Just how relevant are transferable skills?
February 20, 2008 by Gary Schlee
Megan Ramsay, a Centennial postgrad PR student, asks the following question in a recent blog posting: Will being a waitress help my career in public relations? She goes on to demonstrate how many of the skills and demands in her job serving food at a Toronto East Side Mario’s have helped prepare her for the PR world.
Students in our Career Management class often want to know the value in shovelling unrelated experience onto their resumes. They’ve served food and beer, sold clothing, taught English as a second language or coached minor sports. Include it? Or leave it out?
Not surprisingly, the answer is decidedly mixed. Some communication managers tell them to skip it. Others indicate it demonstrates the ability to multi-task, or handle a client’s needs, or manage a team or … you get the idea.
Ultimately, the right decision probably comes down to running each unrelated job through a checklist that doesn’t focus on duties but on transferable skills and accomplishments. Communicators are in the business of measuring their results (at least, they should be), so finding ways to express transferable skills in these terms adds to the argument of including unrelated jobs with relevant outcomes. For example, to what degree did the student’s initiative on the sales floor have an impact on improved sales?
Personally, I think well expressed transferable skills would carry more weight on a resume than generic cliche-ridden objective statements or lists of attributes without supporting examples. But, as it turns out, I’m not hiring anyone at the moment.
So, what do you think? Include the unrelated jobs or leave them out? Megan makes a good case for inclusion. Waitressing probably is helping her PR career — but it also made her too tired to make my morning class today 
I’ll be the contrarian right off the top since I am sure many will say that all experiences can feed your professional qualifications.
I have hired many people for positions in corporate communications (mostly in an agency environment), and frankly am not usually impressed with a candidate’s 20-something jobs taken while they made up their minds about their career direction.
From my perspective, three things stand out in a resume and cover letter beyond specific experience or training . . . a commitment to learning usually through formal education (but I also like people who read books), engagement with political or social issues which evidences an understanding that the “self” and “self fulfillment” are insufficient qualifications for a public affairs or public relations professional who must help the C-suite navigate social minefields, and today an understanding of the potential uses of social media in enhancing or defending corporate reputation.
When it comes to your first job, the qualities that separate you from everyone else in your position are likely to be razor thin - if even the tiniest thing can set you ahead of the pack, you’re better off trying than omitting it.
Mind you, it does have to be something that will set you even that little bit ahead - at that point, it becomes more about tailoring cover letters and resumes for each and every job you apply for (if you don’t do it, somebody else is) and learning how to reinterpret your experiences as being suitable for that particular position.
But you’ve got to be targeted: You need an anecdote about a time where you actually applied a principle of public relations to avoid what could have been a tangible, actual fiasco. You can’t just rely on broad, theoretical parallel between crisis communications and calming down drunk people in a bar. By its very nature, public relations could be said to have a broad, theoretical relationship to almost anything that involves more than one person. Etiquette is not publicity.
Also, I would roll with the subject matter of the work rather than the work itself. If you’ve worked as a waitress since high school, you should be able to waltz into an entry-level P.R job with a national restaurant chain, or a food service provider. If you can go into an interview and demonstrate an experiential familiarity with the product or business of that organization, you will be way, way ahead of some other fresh grad who spent their formative years doing something else.
It really is all about those small, competitive margins over other candidates. New grads shouldn’t look at themselves objectively as communicators - they should look at themselves as compared to their relatively equivalent peers.
Then you find an edge, and go.
Like Megan, I am also a server in a restaurant, and over the years I have gained some valuable skills that I believe are transferable to a job in PR. As a student, I don’t have that much PR experience, except for what I’ve learned in class, events and my client project. It seems that there are so many people out there, even my colleagues, that have more experience than I do. But, we all have to start somewhere, and without a lot of PR experience how would I get a job in PR?
I think that what Megan said is true and that our skills can definitely be applied to a communications setting. Communicating is practically our job! We have experience in a high-paced environment while multi-tasking by serving several tables at a time. Sometimes these tables all want different things and can be very demanding. But it is our job to satisfy them and give them whatever they want, because after all, the customer is always right.
I hope that if an employer sees these skills that they would see how they can be applied to a PR setting. Over the past six years I have only worked in a restaurant so other than my school courses, I don’t have any professional PR experience. But I do feel that everything I have learned is valuable and can be applied to real-world situations. I just hope other people will see the same
I was just blogging about this yesterday. I believe that any work experience a student gets during college is valuable. But I recommend not trying to relate being a server in a restaurant to serious PR skills. True, being able to deal with people is important, but it is a stretch to say that waitressing is pure PR.
What is important about your undergrad jobs is that you had jobs — by that I mean you prove to potential employers that you are willing to get your hands dirty and work long hours while you study for a career. I have hired many people in my corporate communication management career, and I was always impressed with students who worked during college. It shows potential employers that you know how to earn a paycheck. Instead of teaching your pet lab to catch frisbees, you went to classes, studied, and worked at a job, no matter how simple the job might be. That is what impresses potential emploers — good old fashioned work ethic.
If you can claim some success or achievement on the job, then that helps, too. For example, if you had worked your way up from a server to one who trains servers or to night restaurant manager, etc. Claim it, for it shows responsibility.
In summary, I believe all your work experience is valuable. It tells potential employers something about you. Chances are, the person interviewing you has much the same background and can relate to you. That makes a good impression.
I think it’s important that an individual’s personality, talents and points of differentiation stand out in a resume. That’s your story.
And I believe you should tell the best story you can (briefly, clearly and with a show of passion or flair).
Yes, education is important, as are writing skills, organization, judgement, a generalist’s hunger for knowlege about the world and a love and understanding of media (MSM and social).
Like Gary, a list of bland generic qualities doesn’t do much for me. I want to see that a person is hard-working and resourceful. And nothing says that more quickly than a reasonable tenure in food service or retail.
Boyd, Will, Ashley, Les & Martin:
Thanks so much for weighing in on this one. There are no absolute right answers to crafting information targeted to employers. The best bet: find a relevant way to include the previous labour, but don’t belabour.
This is also a question that I asked myself when I was crafting my resume. I have worked in retail, restaurants and other minimum wage jobs that have nothing to do with Public Relations.
I think many employers like to see the variety of experiences that we’ve had and others just want us to cut to the chase. It is all just personal preference. So how do we try to cater to both?
I made the decision to separate my work experience under two headings in my resume: Public Relations Experience and Other Work Experience. I have done this for two reasons.
Firstly, if the potential employer only cares to see the experience that I have in Public Relations, they only need to read under the first heading. Also, I want my potential employer to be aware that, while a job in customer service or hospitality has helped me to gain valuable skills, I am not trying to equate these skills with practical PR skills. Like Will said, I wouldn’t want to parallel crisis communications with dealing with a bar fight.
Maggie, I like the fact that your parsing of experience on your resume is driven by what you feel the employer is looking for, rather than just what it is you want to tell them.
Personally, I feel that any job experience which relates to the job which one is applying for should be left on a resume. For example, if you are applying for a job which requires working directly, and often, with people, then the job waiting tables in college would be relevant. Any job can be used to show skills you have mastered which can make you a more qualified candidate for a job. Obviously if there is a job which you held which has no relation to the one which you are applying for, then it should be left off of your resume.
I think as long as you can show, in a substantial way, that every job listed on your resume has helped provide you with skills which you can use in your potential job is just another way to stand out from the crowd!
Thanks, Gabby. Your comments reinforce why it’s important that a resume never look the same way twice. Every job application suggests a need to tweek the resume. Things come out. Things go in. Priorities are shuffled.