Dick Bolles:
When a woman is packing for a trip, she may throw in “this little frock, which can go anywhere.” Likewise, when a man is packing for a trip, he may throw in a dark blue blazer, again because “it can go anywhere.”
This idea, that you have something which could fit into a number of different situations, is probably the best introduction possible to the concept of “transferable skills.”
Briefly stated, this concept holds that your basic skills – whether they be “organizing,” or “analyzing,” or “writing,” or “teaching,” or “planning” – are like that frock or blazer: they can go anywhere.Therefore, you have to decide where you’d be happiest employing your transferable skills, because – believe me – where you’d be happiest is also where you’d be most effective.
This is called “picking a field.” Sounds easy. But I have learned over the past forty plus years that there is no subject where job-hunters and career-changers bog down more, than in figuring out their favorite field; so let me try to cut through the thicket by offering you ten ways to approach this.
