Cowritten by Nathalie Boutros and Tchiki Davis.

The average person can expect to hold 12 different jobs in his or her lifetime (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). With all this job-changing, how can you navigate your career in the direction that you want to take it? One way to improve your career prospects may be to cultivate your transferable skills.

Transferable skills are those skills that are useful, and maybe even necessary, to the performance of a wide variety of jobs. A skill may be considered transferable if you learn and perfect it in one context, like school, a job, volunteer work, or a hobby, and then can use that skill in new and different situations (Nagele & Stalder, 2017). A huge range of skills, proficiencies, competencies, and talents may qualify as transferable skills. Some transferable skills are very specific and technical—for example, knowledge of specific software or industry regulations. Other transferable........

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