The Transferable Skills Trap - Jobseeker Basics III

Greg Wyatt • October 21, 2025

The following is Chapter 4 in A Career Breakdown Kit, my guide for improving your odds in a VUCA jobs market.


Fundamentally it's a chapter about selling yourself, and moving from features to benefits to how it matters.


Similar to the advice I give to employers in how and why they should move from generic copy+paste job adverts to specific, representative content that shows context and has meaning.


The same generic adverts you tailor your CV towards (a chapter for another time).


Put it this way -


Do you buy Pizza because it contains flour, yeast, dough, salt and water?

Do you buy it for the toppings?

Or do you buy it because of the way it makes you feel as a regular buyer or someone attracted to its packaging?


My favourite pizza has a bite, a sizzle, the richness juiciness of its sauce and how it combines with the stretchy delight of mozzarella. Oh, and that spicy kick from the Jalapenos!


Transferable skills are your dough - the basic ingredients - important in the right place, but must be defined in the right way to have meaning for your ideal readers.


Chapter 4 - The transferable skills trap


Maybe your top ten looks like this:


  • Strategic Thinking
  • Leadership
  • Communication
  • Problem-Solving
  • Decision-Making
  • Organisation
  • Analytical Skills
  • Project Management
  • Change Management
  • Relationship Building


If you’re a COO, that is.


If you’re in a different field, your list may look a little different - why not ask a large language model? Gemini came up with the one above.


I expect the results would be similar for an HR Director, with a little people strategy, employee relations and EVP development thrown in for good measure.


Here’s the rub - if these skills are in your top 10 list of transferable skills, they are likely in the top 10 list of your competition’s transferable skills.


And if everyone has the same skills, none of these skills stand out.


If transferable skills are your unique selling point… how are they unique?


The problem doubles down.


If, in our days of generic advertising, a company is looking for a COO or an HR Director, their essential required skills can often include these transferable skills.


Can you communicate at all levels with strategic thinking, fostering an innovative culture?


Me too!


We all ‘know’ that a customised CV is the way to go. (Is it though? Check out Part Three for my answers.)


What exactly are you customising against, if your custom skills are the same as every other applicant who applies to this advert?


This is the transferable skills trap.


Skills that in real life serve you well and are valuable in any context. Yet skills that are common enough they work against you, when you declare them your strength.


What can we do?


Move from transferable to applicable.


Applicable skills are precisely the same skills as transferable skills, with two differences:


  • Direction
  • Definition


The direction of any applicable skills is that of the employer.


How does your skill apply in their domain?


The definition of any applicable skill is the context in which you have applied them successfully. This can be synonymous skills, tools, processes, software, etc.


If the direction and definition don’t reflect each other, you may not be an ideal candidate.


Should you even apply?


And if they do reflect each other, the onus is on you to show explicitly how your skills work in the employer’s context.


In an ideal world employer hiring processes are skilled and knowledgeable.


In practice, you should assume the weakest link in their hiring process is the gatekeeper - an administrator, a recruiter, an HR assistant.

Maybe they’re lazy, maybe incompetent, maybe swamped, maybe inexperienced.


It doesn’t matter - a weak part of a hiring process doesn’t necessarily mean employment is unsuitable but can prevent you from being considered.


Help us do our jobs by showing how your skills apply, and we may see you as a suitable candidate.


With the benefit that this helps skilled recruiters too.


What is context?


This is the relevant background that adds sufficient substance to an assertion.


So, you’re a COO?


Are you a COO within a £2m bootstrapped start-up that’s achieving profitability?


Do you work in a multinational charity streamlining your operations to save money?


Or are you a safe pair of hands to keep the ship steady in your £30m family-owned manufacturing company with 120 employees?


These three COOs may well have the same transferable skills, and might each be brilliant, but their contexts are more important than their job title in assessing suitability.


Going further.


The ugly brother of transferable skills is responsibilities and experience.


In the same way adverts copy-paste job descriptions, how many CVs do the same under each job title in a CV?


