Quintessential Careers Press:
The Quintessential Guide to Words to Get Hired By
Chapter 4: Identifying and Portraying Transferable and Applicable Skills
Page 155
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I told her that if she really wanted an account rep position, she was emphasizing the wrong skills. She should not have been emphasizing clerical and secretarial skills --- or even computer skills. None of those skills is even mentioned in the ads she sent me typifying the kind of job she wanted.
I told her she should be emphasizing sales, customer service, interpersonal, and communications skills. Almost nothing in her current job --- the way she portrayed it on her old resume --- supported her desire to be an account rep. Yet, I'm sure her job requires great interpersonal skills, and she interacts with lots of different people and solve the problems of her boss and others. Those are the kinds of skills needed in the account rep jobs.
For example, I told her that instead of saying "Schedule meetings/appointments and make travel arrangements," she should say "Interact with a wide variety of personalities to schedule meetings and make travel arrangements."
That's what you need to do if you're seeking a new job. Think of everything you've done in terms of how it is transferable to what you want to be doing and portray it that way.
For every item on your resume, think: How can I portray this skill so that it supports the idea of doing what I want to do in my next job? If you can't make it support what you want to do, leave it out.
The classic examples I show my students about how a college student can portray transferable skills come from Donald Asher's book, From College to Career, one of the best resumes books available for college students.
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