Introduction
The skills a person holds are usually useful in determining the professional area he or she can be competent. It is worth noting that each profession has specific skills which any individual wishing to be employed should possess. These are usually referred to as professional skills. Transferrable skills are usually necessary to ensure that an individual performs with a high level of competence (Willis & Mester 1990). The professional skills ensure that an individual is able to add value to his or her employer. According to Jones and Hill 2009, an employee is usually useful only when he or she can add value to the employer.
Professional Skills for Business and Finance
Like the other professional fields, business and finance field is known to be very strict when it comes to professional skills. This is because any inefficiency in business and finance management would spell losses for an organization. This requires the employers to look for several factors in an individual such as the transferable skills which make an individual employable by an organization. It is important to note that transferrable skills are similar in all fields (Gallagher 2012).
Transferrable skills
Transferable skills are the ones that can be transferred from one job to another. These skills are usually able to be applied in more than one job. They are sometimes referred to as the employability skills or essential skills (Lumley & Wilkinson 2013). It is worth noting that these skills are learned from different places. According to Billett and Henderson (1997), an individual can acquire the transferable skills from school, a team in sports or at home. After acquiring these skills, an individual is able to transfer these skills to the place of work throughout the career life.
The transferable skills are usually an important consideration by all employers. In most cases, the employers put equal weight on the transferable skills as the case in technical job skills. It is worth noting that the transferable skills are usually instrumental in determination of whether an individual succeeds or fails in a job search.
Examples of transferrable skills
The list of transferrable is long due to their importance in the professional fields. This is because they make the process of achieving the objectives of companies an easy task. Self awareness is one of the important skills that an individual needs. This is important because it tells the employer that once the employee is hired, he or she will be able to carry out the daily activities with a certain level of confidence with regard self knowledge. With self awareness, an individual will be able to tell the employer with precision what she or he can offer. This is important since it determines the level of conviction that the employer will have towards the prospective employee.
Creativity is the other important transferrable skill that an individual should try to cultivate. This skill is usually important in ensuring that all responsibilities given are done in a way which improves what is in the book. Creativity ensures that an individual completes tasks smoothly even beating deadlines and targets. This skill helps in making the process of achieving a given goal much easier. Additionally, creativity is responsible for coming up with better products for an organization. All employers will be willing to hire someone who is able to come up with better things and ways that are able to improve the performance of an organization.
Integrity has also been identified as a major pillar of the other transferrable skills. This is because integrity is known to bring a reliable mind into an individual. This skill is always useful in ensuring that an individual can be trusted to run the affairs of an organization. Since an employee is always an agent of an organization, employers will not leave the affairs of an organization to individuals who cannot be relied or trusted.
Leadership skills are the other transferrable skills that an individual is required to have so as to increase the chances of getting employed. A leader is a person who is capable of defining the way the objectives of an organization can be achieved. This is through doing things that are able to bring all business functions to life. In leadership, a person is supposed to learn how to motivate people in an organization (Cottrell 2013). This should be done with the sense of mind that human capital is crucial to an organization. Leadership is also determined through looking at the extent of decision making of an individual. The level of decisiveness is a useful measure of an individual’s decisiveness. To have leadership skills, an individual should be able to make appropriate directions to the other people in an organization. A leader is supposed to make timely and proper directions in the right way. This ensures that the people to whom the directions are aimed at understand and execute them as required. This is one of the major employability skills that employees look for in an individual. Leadership goes hand in hand with being good in communication. An individual should be able to hold proper interpersonal communication. Leadership can be indicated by a person’s involvement in student leadership, holding presentations in meetings and a sports team captain among others.
Being able to work in a group is another valuable area of transferrable skills. For a person to be easily employable, he or she should hold a given level of team working skills. Some of the team work skills include being able to exhibit patience with others. This will make people become willing to share and improve on their work related activities. It is also important for an individual to be able to care for the team members. This is important since it brings more togetherness which improves the overall performance in an organization. The other things that show ability to work in a team include persuading the others, confronting group members when necessary, show kindness, support others and listening to team members among others. Ward (2002) says that for a person to be good in a working with others, he or she should make people comfortable while working. This is important since it makes sharing of ideas easy. It is important to ensure that every team member’s opinion is captured in the process of decision making. This ensures that the final decision is made after factoring in all the ideas from the group members.
All the above mentioned transferrable skills go through a given cycle which ensures that they are successful in an individual.
Transferrable skills Cycle
An important thing to note is that transferrable skills’ cycle is based on four steps. This cycle covers the path the transferrable skills take from acquisition to benefiting an give employer. The skills cycle involves, skills acquisition, skill matching, skill transfer and skill progression.
| Skill Acquisition
This is where an individual acquires a skill from a sport team, school and work among other places |
|
Skill Progression This step of the transferrable skills cycle talks about the process of developing skills in a new scenario or situation.
|
Skill Match
This is where an employer matches the skill of an individual to an opening or vacancy in an organization. This is usually done through getting evidence from an individual’s CV and interview. |
| Skill Transfer
This is where the skill that an individual has is transferred from one job to another. This means that the skill is taken from one situation to another. |
Conclusion
It is important for individuals to be much focused when packaging themselves for the job market. Everybody should be able to analyze the job environment and create a brand which is capable of making him or her become attractive to the various employers in the market (Gravells 2007). Most important of all, the area of professional skills should be emphasized on. This is because it determines whether an individual is going to take a job or not. A person should be able to look at the level of transferrable skills he or she holds. This is because the “employability’ skills are usually very useful to employers in determining the amount of value an individual is capable of giving the company.
Some transferrable skills usually carry more weight than others. This is because they cover a wider scope than others. Skills such as being able to do teamwork are quite fundamental in determining how employable an individual is. This is because organizations are formed through the creation of teams thus the need to have people who can work within teams.
References
Cottrell, S 2013, The Study Skills Handbook. 4th ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Gallagher, K 2012, Skills Development for Business and Management Students. 2nd ed. Oxford: OUP
Lumley, M, & Wilkinson, J 2013, Developing Employability for Business. Oxford: OUP
Ward, PL 2002, Continuing Professional Education for the Information Society. Walter de Gruyter.
Gravells, A 2007, Delivering Employability Skills in the Lifelong Learning Sector. Sage.
Billett, S & Henderson, A 1997, Developing Learning Professionals: Integrating Experiences in University and practice settings. Springer.
Willis, JB & Mester, CS 1990, Maintaining professional competence: approaches to career enhancement, vitality, and success throughout a work life. Peter Lang.
Jones, GR & Hill, CW 2009, Strategic Management Essentials. 2nd ed. Southwestern: Cengage Learning.
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