There may be hundreds of applications each sharing the same explanations.


Fortunately, you can apply direction and definition here too, by showing impact, by showing your achievements (with numbers and context), and by showing how you can help.


These principles help you move from being a <job title> with a dry set of responsibilities and experiences.

To someone who shows how they can help, how you can solve problems, and how you can heal the pain of the people who might employ you.


It’s the same as moving from features to benefits in sales.


Features are what you do. Benefits are how the customer’s life is improved.


Transferable skills are highly valuable to your next employer. You should be proud of them.


Unless they are specific and relevant to the roles you apply for, they can get in your way.


If you can gain insight into what your potential employer needs, and show how you may solve their problems, your odds will improve.


The frustrating caveat to this is that sometimes you are only given a generic advert to try and glean this from.


If you can’t gain insight, is there any point in showing applicability by tailoring?


Apart from using their terminology (such as if they say Continuous Improvement, and you’re a Six Sigma Black Belt), my answer is no.

Instead, default to a good enough CV. One which plays to your strengths by showing how your skills apply through tools, process, context and achievements.


Apply with what you have, follow their instructions and diarise a follow-up. Then move on.


Treat transactional generic adverts transactionally and worry more about the ones that speak to you personally.


Don’t rely on transferable skills in the hope that others will see how they apply.


Help us do our jobs and see you as a great candidate by showing how your skills apply.


This won’t guarantee interviews. It will improve your odds.


Showing applicability is a strong gain for every aspect of your job search.

