Why do Employers Need to Hire for Transferable Skills?

Introduction

Individuals must acquire transferable skills in 2024 and beyond to be more indispensable. With the new wave of brittle, non-linear, and incomprehensive world of work, both recruiters and candidates need to up their game. With transferable skills, they can take on new challenges, be change-ready, have more curiosity in the workplace, be more compassionate, and always be eager to grow, upskill and reskill. So, the practice and need to hire for transferable skills becomes easier for the recruiters when they know what these are, how these shape an organisation, and when to look out for such skills in a candidate. 

This way, the new wave of technology or the AI emergence and convergence in HR would not scare the workforce. Rather, they will be quick enough to utilise the freely available resources and tech to their advantage and make their work and lives easier. 

Ultimately, the next decade boils down to how we all, employers and employees, learn to monitor, supervise, and utilise next-gen tech like uKnowva for our benefits. 

At the same time, transferable skills help us to stay grounded, empathetic, and emotionally intelligent enough to forge purposeful collaborations at the workplace. 

So, read the post ahead and implement the best plan to hire the new workforce with transferable skills like never before. 

Also read: How to Spark Enthusiasm in Recruiters with AI?

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What are transferable skills recruiters must be aware of while hiring?

Project management 

Candidates who complete a project can manage a team swiftly. They will know how to convince the team members, know their ups and downs, handle variations in team members' emotions, etc. 

They can add ROI to a business if they can mentor, coach, and motivate their teams to improve the quality and TAT of process-oriented deliverables. 

Commitment 

A person with a strong sense of commitment shows that they are retainers. They stick around in a firm for at least 1-3 years. They want to delve deeper into the work culture. 

Recruiters can recruit such people when they are looking for dependable, reliable, and committed individuals to work with.

They can utilise this commitment in spearheading stronger and more challenging projects. Such people will be committed to a goal, process, or vision. 

They align the team goals effectively, as it shows that they’re portraying commitment to the firm. 

Problem-solving mindset

Recruiters can enter such keywords in the CV Parser to select a candidate with a problem-solving mindset. When a recruiter is searching for a hard taskmaster to complete challenging, uncertain, and previously pending tasks, this could be a person to hire. 

A problem solver will look at the same problem in different ways. They’re highly optimistic and self-driven to find the right solution to the given problem and constraints. 

Growth-mindset

When a recruiter is searching for someone to helm a team to grow, this could be a transferable skill to bank on. A growth mindset is always an asset to the firm’s growth. 

These people with a growth mindset know how to push the team members out of their comfort zone. They can challenge the team and the cultural norm to break barriers or the glass ceiling. 

HR recruiters can find how much growth they can promise to bring to the table with the project results in the backend analytics. They will know if such people are really pushing their subordinates to grow more or not. 

Most often, these people are star performers in the 9-box grid model. They want to stay out of their comfort zone, set trends, find hidden patterns, and implement creative solutions. 

Change-ready mindset

One of the important transferable skills is a change-ready mindset. Recruiters need these people or candidates in a fast-growing or fast-changing organisation or a team. For instance, most often, marketers have a team of change-ready mindset workforce. 

That is because people in the marketing or knowledge-based industries are always on the lookout for new trends, initiatives, and strategies. 

Purposeful communication

One of the crucial transferable skills to find in your candidates when hiring is their love to communicate with a purpose. 

Recruiters can test the communication skills of their candidates by creating a purposeful rapport with them. They engage with the candidates throughout the interview and feedback process to know if the person is responding on time. 

Leadership qualities 

Leadership qualities are important for scouting hard taskmasters and team leaders. These qualities mean that the person to be onboarded requires minimum coaching and mentoring. 

They will take calculated risks and find new solutions and opportunities to tackle and overcome existing obstacles. 

It means the person will be an asset to the team when the team wants to grow, take on more challenging projects, and carve a path for others in unchartered waters. 

Strong work ethic

A strong work ethic makes a hire more empathetic, disciplined, humble, and transparent in deliverables. When someone has these qualities, recruiters do not worry about negative experiences like absenteeism, burnout, or absconding. 

