"From collecting stamps to scooping ice cream, your past experience has not only made you who you are, but taught you plenty of valuable lessons that may apply to the workplace. However, before you can effectively present these abilities to a potential employer, you must first identify what you have to offer. Read on to learn how to use your transferable skills to get hired.

Transferable Skills: A Primer
Simply put, transferable skills refer to the generally applicable skills you've gained in your life to date. They include (but are not limited to) skills you may have learned at a previous job, in academic settings, or even during leisure activities.

Many employment resources group transferable skills into five broad categories:

1. Communication--expressing, transmitting and interpreting knowledge. Specific communication skills include speaking, writing, listening, giving feedback, editing, and facilitating discussions.
2. Research & Planning--This skill set encompasses searching for information and understanding and preparing for future needs. Skills in this area include resource identification, analysis, creative visualization, goal setting, problem solving, and defining needs.
3.Human Resources--At its most basic, human resources involves helping people. Human resource skills include support, motivation, counseling, cooperation, delegation, and empathy.
4. Organization, Management, and Leadership--Encompasses supervision, direction, and guidance of others to achieve goals. Skills in this area include coordinating tasks, teaching, coaching, selling ideas or products, managing groups, and conflict resolution.
5. Work Survival--Encompasses everyday skills crucial to success in the workplace. Skills in this category include punctuality, effective time management, attention to detail, organization, and decision-making.

Which Transferable Skills Do You Have?
Whether you're applying for your first real job or just looking for a midlife career shift, you may have realized, while reading the list above, that you have more transferable skills than you once thought.

The best way to identify your skills is to sit down and spend some time making a list of all your relevant life experiences. Include all previous jobs (even waiting tables or pumping gas), extracurricular activities, coursework, hobbies, and community involvement. Even experiences like living abroad or tending to a chronically ill family member can constitute valuable job skills if applied in the right professional setting, so make your list as complete as possible. Friends, coworkers, and relatives are often helpful resources at this point, as they may think of skills you've overlooked.

Before moving on to the next step, review your list. Did you include everything? Now is the time to really explore how your experiences have shaped you as a person. If you moved frequently as a child, for example, you may have learned to adapt well to new environments--a useful skill for jobs requiring travel or networking. Even some of your life's darkest moments can prove central to your character. Those few years of adolescent rebellion, while full of inappropriate or even illegal behavior, might make you better able to counsel troubled youth as an adult.

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