Transferable skills are abilities you can carry from one role, industry or part of your life into another. They are especially important when your previous job titles do not closely match the role you want next.
You may be changing careers, returning after a break, moving from education into work or applying for a role that uses your experience in a different way. In each case, employers need help understanding how your background remains relevant.
The challenge is that many applicants either overlook their transferable skills or describe them using vague phrases such as “good communicator” and “team player”. Those claims are easy to write but difficult for an employer to assess.
A stronger CV identifies the skills the new role requires, connects them to your actual experience and supports them with evidence.
What Are Transferable Skills?
Transferable skills are abilities that remain useful across different jobs and settings.
For example, someone working in retail may develop customer service, organisation, problem solving and conflict-resolution skills. Those abilities could also be relevant in administration, recruitment, account management or healthcare support.
Transferable skills can come from:
- paid employment
- education
- volunteering
- placements
- community roles
- caring responsibilities
- freelance work
- personal projects
- sports or societies
The original setting matters less than whether the skill is relevant to the job and whether you can show how you used it.
Transferable skills are not the same as unsupported buzzwords. Writing “excellent leadership skills” on a CV is only a claim. Explaining that you trained four new colleagues, organised workloads and helped the team meet a deadline turns that claim into evidence.
Why Transferable Skills Matter
Employers often use job titles as a quick way to understand experience. That can create a problem when your previous role looks different from the position you want next.
A hiring manager may not immediately see the connection between hospitality and office administration, teaching and project coordination, or unpaid caring responsibilities and support work. Your CV needs to make that connection clear.
Transferable skills can help show that you already understand how to:
- work with other people
- solve problems
- manage responsibilities
- communicate clearly
- learn new systems
- work under pressure
- make decisions
- support customers or stakeholders
They do not remove the need for role-specific knowledge, but they can show that you already have a strong foundation. This is particularly useful for career changers, returning workers and people applying for their first professional role.
How To Identify Your Transferable Skills
A useful starting point is to stop thinking only about job titles and begin thinking about what you actually did.
Take each previous role or experience and ask:
- What problems did I deal with?
- Who did I communicate with?
- What did I organise?
- What decisions did I make?
- What systems or tools did I use?
- What responsibilities did other people trust me with?
- What improved because of my work?
For example, a café supervisor may have managed shift rotas, dealt with complaints, trained new employees, monitored stock, prioritised work during busy periods and reported issues to management.
Those responsibilities point to transferable skills in organisation, leadership, customer service, communication and problem solving.
You can use the same process with education, volunteering and caring responsibilities. A university group project may demonstrate planning, research, teamwork and presenting. Organising appointments and records for a relative may involve coordination, communication and attention to detail.
The next step is to compare those skills with the job description. Prioritise the ones the employer is actively asking for rather than trying to include every ability you have.
Transferable Skills Examples
There is no single list of transferable skills for a CV that will suit every job. The most useful skills depend on the role.
However, several broad areas appear across many industries. The following examples show how to turn each one into useful CV evidence.
Communication Skills
Communication includes much more than speaking confidently. It can involve explaining information, writing clearly, listening, handling sensitive conversations and adapting your style to different audiences.
Evidence might include responding to customer enquiries, presenting work, writing reports, explaining complex information, resolving complaints or supporting people with different needs.
Instead of writing “Excellent communication skills”, try:
Responded to customer enquiries by telephone and email, explaining processes clearly and resolving most routine issues at the first point of contact.
That gives the employer a clear picture of how you communicate.
Organisation And Time Management
Organisation is valuable in almost every role, but it needs to be shown through real responsibilities. Examples include managing appointments, coordinating deadlines, planning events, maintaining records and prioritising urgent work.
A stronger CV bullet might read:
Coordinated diaries for three managers while tracking deadlines, meeting requests and follow-up actions through a shared scheduling system.
This is more useful than simply describing yourself as organised.
Problem Solving
Problem solving is the ability to identify an issue, assess what is causing it and take practical action.
Examples may include fixing an inefficient process, resolving a complaint, responding to an unexpected staff shortage, correcting an error or finding an alternative when a plan failed.
Identified repeated delays in processing customer returns and introduced a clearer handover checklist, reducing missed information between shifts.
This explains both the problem and your response.
Teamwork And Leadership
Teamwork does not only mean being friendly or cooperative. It can involve sharing information, supporting colleagues, resolving disagreements and contributing to a wider goal.
Leadership can include formal management, but it can also mean taking responsibility, guiding others or coordinating a task. Relevant examples include training new starters, leading a university project, allocating work during a busy shift or coordinating volunteers.
Trained six new team members on service standards and till procedures, providing additional support during their first shifts.
Customer And Stakeholder Management
Many jobs involve managing relationships, even when the people involved are not called customers. Stakeholders could include clients, patients, students, suppliers, colleagues, managers, partner organisations or members of the public.
Useful evidence may involve managing expectations, providing updates, handling difficult conversations or maintaining professional relationships.
Acted as the main contact for external suppliers, resolving delivery issues and keeping internal teams updated on revised timescales.
Analytical And Technical Skills
Analytical skills involve reviewing information, identifying patterns and using evidence to make decisions.
