# Transferable Skills Training: How to Build Skills That Hold Up in a New Job Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/transferable-skills-training/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/transferable-skills-training.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building self-awareness at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer What transferable skills are, whether they can be taught, and how to train them so they carry into your next job. Answers on courses, practice and feedback. ## Key facts - Title: Transferable Skills Training: How to Build Skills That Hold Up in a New Job - Category: Improve Your Skills - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Building Confidence, Communication - Primary keyword: transferable skills training - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/transferable-skills-training/ ## What this page covers - What transferable skills are, whether they can be taught, and how to train them so they carry into your next job. Answers on courses, practice and feedback. - Practical guidance for transferable skills training - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation Transferable skills training works when it looks like the work you are training for: pick one skill, practice it in several real settings, such as a seminar, a part-time job or a volunteer role, and get feedback each time. A course can introduce the skill, but practice with feedback is what makes it carry into a new job. If your studies have given you plenty of knowledge but left you unsure which of your skills a workplace can actually use, that uncertainty is common, and it is fixable: these skills are learned, not inherited. There is a catch hidden in the word "transferable," though, and it changes how you should train. ## What are transferable skills, exactly? Transferable skills are skills you learn in one setting that stay useful in another. The OECD uses exactly that definition in its 2012 report *Transferable Skills Training for Researchers*, with research as the setting where the skills are learned, and names time management, writing, oral presentations and research methods among the skills doctoral candidates benefit from building while they study. What makes a skill transferable is not where you picked it up but whether it still works once you carry it somewhere new. That is good news for you, because you are probably not starting from zero. Writing a thesis chapter to a deadline, presenting in a seminar and coordinating a group project have all exercised skills a workplace relies on. Training is less about acquiring something brand new and more about making what you already have dependable in a different setting. ## Are transferable skills the same as soft skills? Not quite. Transferable skills include technical abilities, such as coding or data analysis, as well as interpersonal ones, such as communication. The University of Michigan's LSA Technology Services draws this line in its guidance on teaching transferable skills: soft skills are a subset of transferable skills, not another name for them. The distinction matters when you choose what to train. Technical skills usually come packaged in courses, syllabi and exams. The workplace skills, meaning how you communicate, work in a team, manage your time and work with your manager, are the part formal education rarely teaches directly. You will build most of them through practice rather than exams, and you can start well before your first full-time job. ## Can transferable skills actually be taught? Yes, but not the way most people picture it. A report from the American Enterprise Institute, *The Problem with Transferable Skills*, argues that the best available evidence shows these skills cannot be taught as general, context-free abilities. Transfer to a very different domain is elusive; transfer to closely related situations does happen. A skill stays tied to the kinds of situations in which you practiced it. That sounds discouraging until you see what follows from it: train close to where you want to use the skill. Presenting your research to a seminar group is good preparation for presenting a project update at work, because the two situations resemble each other. A one-day workshop on "communication in general," with no link to anything you actually do, is far less likely to change how you behave in your next team meeting. The skill is learnable; the training just has to resemble the real thing. ## How do I develop transferable skills? Practice the same skill in more than one place, and get feedback every time. Northeastern University's center for teaching and learning recommends exactly this combination, multiple opportunities for practice with feedback in varied contexts, as the way to develop skills that transfer. Using a skill in several settings shows you which parts of it are general and which belong to one situation, and feedback catches what you cannot see in yourself. A routine that puts this into practice: - Pick one narrow behavior, such as stating your main point in the first sentence when you explain something. - Use it on purpose in two or three settings you already have: a seminar, a shift at your part-time job, a meeting of a club or volunteer group. - After each attempt, ask one person [one specific question](/knowledge/self-awareness/questions-to-ask-for-feedback/), for example whether your point was clear within the first minute. - Adjust and repeat until the behavior holds up in every setting, then move on to the next one. [A mentor or coach](/knowledge/improve-skills/soft-skills-coaching/) makes this loop easier to sustain, because they give you a steady source of the feedback it depends on. ## How do I know which transferable skills I already have? Reflect on your experience deliberately rather than waiting to notice. A peer-reviewed study on building transferable skills into a science curriculum found that encouraging students to reflect on their learning helps them identify the transferable skills they have gained. Skills you use without noticing are hard to apply on purpose, and harder still to [describe to an employer](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/transferable-skills-for-resume/). If you have ever wondered how your coursework is supposed to count at work, you are not alone. