The eight skills UK employers name when they hire young people, where you already use each one, and the real routes — T Levels, free courses, college, volunteering, apprenticeships and first jobs — that turn them into something you can prove.
Transferable skills are abilities that stay useful in any job — communication, teamwork, problem solving, organisation, digital skills, adaptability, leadership and customer awareness. Unlike technical skills they carry from school to a first job to a career. You build them through T Levels, free courses, college, volunteering, apprenticeships or part-time work, then evidence each one with a situation, action and result.
Last reviewed by the Shine careers team.
A technical skill belongs to one job: wiring a consumer unit, using a particular till system, writing Python. A transferable skill goes with you: it's just as useful in a warehouse as in a lab. Technical skills get taught to you on the job. Transferable skills are what employers expect you to arrive with — which is why an application that only lists grades so often loses to one that shows a Saturday job.
The UK's most widely used map of these is the Skills Builder Universal Framework, used by schools, colleges and employers from small businesses to national firms. The eight below follow that framework, with digital skills added because almost every entry-level UK role now assumes them.
Getting information across clearly, and actually taking in what someone else says before responding.
Where you already use it: Explaining a task to a younger sibling, presenting in class, taking a phone order, answering a customer.
How it looks on a CV: "Handled 40+ customer queries a shift at a café counter; trained two new starters on the till."
Working with people you didn't choose, doing your share, and keeping things moving when someone drops out.
Where you already use it: Sports teams, group coursework, a band, DofE expeditions, a busy Saturday shift.
How it looks on a CV: "Played in a Sunday league squad for two seasons — organised kit and cover when players dropped out."
Spotting what's actually gone wrong and finding a workable fix rather than waiting to be told.
Where you already use it: Fixing a broken bike, debugging a game mod, sorting a rota clash, handling a delivery that never arrived.
How it looks on a CV: "Rewrote the stockroom labelling so weekend staff could find sizes — cut restocking time noticeably."
Planning ahead, hitting deadlines and juggling more than one commitment without dropping either.
Where you already use it: Revising for nine GCSEs, holding down a Saturday job during term, running a club's social accounts.
How it looks on a CV: "Balanced a 12-hour weekend job with A level study; never missed a shift or a coursework deadline."
Confidence with the everyday tools of work: email, spreadsheets, shared documents, scheduling, basic data.
Where you already use it: Editing videos, building a spreadsheet for a team, running a group chat, making a presentation.
How it looks on a CV: "Built and maintained the team's fixture spreadsheet; edited and posted weekly highlight videos."
Coping when the plan changes, and not going to pieces on a bad day. The one managers mention most.
Where you already use it: Covering a shift at short notice, changing subjects, moving school, a season with more losses than wins.
How it looks on a CV: "Moved between three departments during the Christmas period at short notice."
Taking responsibility for something without being asked — for a task, not necessarily for people.
Where you already use it: Captaining a team, being a prefect or peer mentor, starting a club, organising a fundraiser.
How it looks on a CV: "Set up and ran the school's chess club — grew it from 4 to 25 members in one term."
Understanding that there's someone at the other end of the work, and what a good experience feels like to them.
Where you already use it: Any front-facing job, charity shop volunteering, coaching younger players, babysitting.
How it looks on a CV: "Volunteered on a charity shop till on Saturdays for a year — regular customers asked for me by name."
You can't build a transferable skill by reading about it. Each of these puts you in a situation where the skill is the only way through — pick one you can realistically keep up for a term.
The strongest single option if you're 16 in England. Every T Level includes an industry placement of at least 315 hours — around 45 days — with a real employer, so you leave with genuine workplace evidence rather than classroom claims.
Customer awareness, communication, adaptability, digital skills
Short, free UK courses you can finish in evenings — digital skills, customer service, first aid, food hygiene, coding. A certificate on its own proves little; a certificate plus a thing you built with it proves a lot.
Digital skills, problem solving, organisation
A Level 2 or Level 3 course keeps your options open while you decide. Group projects, deadlines and presentations are the skill-building parts — treat them as the point rather than the admin.
Teamwork, organisation, communication
The fastest way to get workplace evidence when nobody will hire you yet. A charity shop, a food bank, a sports club, a youth group — a few hours a week for a few months gives you a referee and a story.
Customer awareness, teamwork, staying positive
A paid job with training built in, from Level 2 straight after GCSEs up to degree level. You build every transferable skill at once, because you're doing the actual work from week one.
All eight, on the job
Saturday jobs, evenings and holiday work open to 16 and 17 year olds. Twelve weekend shifts is a real, provable body of experience — and it's the fastest route to a reference.
Customer awareness, reliability, teamwork
Government-backed schemes are worth knowing about too: youth employment support through Jobcentre Plus, sector-based work academy programmes and supported internships all exist for 16–24 year olds. Your college careers lead or local Jobcentre can tell you which are running in your area right now.
Write down everything you've done in the last two years — school, sport, clubs, caring, gaming, part-time work, volunteering. Every line is evidence of at least one transferable skill. Most people under 20 badly underestimate this list.
Don't spread yourself thin. Employers can tell the difference between one strong, evidenced skill and eight claimed ones. Use the National Careers Service skills assessment to get an outside read.
A T Level placement, a free online course, a college course, a volunteering role, an apprenticeship or a part-time job. The skill grows because the situation demands it, not because you read about it.
Three months of anything beats one afternoon of five things. You need a beginning, something that went wrong, and what you did about it.
"The Saturday queues were backing up (situation), so I asked to open the second till at 11am each week (action) and the wait dropped to a couple of minutes (result)." That one line is worth more than the word 'hard-working'.
Employers don't want adjectives, they want evidence. Use situation, action, result — one sentence each.
Weak: "Hard-working team player with excellent communication skills."
Strong: "Saturday sales assistant for 8 months. Queues built up at lunchtime, so I asked to open a second till each week — average wait dropped to under two minutes and I trained two new starters on it."
Same job. The second one gets the interview. If you're writing your first CV, our first-CV guide walks through every section.
Part of Shine's apprenticeship guide series, plain-English answers, updated regularly.
