Tag Archives: career

Transferable skills

More thoughts coming out of a career coaching session this week

Imagine you need to make a bet on whether or not an individual will finish a 3 mile race in 40 minutes.

Candidate 1: Performed very well in several races 10 years ago, but has not run in a while.

Candidate 2: Has never been given the chance to run a race of this length – their best is 1 mile. However, they know all of the theory and lingo. They passionately speak about cadence, foot strike, and pace.

Candidate 3: Has never run a race, but is a skilled and accomplished athlete. They recently put up top 10% finishes in similarly challenging biking and swimming events.

Which would you be willing to bet on to finish the race? To finish in the top 50%? Top 25?

I realize this may seem like a bit of a strawman, and the reality is that candidates are infinitely nuanced. Still, the point is that I believe that transferable skills are often underappreciated by both candidates and hiring managers.

The person who has never run a race before, but has a near-perfect match of transferable skills, has the advantage. Is your job description or hiring process potentially only looking for people who have run a race before? What outstanding candidates might you be missing out on as a result of that?

Past performance has been proven to be correlated to future success, but that past performance does not need to be a perfect match.

Advice I gave today

1.) If there is more demand than supply for a role you want in the next 3-5 years, look for alternate paths to the position. Many people will plan to be an ideal candidate through the front door or the standard application process. That is the most hardened path.

Think strategically about “side doors” that may be underused.

Example: Many people seek advice about how to get a job in private equity or venture capital. They look at a core set of internships, educational achievements, etc., as the most logical path. A side door may be to do excellent work for VC or PE held company or do specialized consulting work for a VC/PE held company (or the firm itself) and deliver exceptional results.

2.) Leverage your existing brand/career equity to get access to jobs you would otherwise have no chance of getting.

Example: You want to be a CFO someday, but you are a top-performing, mid-level operations leader with no experience or education in finance. Your odds of getting a mid-level finance role outside of your organization are near-zero. But, your odds of getting a mid-level finance role inside your organization are exponentially higher. Most people do not adequately leverage their existing success/brand to get diversified/stretch experience.

3.) For long-term planning, look at job descriptions for the roles you want to have and chase the necessary experiences.

Example: You want to be a CFO someday. Look at 5-10 CFO job postings for a company with characteristics that match what you have in mind. (Note -it’s essential to be as specific as possible. A $10M startup CFO is quite different than a $50B global CFO of a public company). You’ll be shocked at how many of the preferred experiences are the same. These experiences make up your 5-year to-do list.

Chase them.