a team meeting, taking on a mentoring role, or working through case studies all develop these skills. You can then describe them later with real examples.
Browse more practical guidance in the Career Skills topic hub.
Frequently asked questions
How do I talk about transferable skills in a job interview?
Match your skill language to the words used in the job description. When you speak about a skill, give a specific example from past work that shows what you did and what happened as a result. This turns a general claim into a concrete story.
Are transferable skills the same as soft skills?
They overlap heavily but are not identical. Soft skills is a broad term covering interpersonal traits, communication style, and emotional intelligence. Transferable skills are abilities that move across jobs and industries. All transferable skills in the O*NET list are soft skills, but some soft skills are harder to frame as job-ready competencies without a concrete example.
Which transferable skills are most useful for someone switching from a non-office job?
O*NET's list applies across all work settings. Skills like coordination, service orientation, active listening, and time management are built in customer-facing, trades, and care roles just as much as in office jobs. The key step is translating the specific behaviors from your previous setting into language that matches the new role's job posting.
Can I list transferable skills in a dedicated skills section on my resume?
A skills section can name them, but it carries little weight on its own. Back each skill up with at least one bullet in your experience section that shows a concrete action and outcome. The skills section works best as a quick reference alongside strong experience bullets.
Do transferable skills matter less once you have years of experience in one field?
No. Mid-career and senior professionals still rely on transferable skills for leadership, cross-team collaboration, and managing change. O*NET lists negotiation, judgment and decision making, and monitoring as valued at all career levels. The difference is that experienced professionals are expected to show more complex examples of these skills, not simpler ones.
Sources
- Soft Skills Custom List · onetonline.org
- Skill - Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
Prepared from these references and checked against them. References retrieved October 11, 2026.
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