Personal Transferable Skills: A Guide To Developing And Acquiring Skills Essential For Employment

Developing Employable Skills or Personal Transferable Skills

Discuss about the Personal Transferable Skills.

Employment skills are also called “Transferable Skills” because they can be transferred from one field to another.  People develop these skills among themselves in all the areas of their life such as school college sports events once these developed can be transferred to any job, developing these skills helps in getting a push to a career and be successful in the corporate ladder.

Personal transferable skills or employable skills are the most essential skills for any employee or candidate seeking a job (Ashcroft, 2012). As Per a research most of the candidates graduating from Colleges are unemployable because they lack the general employability skills (Rarr, 2014) such as communication skills, leadership skills, time & task management also team working skills. These skills are developed over time by the candidate in his social setting, college and general upbringing environment various events he participates in and day to day life chores (Skills you need, 2013).

An Australian research in the year 2013 Identified 4 main clusters of skills which contribute heavily in career planning and getting a job. The four Clusters are (Bennett, 2014)

Communication Skills which involves effective speaking, listening and writing, computing.

Problem solving skills which includes decision making and follow through, research about the social and political factors, reworking and applying knowledge.

Team work skills includes cooperating with others, handling disputes, managing differences, motivating people etc.

Managing and organizing skills includes planning and executing tasks, decentralize authority and responsibility, handling contingencies and ability to work independently.

Skill Gap is the major concern which every employer faces, Skill gap may be defined as the difference in the skill which the employer wants and what is available in the person looking for a job. US in 2014 had 4.3million jobs on offer while 9.7 million people were looking for a job that’s almost 2 people for 1 job and yet the employers couldn’t fill all the position with people of right skills (Shah, 2013).

To understand and know what are the major skills that an employer wants two Areas Namely Accounting and Finance & IT were taken up with five Job Advertisements of each area analyzed. Job advertisements were taken From Seek.com- Leading Job search portal in Australia.

Accounting and Finance Job Advertisements (Seek, 2016)

Company	Job	Responsibilities	Educational Qualifications	Skills Required
Payroll plus	Assistant Accountant	·         Balance sheet management ·         Invoicing ·         Tax Audits ·         Preparation of returns ·         Financial reporting	CA/CPA qualification 2+Years of experience in same Industry	o   Self -Motivated o   Team Player o   Excellent Communication o   Data analysis
Prosperity advisers	Accounting & Tax Adviser	·         business restructuring, tax planning and research, benchmarking and cash flow analysis	CA qualified with 3+ years’ experience in a chartered environment.	o   strong business acumen o   Excellent communication o   Client handling o   Team Leader o   Developing network and Strong business ethics
QBE	Finance Business Partner	·         financial analysis and commentary ·         annual budgeting process ·         Monthly management reporting	CA/CPA qualified FP&A/ business partnering experience	o   ability to work to deadlines with excellent time management and organizational skills Excellent communication and inter-personal skills o    negotiation ability skills
Bentley Findex	Internal Auditor	·         audit process, including scheduling and scoping the audit, designing and executing audit tests, drawing appropriate conclusions and drafting audit reports.	CA, CPA, CIA or equivalent 3+ years of experience	o   Strong understanding of business o   Excellent written and oral communication o   Team and task management skills o   Good with deadlines
Lloyd Harrington Australia	Business Services Manager	·         Client handling ·          training and development strategy	MBA -Finance With 2+ years of experience in the same industry	o    Perfect written and verbal communication skills o    Excellent interpersonal skills. o    Relationship handling o    Team leadership skills

Source: Own

IT Job Advertisements (Seek ,2016) 

Company	Job	Responsibilities	Educational Qualifications	Skills required
Melbourne Water	Business Analyst	·         functional and system analysis standard business analysis and process improvement techniques.	Business finance/ IT related discipline with 3+ years of relevant experience	·         Extensive experience in Business Analysis ·         negotiation and customer service skills ·         collaborative team player ·         effective interpersonal skills
Telstra	Senior Business Analyst	·         Establishment of TSS Reporting Framework and development of TSS Tactical Reporting	Business, Finance and/or IT related discipline with demonstrated experienced in a similar role.	·         Good Business Acumen ·         Ability to communicate effectively ·         Good written English skills ·         Self-motivated
Virtualite	Automation Test Analyst	·         Design test scenarios ·         Review business, technical and architectural requirements ·         Design and execute test scripts	Experience with Backend API testing: REST, JSON, XML Experience testing iOS and Android mobile apps	·         Good reporting skills ·         Ability to handle team
Virtualite	Front End Developer	Google Analytics and A/B split test implementations & data analysis UI Design Development for Desktop, Mobile & apps	Experience in UX/UI and digital analytics	·         Knowledge of JavaScript & HTML5/CSS3 ·         Time and task management
J5 Group	Senior Information Security Consultant	·         Review technology objectives and security requirements, deliver security solutions governance and risk guidance internally and externally.	Extensive Security Consulting experience minimum 3years – Internal or External	·         understanding of Security Architecture ·         Stakeholder management ·         Team Worker ·         Good negotiation skills

Source: Own

For all the advertisements analyzed in accounting and finance vertical the major requirement was excellent communication skill, Data analysis skills, Team player, Problem Solving skills and time and task management skills and good negotiation skills.

When analyzing the IT vertical job advertisements, the major requirements were communication skills, good understanding of the subject (Technical skills), Ability to handle team, time management skills.

In both the verticals it was communication skills which were most important as right from the start we have to have the ability to communicate what we are trying to say. Most of the jobs require reporting to senior officials through presentations, business reports therefore good written and oral communication skills are demanded. 

Top Five Skills required by the employers (Career studies, 2015)

Communication skill

Negotiation skills

Time management skills

Relationship management skills

Team player

Conclusion

Personal transferable skills or employable skills are what determines the success of a person in the corporate ladder. From the above findings, it can be easily concluded that communication skills- oral and written are most demanded by the employers (Smale & Fowlie, 2015), there are enough opportunities in the world and the kind of skill gap faced by the employer it won’t be difficult for the someone to grab the opportunity if focused well on the top five employability skills.

References

Ashcroft, L. (2012). Developing competencies, critical analysis and personal transferable skills in future information professionals. Library Review, 53(2), 82-88. https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00242530410522569

Bennett, R. (2014). Employers’ Demands for Personal Transferable Skills in Graduates: a content analysis of 1000 job advertisements and an associated empirical study. Journal Of Vocational Education & Training, 54(4), 457-476. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13636820200200209

Career studies,. (2015). 1. Top 10 Transferable Skills. Career Studies GLC2O. Retrieved 30 December 2016, from https://www.careernotes.ca/employability/top-10-employability-skills/

Rarr, V. (2014). ‘99% of today’s graduates are not employable’ – Vanguard News. Vanguard News. Retrieved 1 January 2017, from https://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/09/99-todays-graduates-employable/

SEEK – Australia’s no. 1 jobs, employment, career and recruitment site. (2016). Seek.com.au. Retrieved 30 December 2016, from https://www.seek.com.au/

Shah, S. (2013). The use of group activities in developing personal transferable skills. Innovations In Education And Teaching International, 50(3), 297-307. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2012.760778

Skills you need, (2013). Transferable Skills | SkillsYouNeed. Skillsyouneed.com. Retrieved 1 January 2017, from https://www.skillsyouneed.com/general/transferable-skills.html

Smale, B. & Fowlie, J. (2015). How to succeed at university (1st ed.). London: SAGE Publications Ltd.