Transferable Skills – Knowledge – Ability – Experience

In a fast moving, ever changing world where equality of process and flexibility is paramount, an increasing number of employers seem to be putting greater emphasis on transferable skills. These considerations might centre around one or more of the following:-

Work and Family experience – those on maternity/paternity leave or those responsible for other dependants at home will often have acquired a huge range of skills associated with flexibility/multi-tasking/budgets  and time management

Recognition of prior learning schemes where academic and/or professional qualifications attained through one examination body can be recognised and credits awarded accordingly making shorter a new course of study

Internationally, and linked to the previous point, universities and college degrees attained in one country clearly have equivalent counterparts in another country which bring about both new insights for the workplace

Volunteering – 60% of UK employers reported last year that they were more inclined to recruit someone with a record of active citizenship or similar. And of course the skills attained through a properly structured and managed volunteer/intern programme can be enormous

Retired self-employed tradespeople(builders/plumbers) are finding that stores like B and Q are very keen to acquire their services knowing that they are going to engage with the customers and offer tangible help/advice

Hobbies – when helping people put a CV together, I always say don’t just list “reading/football/swimming”. Everybody does that! Say what you have done with the hobby, e.g. “organised the football team”, “reading classical literature” and “keeping fit” through swimming etc. etc.

What other “transferable” considerations would seriously assist in recruiting AND retaining a diverse workforce? And recruiting AND retaining customers too!