Jump the shark. A Recruitment AiDE, pt 13

By Greg Wyatt • January 29, 2026
May 2023 You’ve heard the phrase, I take it – “jump the shark”? It’s the moment when one surprising or absurd experience can indicate a rapid descent into rubbishness and obscurity. When it’s time to get off the bus. Typically in media. Jumping the Shark comes from an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz does a water ski jump over a shark. 👈 Aaaaay. 👉 A sign creators have run out of ideas, or can’t be bothered to come up with fresh ones. In movies, sequelitis is a good example of this – an unnecessary sequel done to make some cash, in the hope the audience doesn’t care about its quality. Sometimes they become dead horses to flog, such as the missteps that are any Terminator film after 2. It’s an issue that can lead to consumers abandoning what they were doing, with such a precipitous drop in engagement that the thing itself is then cancelled. Partly because of breaking trust in what was expected to happen next. And because it’s a sign that the disbelief that was temporarily suspended has come crashing down. If you don’t believe that your current poor experience will lead to further, better experiences, why would you bother? Once you’ve had your fingers burnt, how hard is it to find that trust in similar experiences? It doesn’t have to be a single vein of experience for all to be affected. Watch one dodgy superhero movie and how does it whet your appetite for the next? You didn’t see The Eternals? Lucky you. Or how about that time we had really bad service at Café Rouge, a sign of new management that didn’t care, and we never went again? Just me? Did they sauter par-dessus le requin? Here’s the rub – it matters less that these experiences have jumped the shark. It matters more what the experience means for expectation. So it is in candidate experience. It’s not just the experience you provide that tempers expectations – it’s the cumulated experience of other processes that creates an assumption of what might be expected of yours. If you’re starting from a low trust point, what will it take for your process to ‘jump the shark’ and lose, not just an engaged audience, but those brilliant candidates that might only have considered talking to you if their experience hadn’t been off-putting? Not fair, is it, that the experience provided by other poor recruitment processes might affect what people expect of yours? Their experiences aren’t in your control, the experience you provide is. Of my 700 or so calls with exec job seekers, since The Pandemic: Lockdown Pt 1, many described the candidate experience touchpoints that led to them deciding not to proceed with an application. These were calls that were purely about job search strategy, and not people I could place. However, one benefit for me is that they are the Gemba , and I get to hear their direct experiences outside of my recruitment processes. Experiences such as - ‘£Competitive salary’ in an advert or DM, which they know full well means a lowball offer every time, because it happened to them once or twice, or perhaps it was just a LinkedIn post they read. Maybe it isn’t your problem at all, maybe your £competitive is upper 1% - how does their experience inform their assumptions? Or when adverts lend ambiguity to generic words, what meaning do they find, no matter how far from the truth? How the arrogance of a one-sided interview process affects their interest. The apparent narcissism in many outreaches in recruitment (unamazing, isn’t it, that bad outreach can close doors, rather than open them). Those ATS ‘duplicate your CV’ data entry beasts? Fool me once… Instances that are the catalysts for them withdrawing. I’d find myself telling them to look past these experiences, because a poor process can hide a good job. It’s a common theme in my jobseeker posts, such as a recent one offering a counterpoint to the virality that is “COVER LETTERS DON’T M4TT£R agree?” Experiences that may not be meant by the employer, or even thought of as necessarily bad, yet are drivers for decisions and behaviour. I can only appeal to these job seekers through my posts and calls. What about those other jobseekers who I’m not aware of, who’ve only experienced nonsense advice? What about those people who aren’t jobseekers? What about those people who think they love their roles? What about all those great candidates who won’t put up with bad experiences? The more sceptical they are, and the further they are from the need for a new role, the less bullshit they’ll put up with. What happens when an otherwise acceptable process presents something unpalatable? Might this jumping the shark mean they go no further? Every time the experience you provide doesn’t put their needs front and centre or if it’s correlated to their bad experiences…. these can prevent otherwise willing candidates from progressing with your process, whether that’s an advert they don’t apply to, a job they don’t start, or everything in between. Decisions that may stem from false assumptions of what a bad experience will mean. Instead, look to these ‘bad experience’ touchpoints as opportunities to do better: instead of £competitive, either state a salary or a legitimate reason why you can’t disclose salary (e.g. “see below” if limited by a job board field and “we negotiate a fair salary based on the contribution of the successful candidate, and don’t want to limit compensation by a band”) instead of a 1-way interrogation… an interview instead of radio silence when there’s no news - an update to say there’s no update, and ‘How are things with you by the way?’ instead of Apply Now via our Applicant Torture Sadistificator, ‘drop me a line if you have any questions’ or ‘don’t worry if you don’t have an updated CV - we’ll sort that later’. Opportunity from adversity. And why you can look at bad experiences other processes provide as a chance to do better. With the benefit that, if you eliminate poor experience, you'll lose fewer candidates unnecessarily, including those ideal ones you never knew about. Bad experiences are the yin to good experience’s yang and both are key parts of the E that is Experience in the AIDE framework. The good is for next time. Thanks for reading.  Regards, Greg

