We live in a fast-paced world that is driven by technology and innovation. So, it’s vital to do a transferrable skills analysis to know what skills you possess that can help you excel at work or carve a new career path. A TSA will also reveal any existing gaps that must be filled to do a job properly. The analysis of transferrable skills is a common practice during the vocational rehabilitation counseling process. It helps decide the future career path of a person, whether the person wants to return to the previous job or start a new career altogether. 

Who Needs to Get Comprehensive Transferrable Skills Analysis Done in Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling?

After a workplace injury and accident, any person seeking vocational rehabilitation counseling can get comprehensive transferrable skills analysis done by an expert. It can help a person to return to the job they were doing before the incident. If a disability doesn’t allow a person to return to the previous job, a transferrable skills analysis will help a person recognize skills that might help them land another job or start a new career. 

How to Perform a Comprehensive Transferrable Skills Analysis?

Anyone who is willing and able to learn transferrable skills analysis can do it. The most common process and the steps for the same are described below. Ensure that you dedicate a few hours to the task and do focused thinking in a quiet space to get it done right. 

The First List

The first step is to make a list of all the places where you might have developed any skills. It includes everything from a hobby class to a workplace or even at home. For instance, even if done for your family, cooking can be a skill you can transfer to a job if you want to work in the hospitality industry. When preparing this list, you need to list all the jobs you have done in the last decade, list every volunteer experience you have gained, list the education you have received (formal as well as informal training, list your hobbies, personal responsibilities, and the things you are passionate about. 

Brainstorm Session

After preparing the first list, you need to brainstorm and discover the skills you might have developed when you did things mentioned in the list. For instance, if you learned basic computer skills during a job, you might want to add them to a new list of transferrable skills you possess. If you need, you can do a brainstorming session with your vocational counselor or a friend to get the added support you need. 

Comparison

Once you are done preparing a list of all transferrable skills that you might possess, think of your dream job or the kind of job that will enable you to earn as well as you earned before you got a workplace injury. Then make a list of the transferrable skills needed for the job. Compare these two lists to find out which transferrable skills you already possess and which you need to hone and which ones you might want to learn from scratch. 

What is the Formal Process of Doing Comprehensive Transferable Skills Analysis in Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling?

Many vocational counselors use a formal process of doing Comprehensive Transferable Skills Analysis in Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling. In this process, the counselors compile occupations listed by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). They use it to represent your work history and analyze the work activities you have performed in the previous jobs. It also includes the objects upon which work activities were performed like products, materials, services, Subject Matter, or MPSMS. The counselor will utilize this data to identify a set of occupations that you might be capable of performing. 

If you were injured and partially disabled, the counselor will consider your residual functional capacities and adjust the traits associated with your DOT work history. 

A counselor needs to be extra cautious while selecting DOT occupations that best represent the jobs you have performed in the previous jobs. They need more time than usual to complete the process. 

One of the most preferred methods is based on the federal definition of skill transferability. It utilized the technology that is described in The Revised Handbook for Analyzing Jobs (HAJ, 1991). For those who are unaware, the HAJ also describes as well as explains all the variables used in TSA. 

Work Fields, also known as WF’s, are categories of technologies that reflect how work gets done and what work gets done as a result of the work activities. DOT occupations can have anything between one to three WF codes. 

Derived from the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes, MPSMS are the end products upon which the work activities are performed. These identify employers by type of business. Again, the DOT occupations can have anything between one to three MPSMS codes

SVP, which stands for Specific Vocational Preparation, is defined as the amount of time needed to learn activities and acquire the required information for a specified occupation. This kind of training can be acquired anywhere, be it a school, work, an institution, military, or a vocational environment. 

In the TSA process, the worker traits needed to perform any given job are also utilized. The variable includes everything from general educational development to training time (or SVP), physical demands, aptitudes, temperaments, environmental conditions, and relationships to people, things, and data. 

