4 Courses to Help You Identify and Strengthen Hidden Skills

Spotting transferable skills — strengths and talents you can apply to roles on a new career path — is tricky for individuals and talent leaders alike. But as organizations continue to face skills shortages and retention woes, it’s more important than ever to uncover and develop these potentially hidden skills in yourself and others.

According to LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report, 93% of organizations are concerned about retaining their employees, and the No. 1 way they’re working to improve retention is by providing learning opportunities. It’s the right move, since employees cite “progress toward career goals” as their top motivation to learn. When you connect skill-building to internal mobility options and career growth, you’re not only giving employees a reason to engage, but you’re also expanding your workforce’s future-ready skills.

Whether you’re looking for your next career move or helping your organization navigate a challenging talent market, these four courses will help you develop transferable skills for yourself and provide continuous upskilling and reskilling opportunities for your employees.

1.  Upskilling and Reskilling Your Workforce with Lori Niles-Hofmann 

LinkedIn data shows that skill sets for jobs have changed by around 25% since 2015, and will double by 2027. As skills become the primary currency for employment, organizations are looking to HR leaders to help employees stay agile so they can meet today’s challenges and be better prepared for the future of work.

That’s a tall order, and one Lori Niles-Hofmann, senior educational technology transformation strategist at NilesNolen, helps you navigate with this brand new course. 

What you’ll learn: Use Lori’s data-based methodologies and frameworks to learn how to start a comprehensive skilling program and how to calculate your upskilling investment. As someone who’s passionate about helping companies thrive in the face of change, Lori explains how to successfully upskill and reskill your teams in a workplace increasingly defined by transferable skills. Her goal? To help you move from a business support function to a strategic business driver.

Sneak peek: Want to know the secret to building an upskilling program? Put on your sales hat to get stakeholder buy-in. Without that, Lori says, it will be difficult to execute because people typically underestimate the time, cost, and effort required to build skills. Leverage Lori’s guidance to set expectations with the C-suite stakeholders and connect your upskilling strategy with business outcomes — and you’ll get the allies you need for a successful long-term investment.

2. Considering Transferable Skills in Talent Acquisition and Retention with Don Phin

As an individual contributor, you want to build transferable skills so you can take advantage of new career opportunities. As a talent leader, it’s important to recognize others’ transferable skills even if they’ve yet to see them on their own. In this course, leadership trainer Don Phin helps you utilize transferable skills from both perspectives — as an employee and an employer. 

What you’ll learn: Learn how to identify, assess, and improve transferable skills for yourself, your teams, and potential employees. When you can fully identify the value of transferable hard and soft skills, Don says, you’ll make your company a place where employees choose to stay. 

Sneak peek: Struggling to pinpoint an employee’s (or your own) most valuable soft skill? Zoom out and observe. Do they help onboard new team members? Do they talk to vendors to ensure accurate, on-time deliveries? Do they provide updates to management or clients? Compiling what Don calls a “bank of behaviors” makes it easier to identify soft skills needed in other departments or roles — a growing need as companies ramp internal mobility efforts.

3.  Recruiting Techniques to Reveal Transferable Skills with Barbara Bruno

Focusing on transferable skills can create a larger pool of candidates and give you an edge over competitors, but how do you put skills-first hiring into practice? Barbara Bruno, CEO of Good as Gold Training and president of H & R Search, has the secret sauce. In this course, she explains how to go beyond a candidate’s previous titles or professional experience to understand the skills that will transfer to roles you need to fill. 

What you’ll learn: Learn the steps you need to take to better understand, identify, and hire candidates who have transferable skills so they can thrive and succeed in their role. This includes simple changes you can implement right away, like adopting new interview techniques, modifying your job requisitions, and getting buy-in from hiring managers on which transferable skills they are looking for. 

Sneak peek: Want to know where you can tweak the hiring process to land people who will become engaged and loyal employees? Start with the five areas where the majority of companies waste the most time, energy, and money, Barbara says. Here’s one: performance objectives. Everyone — hiring manager, recruiter, and prospective hire — should be clear from the start about how that hire will be evaluated over time.

4.  Leveraging Transferable Skills to Drive Your Career with Jodi Glickman

“Don’t talk yourself out of applying for a job opportunity because you don’t meet the minimum requirements or have relevant experience,” says Jodi Glickman, CEO and founder of corporate training firm Great On The Job. “Instead, figure out what transferable skills you do have to land the job you want.”

Jodi uses real-world examples from her own life as well as from the experiences of others — like how an architect became a brand marketer — to help you become more marketable and competitive for career paths that might have previously felt out of reach. 

What you’ll learn: You have transferable skills. Everyone does. But most of us are prone to devaluing or not even recognizing those skills, Jodi says. She explains how to hone in on your strengths and talents, connect them to job openings, and sell your transferable skills with confidence, whether you’re going after a brand-new job or considering an internal move at your company. 

Sneak peek: If you’re not sure what transferable skills you have, ask yourself this question: What do other people (your friends, family, peers, colleagues) come to you for advice, feedback, and guidance on? That input tells you what others value and points to strengths you can convert to in-demand skills and, ultimately, to new career opportunities.

Final thoughts: Build skills agility  

As Don Phin says in his course: “Your greatest asset in this dynamic world of work is your ability to recast your current skill sets as transferable across a wide range of jobs and careers.” 

This, he says, is how individuals build resilience to deal with change. It’s also how organizations stay agile. 

While large-scale upskilling and reskilling programs take time, leaders can take steps now to open up new paths for more people and ready the organization to move fast on valuable opportunities.