How To Network For A Job - Jobseeker Basics XIV

By Greg Wyatt • January 26, 2026
The following is Chapter 42 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . In a sense it's a microcosm of how any commercial activity can see a better return - which is to put the needs of the person you are appealing to above your own. It feels counterintuitive, especially when you have a burning need, but you can see the problem of NOT doing this simply by looking at 99% of job adverts: We are. We need. We want. What you'll do for us. What you might get in return. Capped off by the classic "don't call us, we'll call you." If you didn't need a job, how would you respond to that kind of advert? In the same vein, if you want networking to pay off, how will your contact's life improve by your contact? What's in it for them? 42 - How to network for a job Who are the two types of people you remember at networking events? For me two types stand out. One will be the instant pitch networker. This might work if you happen to be in need right now of what they have to offer or if mutual selling is your goal. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this but it’s a selling activity pretending to be networking. If you want to sell, go and overtly sell rather than disguise it with subterfuge. Lest we mark your face and avoid you where possible in future. The second is the one who gets to know you, shows interest and tries to add to your experience. You share ideas, and there’s no push to buy something. They believe that through building the relationship when you have a problem they can solve, you’ll think to go to them. It’s a relationship built on reciprocity. One where if you always build something together there is reason to keep in touch. And where the outcome is what you need if the right elements come together: right person, right time, right message, right place, right offering, right price. Job search networking is no different. The purpose of networking in a job search is to build a network where you are seen as a go-to solution should a suitable problem come up. In this case the problem you solve is a vacancy. Either because your active network is recruiting, or because they advocate for you when someone they know is recruiting. It is always a two-way conversation you both benefit from. Knowledge sharing, sounding board, see how you’re doing - because of what the relationship brings to you both. It is not contacting someone only to ask for a job or a recommendation. A one-way conversation that relies on lucky timing. That second approach can be effective as a type of direct sales rather than networking. If you get it wrong it may even work against you. How would you feel if someone asked to network with you, when it became clear they want you to do something for them? You might get lucky and network with someone who is recruiting now - more likely is that you nurture that relationship over time. If your goal is only to ask for help each networking opportunity will have a low chance of success. While if your goal is to nurture a relationship that may produce a lead, you’ll only have constructive outcomes. This makes it sensible to start by building a network with people that already know you: Former direct colleagues and company colleagues Industry leaders and peers Recruiters you have employed or applied through Don’t forget the friends you aren’t in regular touch with - there is no shame in being out of work and it would be a shame if they didn’t think of you when aware of a suitable opening. These people are a priority because they know you, your capability and your approach and trust has already been built. Whereas networking with people you don't know requires helping them come to know and trust you. Networking with people you know is the most overlooked tactic by the exec job seekers I talk to (followed by personal branding). These are the same people who see the hidden jobs market as where their next role is, yet overlook what’s in front of them. If you are looking for a new role on the quiet - networking is a go-to approach that invites proactive contact to you. Networking with people who know people you know, then people in a similar domain, then people outside of this domain - these are in decreasing order of priority. Let's not forget the other type of networking. Talking to fellow job seekers is a great way to share your pain, take a load off your shoulders, bounce ideas off each other, and hold each other accountable. LinkedIn is the perfect platform to find the right people if you haven't kept in touch directly. Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a conduit to conversation. It isn’t the conversation itself. Speaking in real life is where networking shines because while you might build a facsimile of a relationship in text, it's no replacement for a fluid conversation. Whether by phone and video calls, real life meetups, business events, seminars, conferences, expos, or in my case - on dog walks and waiting outside of the school gates. Both these last two have led to friends and business for me though the latter hasn’t been available since 2021. Networking isn’t 'What can I get out of it?' Instead, ‘What’s in it for them?’ The difference is the same as those ransom list job adverts compared to the rare one that speaks to you personally. How can you build on this relationship by keeping in touch? Networking is systematic, periodic and iterative: Map out your real life career network. Revisit anyone you’ve ever worked with and where Find them on LinkedIn Get in touch ‘I was thinking about our time at xxx. Perhaps we could reconnect - would be great to catch up’ If they don’t reply, because life can be busy, diarise a follow up What could be of interest to them? A LinkedIn post might be a reason to catch up When you look up your contact’s profile look at the companies they’ve worked at. They worked there for a reason, which may be because of a common capability to you Research these companies. Are there people in relevant roles worth introducing yourself to? Maybe the company looks a fit with your aspirations - worth getting in touch with someone who may be a hiring manager or relevant recruiter? Maybe they aren’t recruiting now. Someone to keep in touch with because of mutual interests. Click on Job on their company page, then "I'm interested" - this helps for many reasons, including flagging your interest as a potential employee Keep iterating your network and find new companies as you look at new contacts. This is one way we map the market in recruitment to headhunt candidates - you can mirror this with your networking The more proactive networking you build into your job search, the luckier you might get. While you might need to nurture a sizeable network and there are no guarantees, think about the other virtues of networking - how does that compare to endless unreplied applications? I often hear from job seekers who found their next role through networking. This includes those who got the job because of their network even though hundreds of applicants were vying for it. While this may be unfair on the applicants sometimes you can make unfair work for you. It can be effective at any level.