More often than not, a vocational counselor will look for job possibilities that define a person’s work experience and then eliminate those that need functionality beyond a person’s capabilities or below their capabilities expressed by Worker Traits. That’s how they determine the transferrable skills. 

The use of software programs is also usual. One such program is the OASYS Job match that uses MPSMS, Work Fields, SVP, and Combination Work Field Variables from your work history as the first filter through which they pass all DOT jobs. Then they use Worker traits as a secondary filter to ensure that a sub-set of DOT occupations is placed in a TSA table.

How Transferrable Skills Analysis Benefits the Employers

There are many ways a transferrable skills analysis benefits the employers. Some of them are listed here. 

• An employer gets access to a larger source of candidates who possess the potential and transferrable skills that make them ready for the job
• It also helps boost inclusivity, multiculturalism, and diversity at the workplace, along with equity group participation
• The employee retention ratio improves, and there are ample human resources available that can be groomed for transfers or internal promotions to take on larger and more fulfilling roles 
• Succession planning becomes easier when the employees have multiple transferrable skills
• As transferrable skills analysis often highlights skill gaps, employers can set up training programs to fill those gaps
• When teams are properly trained, it makes multitasking easier, and interdepartmental communication also improves
• Diversified skill sets also mean greater productivity in the organization
• Employers can define the career path of employees with better knowledge of their skills and abilities

How Transferrable Skills Analysis Benefits the Employees or Transferrable Skills Analysis for Job Seekers?

• A person can find a job easily if they possess multiple transferrable skills relevant to the job they are seeking
• A person with a higher number of transferrable skills also finds it easy to have professional advancement and career growth
• When a person has ample transferrable skills, they can get more options to transition to other professions
• The probability of losing a job in tough times like recession becomes low if you have ample transferrable skills
• A person who has a higher number of transferrable skills also has better prospects for cross-functional training and often gains greater expertise within an organization
• The job satisfaction ratio is also often higher when a person has multiple transferrable skills

Final Words

Now that you have an idea on how to perform comprehensive transferrable skills analysis in vocational rehabilitation counseling, you should know that TSA is not used with all workers injured on the job. It is not needed, especially when a person can return to previous employment in a stress-free manner. It is often needed when an injury prevents a person from getting back to a job they were doing, and they are left with no choice but to look for other suitable employment. 

In such cases, a comprehensive transferrable skills analysis helps a vocational rehabilitation counseling expert to try and find new employment for an injured worker. This new employment can be somewhat related to the past work of that employee, or it can be completely new. It depends on the situation. A vocational rehabilitation counseling expert would always explore all possible avenues of employment before they render the determination of permanently and totally disabled.

Trust Laura M. Wilson & Associates Inc. to Perform a Comprehensive Transferrable Skills Analysis in Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling

If you are looking for an expert to perform a comprehensive transferrable skills analysis in vocational rehabilitation counseling, you must consider Laura M. Wilson & Associates Inc. The TSA performed by our experts is reliable because we understand that re-entering the job market or re-educating as an adult, especially after you have had a considerable break, can be quite challenging. We do our best to make things easier for you.

It is also smart to trust us because we work closely with each person and create custom-made solutions for them, be it creating a questionnaire suited for TSA or organizing counseling sessions that discuss other employment options. We also provide all the tools needed to make things easier for you, be it a list of schools offering a relevant course or helping you plan the expenses. The most important reason for trusting us is the emotional support we provide from the day you walk into our office to the day you return to work. Call us toll-free at (800) 531-5608 or click here to know more. 

References

https://www.lauramwilson.com/services/transferable-skill-analysis/

https://www.thecompetencygroup.com/competency-services/transferable-skills-analysis/

https://www.vocationalsolutions.ca/transferable-skills-analysis.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297875227_Transferable_skills_analysis_in_vocational_rehabilitation_Historical_foundations_current_status_and_future_trends

https://www.craftprofessional.com/transferable-skills-analysis.html

https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Transferable_skills_analysis