Transferring Skills to Flee Troubled Industries

When I moved to TheLadders in September 2008 (less than two weeks before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the deep freeze of the Great Recession), I wasn't just carving a space for original careers reporting where none had existed before. I was also taking a hiatus from the woes besetting the publishing industry in which I'd spent most of my professional life.

Coming into a company whose primary business was selling the connection of high-end job seekers to recruiters, not moving magazines, represented a major cultural shift -- and a great opportunity to apply my core skills to a whole different market.

I'm thinking about that move a lot this week as I prepare to give a keynote talk at the Career Circus hosted in New York by MediaBistro, the leading information source for the content industry. The theme of my talk will be "skills vs. experience": how (properly packaged) the skills you've acquired in one industry can offset your lack of experience in another.

Deciding to make the shift entails a sober assessment of the health of your current industry; after all, it's always easier to make a move within a vertical than to switch. And if you've decided that it is indeed time to test other waters, sealing the deal depends on a sober self-assessment of what skills you can move between industries.

In "Is Your Industry in Decline? Make It Work or Make a Move," Kevin Fogarty explored the characteristics of industries on the wane. Fogarty talked to Ron Dadina, who'd been a hedge-fund manager at Bear Stearns before the crash before losing his job, then making his way to an investment company that handles microfinance deals in emerging markets.

"I'm working in deals that are $5 million, not $200 million or $500 million, but I'm using the same skill set of knowing emerging markets and being able to take a deal from beginning to end," Dadina told Fogarty.

Roy Cohen, master career coach at the Five O'Clock Club in Manhattan and an executive career counselor for more than 25 years, concurred. "If you were an accountant in the auto industry in Detroit, there's a good chance you can be an accountant in Ames, Iowa, or in Los Angeles," Cohen said. "If you're an accountant in the auto industry, there's nothing to say you can't be one in a different industry."

Columnist Dan Coughlin defines "skills" as something you do with a high degree of competency and passion, and a "transferable skill" is one that can be taken from one type of job and applied successfully to another job. In "Transferable Skills and How to Sell Them," Coughlin offers the example of an X-ray technician who wants to move to the hospitality industry. His acumen evaluating X-ray scans may not be transferable, but the ability to solve complex technical challenges certainly is.

"Your job is to know your skills, hone your skills, showcase your skills, and charge for your skills -- in that order," Coughlin writes.