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work put it like this: > I can solve a school assignment, do my research, structure a paper. But how do I turn 'searching literature for an exam' into something a workplace can use? Nobody on the degree tells us which jobs we can actually hold, or how academic skills become a work resource. The translation she is asking about is something you can work out yourself. After a project, a course or a shift, write down three things: what you had to do, what made it hard, and what the same task would look like in a workplace. Searching literature for an exam becomes finding, judging and summarizing information quickly under a deadline, which most jobs need. Reflection has blind spots, though: it is easy to overrate one skill and overlook another. Comparing your list with [a structured outside view](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) of your work skills, and asking someone who has seen you work which strengths they notice, gives you a fuller picture to train from. ## Is a transferable skills training course worth it? It can be, as a starting point rather than the whole plan. Many transferable skills are interpersonal, and interpersonal skills have to be applied in a real work context before they are properly yours: knowing what useful feedback sounds like and giving it to a colleague under time pressure are different abilities. A course is good at two things: showing you a clear example of the skill done well, and giving you a first attempt with a trainer watching. It cannot supply the dozens of attempts in real situations that make a skill reliable. So judge a course by what it asks of you afterward. A strong one sends you back to your own setting between sessions to try the skill and report on it; a weak one ends when the room empties. The science-curriculum study mentioned above notes that universities either build these skills into subject modules or run separate skills modules alongside them, often using group work, and either route can work if practice and feedback follow. Whatever you choose, decide before the course ends where you will use the skill over the next two weeks and who will tell you how it went. ## Do I need a job to build transferable skills? No. Transferable skills come from experience, and full-time work is only one source of it. Internships, [volunteering](/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-gained-from-volunteering/), part-time jobs and classes all give you real situations to practice in: a group project tests how you handle a teammate who misses a deadline, and a weekend job tests how clearly you can explain a problem to an impatient customer. What counts is using the skill deliberately and getting feedback on it, not the job title attached to the experience. ## How do I make sure a skill transfers to a new job? Look for the overlap before you arrive. Skills carry most reliably into situations that resemble the ones where you practiced them, so map your new role against settings you already know: briefing a manager resembles presenting to a supervisor, and delivering a report by a client deadline resembles handing in a thesis chapter on time. In those overlaps, your existing skills will work almost from day one. The parts of the role with no overlap are where you need fresh practice and early feedback. In your first weeks, ask for feedback on exactly those situations instead of waiting for a formal review. Each unfamiliar situation then becomes one more context to practice in, which is precisely how a skill becomes portable. ## What carries your skills from one setting to the next Across these answers, the same few things keep doing the work: an honest sense of what you can already do, the willingness to try a skill before you feel ready, and the ability to make yourself understood in each new setting. None of those is a personality trait. Each is a skill in its own right. **Building Self-Awareness** is how you find out which of your strengths are ready to travel. Courses chosen because they sound employable often miss the point; knowing what you are genuinely good at from study, jobs and projects, and where your blind spots sit, tells you what is worth training. Much of that knowledge comes from feedback: asking a supervisor or colleague for specific, forward-looking advice, such as what to change in your next presentation, turns a vague wish to improve into a short, concrete list. It keeps working after training starts, too, because feedback in a new setting is how you learn whether a skill actually came with you. **Building Confidence** grows out of the practice itself rather than coming before it. Each time you use a skill and it works, you add evidence that you can do it, and that evidence is what lets you use the skill calmly in an unfamiliar job or field. Break the skill into small steps, try the first one in a real situation, and move up only when it holds, such as running a five-minute agenda item before chairing a whole meeting. Step just outside your comfort zone, not miles beyond it, and expect the first attempts to feel awkward; that discomfort is part of the process, not a sign you are doing it wrong. **Communication** is the skill you get to practice most often, because every email, meeting and conversation is another attempt. Its core habits are concrete and portable: state your main point first, be clear and brief, adapt to the person you are speaking with, and listen properly before you answer. They work the same way in a lab, on a shop floor or in an open-plan office, so progress made in one place shows up in the next, with no stage or polished presentation required. Before your next move, whether that is an internship, a first job or a change of field, the free Job Skills Test can show you [which skills will travel well](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and which need more practice first. It scores these three alongside the rest of the set they belong to, **twelve work skills in all**, and every one of them improves with the kind of deliberate practice described above. ## Skills that travel with you Look at an ordinary week of yours and some of this is probably there already: the seminar talk you prepared more carefully than anyone required, or the shift when you calmed an annoyed customer without thinking twice. If you have ever rewritten a group-project summary so that a teammate from another field could follow it, you have already made the core move of transfer, taking a skill built in one setting and making it work in another. Where you take it from here is your call. A gap in any of these skills is simply practice you have not done yet, and closing it changes what you can do, not who you are. Skills like these tend to carry more weight as your work involves more people and fewer instructions, so it makes sense to choose deliberately which ones to strengthen first. ## Your first step in transferable skills training Practice pays off only when it is aimed at the right skill, so the sensible first move is a clear starting point. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: it takes 7 minutes and shows where you stand across all twelve, including the ones that will make the biggest difference for you right now. After that, keep it simple: choose one skill from your results and name two places to practice it this month, one familiar and one new. ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? What transferable skills are, whether they can be taught, and how to train them so they carry into your next job. Answers on courses, practice and feedback. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Building Confidence, Communication. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/confidence.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/improve-skills/transferable-skills-training/ Preferred summary: "What transferable skills are, whether they can be taught, and how to train them so they carry into your next job. Answers on courses, practice and feedback." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.