Such employees are motivators to others in the firm. They keep the momentum going when it comes to delivering work on time, adjusting to each other’s timeline, collaborating with one another, and giving equal praise to each team member when it is due. 

You can find the analytics related to one’s engagement and participation on our portal when you use it to onboard new people. 

The profile shows their statistics. It will tell you how many activities these employees participate in. Then, you know if the employed person is daily interacting on the system or not, as one of the metrics of their strong work ethics. 

Critical and creative thinking

Another essential transferable skill set is having critical and creative thinking ability. We all are living in the era of AI and automation. Human resource management and the department are no further than that. 

Every day, recruiters are using tools like AI Suggest and CV Parser at uKnowva to fasten their process of hiring. 

Amidst that, they need to hire humans who are one step ahead. They need out-of-the-box thinkers – someone with higher EQ instead of IQ. For that, creative and critical thinking matters a lot. 

With people having creative ways to lead a life and exposing themselves to newer experiences and industries, recruiters figure out if the chosen candidate has critical and creative thinking. 

So, when scouting for this skill set while hiring someone new in the organisation, recruiters must check how full of life, purposeful, and self-driven is the purpose. 

If the purpose feels in control most of the time, they are taking regular risks on time. They know their goals and career path ahead. It means they are able to set timely, measurable, challenging, yet strategic goals for themselves. 

Such people take the organisation ahead by motivating and mentoring others to break their mental barriers. 

Technical dexterity 

We are already aware of the famous saying that AI will not replace human intelligence or human workers. However, it will replace your jobs if you do not learn how to leverage it. 

So, now, one of the crucial transferable skills is honing technical prowess. Candidates today need to learn to leverage tools like AI Suggest, CV Parser, ChatGPT, LXPs, Chatbots, etc., to manoeuvre their workday easily. 

Now is the peak time to learn how to control and measure the impact of AI and automated tools. Humans shall start to opt for supervisory positions to audit the impact of AI initiatives in their firms. They must be ready to put ethical AI plans to use for better, faster, and objective outcomes. 

The more tools and apps one is aware of in their industry, the more their chances to get onboarded faster. 

Why are transferable skills important in any employee in 2024 and beyond?

Reduced time on training new hires. 

Transferable skills help recruiters to hire the best talent in less time. They further will not require such people to train extensively to understand the culture of the organisation. These people grasp the expectations of the employer easily and without much resistance. 

Adds diversity in the workforce. 

Recruiters do the best job when they hire for transferable skills, keeping diversity in mind. For instance, one person might be a good communicator while the other person might be a good planner to keep the team aligned with organisational goals. 

So, transferable skills are diverse on their own. There is no end to learning and equipping those. As one gains more experience in life, these skills hone themselves, as long as you are open to learning new things. 

Thus, recruiters can provide the organisation with a diverse skill set and talent when they hire on the basis of a cluster of transferable skills. 

Promotes workflow agility. 

People who are good communicators, persuaders, future-ready, have digital dexterity and will be agile in implementing new strategies. They convince others in the team to apply new methods and techniques and get work done in less time. 

These people can bring more agility into the pre-existing process. It results in better individual and team outcomes and newer and faster solutions to older problems. 

That way, strategic partners like CHROs, CTOs, CSOs, etc., can think about expanding their horizons externally for the organisation. 

Enhances problem-solving metre in the organisation. 

Recruiters hire for the transferable skills and will be doing so more in 2024 because it will help boost the problem-solving ratio of the organisation. People with problem-solving, critical, creative, out-of-the-box thinking skills, etc., have better reflexes and a change-ready mindset. 

These people know how to meet any challenge head-on, even with limited resources and information. They focus on finding the right solution with maximum efficiency. So, the entire organisation and the team become better at solving regular or uncommon roadblocks. 

Elevates employee satisfaction and retention. 

