Why Think About Skills?
After a layoff, your top priority may be to find a job immediately. But you’ll be more successful in your search if you first think about your skills. Recognizing your unique blend of abilities can help you make yourself marketable to employers. It may also help you decide if you need to upgrade your skills.
Transferrable Skills
You may need to look for a job in a new industry or occupation. To do this, you'll want to know how your skills can transfer to a new work environment. Transferable skills include things like:
- Math and computation skills
- Reading and writing
- Speaking ability
- Science skills
- Critical thinking
- Management skills
- Technical skills
- Repair, maintenance, and troubleshooting skills
- Computer and technical skills
- Communication, persuasion, or coordination skills
If you’ve been a fast food restaurant manager, can you jump right into being a hotel manager? Maybe. The key is to recognize which of your skills will be valuable to a prospective employer, and know how to talk about them.
Assess Yourself
Learn more about your own skill set by taking a self assessment. Try several of the following assessments to learn as much as you can about your skills and the jobs that match them (these will all open in new browser windows; to return to this page, simply close the window).
Use the Skills Profiler to find occupations that use skills similar to your previous job. You can also create a list of your skills and match them to job types that need those skills.
Try O*NET’s Skills Search to select skills from a list and then view occupations that use those skills.
Are you realistic, investigative, enterprising, conventional, social, or artistic? Use O*NET’s Interest Profiler to learn how your interests relate to occupations. Create your own “interest profile” that corresponds to matching occupations.
Is it more important to you to develop relationships or work independently? Do you care more about having a supportive supervisor or good working conditions? Take O*NET’s Work Importance Locator to learn which occupations are the best match for what you value at work.
Get More Help
Need more guidance on skills assessments? Contact your local One-Stop Career Center (this will open in a new browser window; enter your Zip code or city and state to find the One-Stop Career Centers closest to you).