Transferable skills are abilities you build in one job that are useful in many others, such as coordinating people, solving complex problems or explaining things clearly. They are the bridge in any career change: they let you show an employer in a new field that you can already do much of the work.
This guide uses the skill ratings in the O*NET 31.0 database from the U.S. Department of Labor. O*NET rates how important 25 cross-functional skills are in every U.S. occupation, on a scale from 1 (not important) to 5 (extremely important). We counted how many of the 875 careers with full data rate each skill at 3.5 or higher, which we call "important" below.
The 25 transferable skills, ranked
| Skill | Careers where it is important (of 875) | Average importance (1–5) | Where it matters most |
|---|---|---|---|
| Judgment and Decision Making | 297 | 3.26 | School administrators, chief executives, urologists |
| Complex Problem Solving | 293 | 3.22 | Physicists, chief executives, treasurers and controllers |
| Social Perceptiveness | 226 | 3.16 | Psychiatrists, marriage and family therapists, counseling psychologists |
| Coordination | 184 | 3.12 | Chief executives, HR managers, chefs and head cooks |
| Service Orientation | 153 | 2.94 | Emergency management directors, travel agents, recreational therapists |
| Time Management | 139 | 3.09 | Supply chain managers, postmasters, health services managers |
| Operations Monitoring | 121 | 2.54 | Airline pilots, commercial pilots, chemical plant operators |
| Instructing | 110 | 2.83 | Social work teachers, coaches and scouts, English teachers |
| Systems Analysis | 87 | 2.72 | Logistics engineers, chief executives, urban planners |
| Systems Evaluation | 74 | 2.66 | Chief executives, logistics engineers, network administrators |
| Persuasion | 73 | 2.73 | Technical sales representatives, telemarketers, sales engineers |
| Operation and Control | 73 | 2.19 | Airline pilots, commercial pilots, locomotive engineers |
| Management of Personnel Resources | 60 | 2.58 | HR managers, chief executives, school administrators |
| Negotiation | 44 | 2.60 | Arbitrators and mediators, real estate brokers, labor relations specialists |
| Repairing | 40 | 1.67 | Aircraft mechanics, medical equipment repairers, farm equipment mechanics |
| Troubleshooting | 39 | 2.03 | Aircraft mechanics, railroad signal repairers, heavy equipment mechanics |
| Quality Control Analysis | 31 | 2.40 | Agricultural inspectors, quality control managers and analysts |
| Equipment Maintenance | 25 | 1.70 | Aircraft mechanics, farm equipment mechanics, wind turbine technicians |
| Operations Analysis | 17 | 2.01 | Architects, aerospace engineers, set and exhibit designers |
| Programming | 14 | 1.61 | Computer programmers, web developers, video game designers |
| Management of Financial Resources | 6 | 1.88 | Chief executives, treasurers and controllers, school administrators |
| Installation | 4 | 1.25 | Solar thermal installers, millwrights, telecom equipment installers |
| Management of Material Resources | 2 | 1.96 | Chief executives, supply chain managers, school administrators |
| Equipment Selection | 2 | 1.71 | Power tool repairers, railroad signal repairers, heavy equipment mechanics |
| Technology Design | 1 | 1.71 | Manufacturing engineers, software developers, robotics engineers |
Source: O*NET 31.0 skill importance ratings, careers with a full page on this site.
What the list tells you
The most portable skills are judgment, problem solving and people skills. Judgment and decision making and complex problem solving are important in about a third of all careers. If your current job rates high on them, you have many possible next steps.
Social skills travel across fields. Social perceptiveness (noticing and understanding how people react), coordination and service orientation are important in teaching, health care, sales, management and customer service alike. That is why teachers often move into training, and retail workers into banking and customer service.
Technical skills are powerful but narrow. Repairing, equipment maintenance and programming are important in fewer careers, but where they matter they are hard to replace. Someone moving between mechanical trades, or between software roles, carries over a lot. Someone moving out of a technical field should lead with the problem-solving and judgment that came with it.
Resource management is where most people have gaps. Managing money, materials and staff is important in only a small set of careers, and they are mostly management roles. Our career change pages list "skills to learn" for each job, and these often show up there.
The five skill groups
O*NET sorts the 25 skills into five groups. It helps to know them when you describe yourself:
- Social skills: coordination, instructing, negotiation, persuasion, service orientation, social perceptiveness.
- Complex problem solving: finding problems and choosing a solution.
- Technical skills: equipment maintenance, equipment selection, installation, operation and control, operations analysis, operations monitoring, programming, quality control analysis, repairing, technology design, troubleshooting.
- Systems skills: judgment and decision making, systems analysis, systems evaluation.
- Resource management skills: time management and managing financial, material and personnel resources.
O*NET also rates basic skills such as reading comprehension, active listening, writing, speaking and critical thinking. Almost every job needs them, so they help less to set you apart. Every career profile on this site lists the most important ones under "Skills that matter most".
How to find your own transferable skills
1. Start with your job's ratings. Open the Transferable Skills Finder and pick your current job. It ranks the skills that matter most in it, from O*NET. This is the typical worker in your job, so adjust it to what you actually do.
2. Add the skills from the rest of your life. Volunteer roles, caregiving, side projects and hobbies count. If you ran a youth sports team, you used coordination, instructing and time management.
3. Pick a target and compare. In the same tool, choose a career you are considering. You will see which skills carry over and which ones the new job needs more of. If a gap is large, plan a course or a project that closes it.
4. Check the full picture. Skills are only part of a match. Our Career Change Tool also compares knowledge, work activities and interests, then shows pay and extra education for every option.
How to show transferable skills to an employer
A skill on a list convinces no one. Show it with a short example that has a result, in the words the new field uses:
| Instead of | Write |
|---|---|
| "Good with people" | "Resolved 30+ customer complaints a week while keeping satisfaction scores above target" (social perceptiveness, service orientation) |
| "Taught 5th grade" | "Designed and delivered 180 days of lessons for 28 learners with different needs; built progress tests and used the results to adjust content" (instructing, judgment) |
| "Managed the front desk" | "Coordinated schedules for 12 staff and 200 weekly appointments" (coordination, time management) |
The numbers in these examples are illustrations; use your own. Then:
- Mirror the job posting. If it asks for "stakeholder communication", use that phrase for the parent meetings or client calls you ran.
- Lead with the skills the new job rates highest. O*NET ratings tell you which ones those are.
- Put the evidence in your resume summary and the first bullet of each job, where readers look first. Our career change resume guide shows a full example.
Transferable skills for common career changes
Each of our "Jobs for Former…" pages lists a job's top transferable skills and the careers that use them. Some examples:
- Jobs for former teachers: instructing (4.21) and social perceptiveness (3.92) lead to training, instructional design and counseling.
- Jobs for former nurses: social perceptiveness and coordination lead to clinical research, genetic counseling and health teaching.
- Jobs for former retail workers: service orientation (3.44) leads to tellers, customer service and office roles.
- Jobs for former software developers: programming and systems analysis lead to data science, hardware engineering and IT management.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration: skill importance ratings and the O*NET Content Model skill groups.
- Counts and averages: our calculation over the 875 careers with a full page. See the Methodology.