Transferable skills show that the employee is self-serving. They know what they want to achieve from an organisation. They have certain personal and professional goals in mind to achieve. Their path in life and work is clear and purposeful most of the time. 

So, they will not struggle much when it comes to retaining, engaging, and getting satisfied at work. 

They will only look for the firm where they think they can fit and work seamlessly to sharpen their skills. Thus, retaining for a specific period and encouraging others around them will not really be an issue. 

Fuels faster and purpose exchange of knowledge. 

The ones who are intellectual, avid readers, learners, and those who love to experiment, often love to teach others. That means when you hire people with exceptional transferable skills, they make sure to be the best team members. 

It’s their innate nature. They love to spread positive, progressive, and purposeful knowledge. That means everyone in their team or in their connection in the organisation will learn one thing or another. 

These people can be the best teammates when one is learning a new course through an eLMS platform. We already offer one that allows teams to learn a course together, with more customisations on demand. 

Easier to identify the future leaders of the organisation.

When recruiters have to hire for critical roles and positions, they can seek EQ knowledge. They also check the projects someone has led with fruitful results. 

So, a person with sharp vision, insights, self-drive, inner motivation, purpose in life, goals to achieve for themselves and society, a good heart, and a clear mind often are the best candidates to be future leaders. 

They know that they have to lead a team to bring change in society or the world. They will most probably be community members, leaders, and managers. 

Administrating a community helps them understand the nuances of leading a bigger team with diverse people. 

Conclusion

I hope from this blog copy, you now understand in great detail about the top transferable skills. You also got to know why recruiters hire for transferable skills in 2024 and beyond. The era is now of AI dominance and partnership in every other corporate function, including human resources. 

People with future-ready, digital-first, and tech-savvy skills will always have the upper hand. So, that requires people to be humble, empathetic, visionary, and be a go-getter. Such are the transferable skills that are hard to train but easy to spot in exceptional candidates. 

If you are following the same line of thought and want to make your life easier while managing A-class talent, implement uKnowva. It’s the future-forward and people-first HRMS suite to ensure that you develop your talent’s career paths with clarity, automation, seamless integrations and sorted budgets. 

Contact us here to book a free demo with our team.

FAQs on Need to Hire for Transferable Skills 

• How can I assess transferable skills during the hiring process?

Use behavioural interview questions that focus on past experiences and ask candidates to demonstrate how they applied their skills in different situations. Additionally, consider skills assessments and scenario-based exercises.

• Should I prioritise industry-specific experience over transferable skills?

While industry-specific experience is valuable, prioritising transferable skills allows you to consider candidates from diverse backgrounds who can bring a fresh perspective and quickly adapt to your organisation's specific needs.

• What if a candidate lacks some technical skills but possesses strong transferable skills?

Technical skills can often be taught, but transferable skills are fundamental to a candidate's overall effectiveness. Prioritising candidates with strong transferable skills provides a foundation for success, and technical gaps can be addressed through training.

• How can I ensure that my team collaborates effectively when hiring for transferable skills?

Foster a culture that values diversity and encourages open communication. Provide team-building opportunities and training to enhance collaboration, ensuring that the transferable skills of each team member complement one another.

• Can transferable skills be developed and improved over time?

Yes, transferable skills can be developed through training, experience, and intentional effort. Look for candidates who demonstrate a commitment to continuous learning and improvement.

• Are transferable skills more crucial in certain industries or roles?

Transferable skills are valuable across all industries and roles. However, they may be particularly crucial in fast-paced or evolving environments where employees need to adapt quickly to new challenges.

• How do I communicate to candidates that transferable skills are a priority for our organisation?

Clearly highlight in job descriptions that you value transferable skills and encourage candidates to showcase relevant experiences in their applications. During interviews, discuss the importance of these skills and their application in various contexts.

• Can I use assessments to measure transferable skills accurately?

While assessments can provide insights, it's important to combine them with other evaluation methods. Use a holistic approach, including interviews, reference checks, and real-world scenarios, to get a comprehensive understanding of a candidate's transferable skills.