Are you stuck in your current practice area or are your skills transferable?
Transferable skills refer to the abilities and knowledge that can be applied across different jobs and industries. These skills enhance a candidate’s versatility and appeal to employers, particularly when changing roles or fields. Understanding what transferable skills are and how they can be leveraged is crucial for anyone looking to make a career transition.
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Lawyers have a very real fear of being pigeonholed. They talk as though getting stuck in a particular practice area is outside their control and irreversible — like accidentally stepping into quicksand on a leisurely stroll.
And after they’ve been stuck in their expertise for a while? They’ve convinced themselves that they have zero transferable skills.
Yet in their next breath, those same lawyers tell me, “I don’t have the specific experience in the job posting, but I know I can do the job.”
Transferable Skills
Definition and Meaning
Transferable skills are the skills that can be applied across different jobs, industries and life situations. These are a mix of technical skills, critical thinking skills and personal attributes that are valuable in multiple professional settings. Transferable skills are important for career growth and development so you can adapt to new roles, industries and challenges.
Transferable skills can be divided into two main types: hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are technical skills specific to a job or industry, like data analysis, writing skills or project management skills. Soft skills are personal attributes and interpersonal skills that are valuable in any professional setting, like communication skills, critical thinking skills and leadership skills.
Employers look for transferable skills because they are valuable in any job and can help employees adapt to new roles and industries. For job seekers, having a strong set of transferable skills can increase employability and career prospects big time.
So What’s Actually True Here?
Are attorneys irredeemably stuck in their current practice areas or are their skill sets transferable? To answer this question, we need a clear understanding of hard skills, soft skills, and how employers view them.
Existing transferable skills are important in the job market because they save employers time and money and demonstate a candidate’s versatility and adaptability. Lawyers can leverage their existing transferable skills to transition into new roles, combining them with new technical abilities to enhance their effectiveness in different careers.
What Are Hard Skills?
Hard skills are the easily quantifiable skills we gain through our education, technical training and experience. Generally speaking, your hard skills relate to your law degree, the number of years you’ve been practicing and types of matters you’ve handled. Analytical skills, for instance, are a critical hard skill that employers seek for logical reasoning and problem-solving.
When you’re reading through a job description, it’s easy to jump to the qualifications section and see how you measure up — or not. This is the point where most lawyers resign themselves to slogging away in their current job for the next 30 years. But what if I told you that employers care less about your hard skills and more about your soft skills?
What Are Soft Skills and Interpersonal Skills?
Most lawyers have no problem identifying their hard skills. But when it comes to soft skills, most attorneys don’t fully understand what those are, let alone what theirs are. That’s understandable considering how difficult it is to quantify soft skills.
Problem solving skills are crucial in the workplace as they enable employees to identify issues, analyze root causes, and develop solutions.
Soft skills describe how you use your hard skills.
You might even think of soft skills as the adverbs of the career world. Keep in mind that you can always Google “in-demand soft skills” if you want to see more detailed lists or check the latest employer trends.
Soft skills come in countless varieties, but here are a few of the most sought-after ones:
Communication
Teamwork
Adaptability
Problem-solving
Creativity
Work ethic
Interpersonal skills (empathy, humor, patience)
Time management
Leadership
Attention to detail
You’ve probably seen these soft skills referenced in job postings. Maybe you skimmed over them thinking they were too fluffy, amorphous or self-explanatory to warrant your attention.
But soft skills are a huge factor in hiring one person over another. They are also skills that apply across practice areas and industries.
In other words, your soft skills and critical thinking skills are the basis for your transferable skills.
The key to unlocking the power of your transferable skills lies in your ability to effectively describe your soft skills to employers.
Critical Thinking
Definition and Why
Critical thinking is a set of skills that allows you to evaluate information, analyse data and make decisions. As a transferable skill it’s useful in any profession. It’s objective analysis, problem solving and decision making.
Critical thinking is important because you can:
- Evaluate and make decisions
- Analyse data and spot patterns and trends
- Identify problems and solutions
- Communicate effectively and persuasively
- Adapt to new situations and challenges
Employers value critical thinking skills because they are for problem solving, decision making and innovation. These skills are also important for personal and professional success as they allow you to navigate complex situations and make informed decisions.
Transferable Skills
Reflecting on Your Experience
Identifying transferable skills involves reflecting on your past experiences to pinpoint the skills and strengths that have been useful across different situations. To identify your transferable skills follow these steps:
Make a list of your top transferable skills and be prepared to give specific examples of how you have used them in different situations.
Reflect on your past experiences including work experience, education and personal pursuits.
Identify the skills and strengths you have demonstrated in each experience.
Categorise your skills into hard skills and soft skills.
Evaluate the skills that are most valuable and relevant to your career goals.
Connecting the Dots for Employers With Real-World Examples of Project Management Skills
As you may have learned by now, simply stating on your resume that you’re an “excellent communicator” or an “expert problem-solver” isn’t enough. You need to show employers how you communicate or how you solve problems using real-world evidence.
Highlighting your transferable skills on your resume can significantly enhance your job search and improve your chances of securing a new position. When you do an effective job of explaining the unique way you complete tasks, employers are able to see how your soft skills apply to the work you’d do for them. The best way to demonstrate your soft skills is by way of example.
Don’t be afraid to include examples of cases or deals that aren’t squarely within the type of work done by the employer.
When I was applying for a commercial real estate position during the Great Recession, I showcased my soft skills of persistence, resourcefulness, collaboration and leadership by describing how I became my firm’s resident expert on financing seafaring vessels.
That example proved successful because I focused on how I solved the problem of financing the construction of a pirate ship for my bank client. (Yes, a literal pirate ship.)
I also made clear the benefits enjoyed by relevant parties to the transaction so that the new employer could clearly envision the value I’d bring to their organization.
My bank client was able to close a complex and specialized loan that it was able to sell on the secondary market.
The new firm also had commercial lending clients with complex deals they sold on the secondary market.Using soft skills, I helped my law firm become known for being one of the few capable of properly closing those kinds of deals, which led to more deals from new and existing clients.
The new firm saw me as someone who can create repeat business for them.My employer was able to rely on me to figure out how to properly close a novel and complicated deal without a lot of hand-holding.
The new employer valued having a lawyer who was a self-starter and problem-solver.
Not only did I receive the job offer, but I also edged out several candidates with twice as much real estate experience.
It’s entirely possible that one of those more senior lawyers could have beaten me out for the position if they’d only known how to effectively leverage their soft skills.
But they didn’t. Instead, a junior attorney with fewer hard skills leveraged her soft skills to help the employer clearly see how it would benefit from hiring her.
So do yourself a favor. Before you count yourself out for that job you wish you had, do some digging to uncover your own metaphorical pirate ship. Focus on those soft skills.
321 Illustration ©iStockPhoto.com
More Tips on Attorney at Work
“Using Soft Skills to Become In-House Clients’ Favorite” by Susan Kostal
“Lawyers Suck at Listening: 3 Ways to Turn It Around” by Annie Little
“Put Your Creativity to Work” (Yes, You)” by Jay Harrington
“Ways to Push Beyond Your Comfort Zone in Managing Your Career” by Wendy Werner
“This Mindset Is a Must for New Partners” by Yuliya LaRoe
“Managing Up” by Wendy Werner
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