This New Year’s, Frank, Vaughn and I attended a party where I spoke to a woman, Donna, who gave me a great story for the idea of transferable skills. Donna was a marketing and ad representative for MSNBC and NBC for years in New York City. She really enjoyed her work, but after several years she realized it wasn’t what she wanted to do forever. One of Donna’s friends told her about corporate real estate leasing. She had never heard of it before, but thought it sounded interesting. She looked into it further; I’m sure through networking and perhaps online research, but she didn’t specify. By the way, http://online.onetcenter.org/ and Wetfeet.com are good sites for researching job industries.

After researching, Donna adjusted her resume to reflect the transferable skills for this industry, and basically hounded someone at longhorn to give her a chance. Her hard work paid off and they hired her. She now works for GAP Inc. handling the leases for all of their stores in a portion of the southeast region. She loves her job for many reasons. It gives her flexible hours, ability to work from home on occasion, which is nice because she has a son and another on the way.

Remember, you may feel like you’ve heard the term transferable skills over and over, but have you really sat down and thought about what other industries you could be qualified for? If I looked at Donna’s resume at first glance, I might have said she didn’t fit the industry. If you dig deeper though, you’ll see that Donna had experience in marketing, ad and media placement, and identifying a target market. All of these things need to be considered when you are opening or re-locating a brand new retail store, right? This approach worked for Donna, why not you? Take another look at your transferable skills. It can lead to your success!