Free tool
Find your transferable skills
Transferable skills are the things you do well now that another employer would also pay for. Pick your current job below to see the skills that usually carry over, CV lines you can copy and adapt, and the jobs that use the same skills, with ONS pay for each.
Updated
Not listed? Paste your CV instead and we will pick out your skills from it.
Skills you can take with you
CV-ready lines for a secondary school teacher. Replace the words in square brackets with your own details.
Training Delivery
Planned and delivered [number] lessons a week to groups of up to [number], adapting material for different abilities.
Curriculum Design
Wrote and updated schemes of work and resources for [subject] at [key stages].
Assessment
Designed assessments and used the results to track progress and target support.
Verbal Communication
Explained complex ideas clearly to mixed audiences every day, including parents and colleagues.
Data Analysis
Analysed attainment data for [number] students to spot gaps and plan interventions.
Stakeholder Management
Worked with parents, support staff and outside agencies to agree plans for individual students.
Safeguarding
Trained in safeguarding; identified and reported concerns in line with school procedures.
Time Management
Managed marking, planning and reporting deadlines alongside a full teaching timetable.
ONS median full-time pay for this job group: £47,632 a year (2025).
Jobs that use the same skills
From our list of career-change destinations, ranked by the skills they share with this job, with more weight for skills that are central to both and less for skills almost every job needs.
Learning and development adviser
£36,357 median
Median for the ONS group “Other vocational and industrial trainers”
Shared skills: Training Delivery, Curriculum Design, Verbal Communication, Assessment, Stakeholder Management
Way in: Learning and development practitioner apprenticeship, level 3, typically 18 months
Learning and development manager
£57,529 median
Median for the ONS group “Human resource managers and directors”
Shared skills: Training Delivery, Curriculum Design, Stakeholder Management
Way in: No apprenticeship below degree level in our data
E-learning developer
£56,914 median
Median for the ONS group “Programmers and software development professionals”
Shared skills: Curriculum Design, Training Delivery, Assessment
Way in: Digital learning designer apprenticeship, level 5, typically 24 months
Further education lecturer
£42,218 median
Median for the ONS group “Further education teaching professionals”
Shared skills: Assessment, Curriculum Design, Verbal Communication
Way in: Learning and skills teacher apprenticeship, level 5, typically 18 months
Training assessor
£36,357 median
Median for the ONS group “Other vocational and industrial trainers”
Shared skills: Assessment, Training Delivery
Way in: Learning and skills assessor apprenticeship, level 3, typically 12 months
Source: ONS, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (provisional), Table 14.7a, published . Median gross annual pay for full-time employee jobs, UK, 2025, for each job's SOC 2020 group.
The skills listed for each job, and the CV lines, are our own judgement of what the job usually involves, not official data. Destinations come from our list of 159 career-change occupations, each mapped to its ONS occupation group.
What are transferable skills?
A transferable skill is anything you have learned to do in one job that is useful in a different one. Some are general, such as explaining things clearly, organising your time or managing people. Others are more specialist but still travel: a nurse's careful clinical record keeping is central to clinical research, and a police officer's report writing and case handling are part of fraud investigation.
They matter most when you change career. A new employer will not expect you to know their field yet, but they will want evidence that you already do part of the job. Your transferable skills are that evidence, as long as you describe them in the new employer's terms.
Examples of transferable skills
| Skill area | What it looks like | Jobs that often build it |
|---|---|---|
| Communication | Explaining things clearly, writing reports, presenting, listening, handling difficult conversations | Teaching, customer service, nursing, policing |
| Organisation | Planning work, managing deadlines, scheduling, keeping accurate records | Administration, care work, logistics, the armed forces |
| Leading people | Managing rotas, training new starters, running one-to-ones, dealing with performance | Retail and hospitality management, the armed forces, senior nursing |
| Working with numbers | Budgets, stock control, analysing results, reconciling accounts | Retail management, bookkeeping, teaching (assessment data), warehouse work |
| Handling pressure | Making decisions quickly, staying calm with upset people, managing risk | Policing, paramedic and nursing work, chefs, the armed forces |
| Rules and safety | Safeguarding, health and safety, data protection, following legislation | Social work, teaching, care, driving, hospitality |
How to put transferable skills on your CV
- Start from the job you want. Read three or four adverts for it and note the skills that come up every time.
- Match them to your experience. Use the tool above to find the skills you already have that appear in those adverts.
- Give each one evidence. A number, a result or a scale: how many people, how much money, how often, what changed.
- Translate the language. “Differentiated lessons for mixed-ability classes” becomes “adapted training for learners with different levels of experience”.
- Lead with them. Put the most relevant skills in a short profile at the top of your CV, not buried under your old job title.
Our guide to writing a CV for a career change goes through this step by step.
How this tool works
Each starting job has a short list of skills, rated for how central they are to that job. Each destination in our list of career-change occupations has its own rated skills. The tool ranks destinations by the skills they share with your current job, giving more weight to skills that are central to both. It does not use AI and it does not produce a match percentage, because a single number would suggest more precision than a list of skills can give. For an analysis of your own experience, paste your CV.
Common questions
What are transferable skills?
Transferable skills are abilities you build in one job that are useful in another: explaining things clearly, organising work, leading a team, handling data or staying calm under pressure. They are what let you change career without starting from nothing, because an employer in a new field can see you already do part of the job.
What are some examples of transferable skills?
Common examples are communication, organisation and time management, leading and training people, working with numbers and data, problem solving, handling complaints and conflict, and following rules such as safeguarding or health and safety. The tool on this page shows the ones that usually come with your current job, with CV wording for each.
What transferable skills do teachers have?
Teachers usually bring training delivery, curriculum design, assessment, verbal communication, data analysis. The jobs in our list that share the most of those skills include learning and development adviser, learning and development manager, e-learning developer.
How do I show transferable skills on my CV?
Put a short profile at the top that names the job you want and the skills you bring to it. Then, under each past job, lead with the parts that match the new role and give each one a result or a number: how many people, how much money, how often. Use the new field's words rather than your old job's jargon.