3 Exercises to Help Clients Identify Transferable Skills During Career Pivots
Career transitions can be challenging, but identifying transferable skills is key to success. This article presents expert-backed exercises designed to help clients navigate career pivots effectively. By focusing on aligning work with core values, developing meta-skills, and mapping skills to impact, professionals can confidently explore new career paths.
- Align Work with Core Values
- Develop Meta-Skills for Career Adaptability
- Map Skills to Impact for Career Transitions
Align Work with Core Values
Feeling "stuck" is a common professional challenge, often fueled by burnout and careers that no longer align with personal purpose. When combined with an unresponsive job search, many professionals feel the value of their expertise is diminishing, prompting them to consider a career pivot to realign their work with their core values.
Burnout often stems from a disconnect between work and core values, while imposter syndrome creates a paralyzing fear of not being qualified for a new role. Identifying transferable skills (i.e., competencies applicable across industries and areas of expertise) addresses both drivers by reinforcing that their existing experience has value in a new context, and by building confidence in the value that they bring to any role.
There are two main challenges clients face in identifying and articulating their transferable skills:
1. Direction - Making decisions based purely on emotion and not knowing the real reason why they are pivoting, nor where they want that pivot to take them.
2. Language and Translation - Using industry-specific jargon and failing to translate experiences into universal, transferable skills.
As a career coach, my role is to facilitate a shift in perspective so that clients can be their own compass and translator. At Viante Talent Solutions, we use a values-based approach, starting with two impactful exercises.
1. Career Values: This exercise builds a "career compass." Clients identify their top three non-negotiable values (e.g., Autonomy, Creativity). They then use these values as keywords to explore new roles on job boards and AI platforms, reframing the search from "what job can I get?" to "what makes me feel fulfilled?"
2. Accomplishment Translation: This exercise reframes past wins. A client describes a project they are proud of, while a coach translates their industry-specific narrative into a vocabulary of transferable skills. For example, "managing a difficult client, internal teams, and a tight budget" becomes "High-Stakes Stakeholder Management," "Cross-Functional Influence," and "Financial Acumen." The client then uses this new language to rewrite their resume, rebranding it in alignment with the desired pivot.
A career is a collection of experiences. By making values-driven decisions and learning to translate transferable skills, professionals can break free from the constraints of one industry and build a career that is both professionally rewarding and personally fulfilling.
Develop Meta-Skills for Career Adaptability
Unlocking Client Potential with Meta-Skills and Body Intelligence
When clients face a dramatic career pivot, I help them shift their focus from job-specific skills to their underlying meta-skills. Think of it like this: if their old job skills were apps, their meta-skills—like resilience and self-awareness—are their personal operating system. Developing this OS isn't a one-time fix; it's the essence of lifelong learning, a continuous practice of upgrading how we navigate our world. This "OS" is the most valuable and transferable asset a person has, allowing them to learn and thrive in any new role.
One exercise that helps clients connect with this deeper value is rooted in Body Intelligence. I have them pause, place one hand on their heart and the other on their belly, and simply ask, "What do I feel right now?" This 60-second practice moves them from intellectualizing their value to actually feeling their inner truth. This is where the KEYS to your relationships methodology I use—a framework of introspective questions and embodied exercises—acts as a bridge; it connects this deep self-discovery (their inner world) with the practical steps of identifying the new skills they need and how to consciously develop them. It helps them see that their value isn't just in what they've done, but is a living capacity they can actively shape for the future.
Map Skills to Impact for Career Transitions
The hardest part of a career pivot isn't learning new skills; it's recognizing the value of the ones you already have. Clients often underestimate how much of what they do every day is transferable. My role as a coach is to help them connect the dots between what they've done and where they want to go.
One exercise I use consistently is a "Skill-to-Impact Mapping Session." In this session, we list my client's top accomplishments in their current or past roles. For each one, we ask: What skills did this require? Who benefited? What measurable impact did it create? This simple reframing turns a resume from a list of jobs into a portfolio of transferable strengths - communication, leadership, project management, resilience - that matter across industries.
We also go further by analyzing job listings in their target field and reviewing the bios of professionals already in those roles. Together, we identify the in-demand skills, compare them to the client's current strengths, and then create a gap-bridging plan. This becomes the roadmap: what to highlight immediately, what to strengthen, and what new skills to build so they become a natural fit.
For example, I recently worked with a superintendent preparing to move into the private sector. At first, he couldn't see how his experience would translate. But when we mapped his achievements - leading multimillion-dollar budgets, managing crisis response teams, negotiating with boards - against executive job descriptions, the alignment was undeniable. Within months, he not only regained confidence but also secured interviews for senior-level positions he once thought were out of reach.
As a coach, it's deeply rewarding to witness those moments of clarity. Clients often walk away not just with a strategy for their next chapter, but with a new understanding of their professional identity, knowing what they are a fit for, and just as importantly, what they are not. That clarity helps them avoid detours and move forward with purpose. And once they see how their skills carry forward into new spaces, they gain a renewed sense of confidence, momentum, and agency over their own career journey.
The takeaway? Career pivots succeed not because people reinvent themselves from scratch, but because they reframe and reapply the strengths they already have, while intentionally building the skills that make their next chapter not only possible, but successful.