Technical skills may include software, databases, spreadsheets, reporting systems or specialist tools. Even when a system is industry-specific, the ability to learn and use it accurately may transfer well.
Examples include analysing performance data, creating spreadsheets, checking records for errors, producing reports, learning software, interpreting survey results or monitoring budgets.
Used Excel to track monthly expenditure, identify unexpected increases and provide a summary report to the project manager.
Transferable Skills For A Career Change
When changing careers, your CV should not try to hide your previous industry. Instead, it should explain why the experience remains useful.
Start by identifying the overlap between the old role and the new one. Someone moving from teaching into project coordination may already have experience in planning, presenting, managing deadlines, handling competing demands, maintaining records and solving problems quickly.
Someone moving from hospitality into recruitment may bring customer service, relationship building, organisation, communication and experience of handling difficult conversations under pressure.
Your CV should bring those overlaps forward rather than expecting the employer to work them out. A career-change profile might say:
Customer service manager moving into recruitment, with five years of experience building relationships, resolving complex enquiries, training staff and managing busy workloads. Confident communicating with a wide range of people and keen to apply these skills in a candidate-focused recruitment role.
This acknowledges the change while keeping the focus on relevant value.
If a career break is also part of your timeline, read our guide to explaining gaps in employment clearly on your CV and in interviews.
Where To Put Transferable Skills On Your CV
Transferable skills can appear in several parts of your CV.
CV profile
Use the profile to summarise your strongest relevant skills and explain your direction. This is especially helpful when changing careers or returning to work.
Key skills section
A short skills section can help recruiters identify your strengths quickly. However, avoid listing broad words without context. Useful labels could include stakeholder communication, workload prioritisation, complaint resolution, report writing, team coordination, and Excel and data reporting.
Employment history
This is where transferable skills should be demonstrated. Use achievement-focused bullets that explain what you did and the impact.
Education, volunteering and projects
These sections can provide important evidence when your paid employment is less directly relevant.
Led a four-person university project, allocating research tasks, managing deadlines and presenting the final recommendations to a panel.
How To Demonstrate Skills With Evidence
The strongest transferable skills CV examples show action and context. A useful formula is:
Action + task + result
For example:
Reorganised the weekly rota to improve shift coverage and reduce last-minute staffing gaps.
Supported customers with complex account queries, explaining options clearly and recording accurate follow-up actions.
Numbers can help where they are truthful and useful:
Managed up to 40 customer enquiries per day while maintaining accurate case notes.
Not every bullet needs a percentage or target. Clear evidence is more important than forcing in statistics.
Before-And-After CV Examples
| Before | Stronger CV example |
|---|---|
| Good customer service and communication skills. | Handled telephone, email and face-to-face enquiries, resolving routine issues and escalating complex cases with clear supporting notes. |
| Responsible for general administration. | Managed appointment bookings, updated customer records and tracked outstanding actions to help the team meet service deadlines. |
| Strong leadership skills. | Supervised weekend shifts of up to eight staff, allocated duties and supported new employees during busy service periods. |
| Took time away from work to care for a family member. | Coordinated appointments, records and communication with multiple services while managing changing priorities and confidential information. |
The stronger version should only be used where the details are accurate and relevant. You do not need to turn every personal responsibility into professional language, but genuine skills developed outside paid employment can still be included.
Matching Your Skills To A Job Description
Transferable skills become more effective when they are tailored to the specific job.
Start by highlighting the main skills and responsibilities in the advert. Then compare them with your experience. If the job asks for stakeholder communication, managing competing priorities, accurate record keeping, problem solving and teamwork, your CV should include clear evidence for those areas near the top of the relevant sections.
You do not need to change the facts of your experience. You are changing the emphasis. For one application, customer communication may be your strongest point. For another, the same role may be more useful as evidence of organisation or working under pressure.
When an application asks for detailed evidence, our guide to writing a supporting statement explains how to connect those skills directly to the person specification.
Worqly can help you keep your experience and skills together in one profile, compare them with saved jobs and create application materials that emphasise the most relevant parts of your background. Explore Worqly's application tools to see how your profile and job details can work together.
Common Mistakes
Listing skills without evidence
Words such as “organised”, “adaptable” and “hardworking” are not persuasive on their own. Show how you demonstrated them.
Including every possible skill
A long generic list weakens the important points. Prioritise the skills most relevant to the job.
Making the connection too vague
Do not assume the recruiter will recognise how your previous experience transfers. Explain it directly.
Copying a transferable skills CV template
A template may help with structure, but the examples must come from your real experience.
Hiding your previous industry
Your previous work still has value. Focus on the relevant skills rather than trying to make your background look like something it was not.
Using the same CV for every role
Different jobs require different emphasis. Adjust your profile, key skills and achievement bullets for each application.
Final Thoughts
Transferable skills help employers understand how your previous experience can add value in a different role.
The strongest CVs do more than list communication, teamwork or problem solving. They show where those skills were used, what the applicant did and why the experience matters for the new job.
Start by looking beyond job titles. Review your responsibilities, achievements, education, volunteering and other relevant experience. Then compare those examples with the job description and prioritise the clearest matches.
Your background does not need to look identical to the role you want next. It simply needs to show that you have relevant skills and can apply them in a new setting.