Finding your Transferable Assets

One of the current buzz words in HR is competencies. Rather than thinking of your lifetime’s achievements as a list of individual actions, the key is to analyse them and to work out what competencies you have gained as a result. A good example of a competency is teamwork - every project that you engage in as part of a team improves your ability to work within teams generally. The next time you work in a team you will bring to the project previous experience of teamwork.

The reason competencies are so important is because they represent transferrable assets: these are the core skills that you can offer a new employer, and the more honed your competencies are, the more attractive you will be if those competencies fit within the prospective employer’s needs.

The test then, is to ask yourself: what are my competencies? Teamwork is one, but think about others like leadership, creativity, financial management, networking, or people management. And remember, it’s no good just thinking that you can do these things - you have to have the evidence to prove that you really do have these skills.