Top Transferable Skills
- Lauren Wegman
- Dec 3, 2014
- 2 min read
The times are changing. Occupations are blurring together, jobs are expanding, and niche start-ups are popping up everywhere. With all these rapid changes in work, it can be difficult to know what skills you should be working to develop to help you get ahead. The list below is designed to help – Compiled from research and extensive interviews with leaders and high-performers across multiple industries, occupations, and locations, this list highlights the key skills needed for success in navigating whatever your career throws your way.
Writing – Regardless of whether your job is directly responsible for a written product or not, writing is a critical skill needed for modern work. You have to be able to write and write well, jumping back and forth between styles, utilizing different formats to tell a complete and cohesive story.
Excel – Yes, advanced Excel skills are critical even if you are not an analyst. Excel can be a great shortcut for organizing, sorting, ordering, and evaluation any kind of data (and not just numbers) quickly and efficiently. Also, Excel allows for tables, figures, graphs and trend lines to be made easily, adding visual support to your thesis.
Analytics Understanding – You don’t need to be an expert, but you should know a thing or two about analytics in order to ask the right questions to evaluate the validity of the conclusions and recommendations drawn from the data.
PowerPoint – Is not dead, and does not appear to be dying out in corporate America anytime soon. Whether you planning for an internal presentation or an external client pitch, PowerPoint is the most common and accepted presentation format default, and can really make or break the presentation. Advanced PowerPoint skills are important to not only aid you in storytelling, but also to make your presentation memorable.
Presenting – Tied into PowerPoint above, presentation skills include anything you do during your presentation (ability to think on your feet and answer tough questions, ability to read the audience, communication and tone of voice and inflection points). Because presentation ability is an individual differences, some people are naturally good in the spotlight. For the rest of us, luckily, there are plenty of solid training resources.
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