Mid-Late Career Shifts: Accenting What You Know

Again, this article is aimed at how we as economic and workforce developers help folks in the mid-late career shift arena. This is an important issue. We seem to be obsessed with retaining and attracting young talent in communities. I find that not enough attention is being given to the mid-later career shifter.

Career strategists give a lot of attention to identifying the skills that people possess. For the late career shifter, he or she has a mountain of skills to draw upon. The first step in identifying them. Then finding the right new career opportunity in which to apply them. Let's look at the starting question: What Are Transferable Skills?

Career expert Richard Nelson Bolles pioneered the idea of transferable skills in his perennial best-seller What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. According to Bolles, we are all born with skills we take from job to job. These transferable skills can be broken down into three categories: people (communicating, teaching, coaching and supervising), data (record keeping, researching, translating and compiling data), and things (operating computers/equipment, assembling and repairing).

If you take the time to identify your transferable skills, you can convince employers that you have the core skills necessary to excel in your new career choice.

Read more here at Monster.com.