From a career development point of view "transferable" skills are far more important to the individual than "specific content" skills. Transferable skills are the general skills that form the foundation for any kind of specific vocational training. They are natural abilities, gifts and talents that, when refined through a training experience, can lead to suitable and meaningful employment. For this reason, in a skill assessment, the individual woman is asked to analyze her life experience in order to identify her natural talents or abilities. She discovers initially what she is good at, and later what talents she would prefer using in a paid job situation. The emphasis is not on marketability, but rather on reclaiming her own strengths and seeing how her preferred strengths suggest a career direction.

I don't mean to imply here that we avoid questions of technical expertise or marketability altogether, but they raise specific questions to be dealt with after occupational research is completed. When a woman is deciding how to refine her talents, she will tackle the training question. When she is ready to seek a job she will deal with the marketable skills questions as a marketing problem and write the appropriate resume.

Skills assessment invites active ownership and authorship of skills. I direct people to use active language in describing their skills. Since a skill is something one does, we are looking for verbs, for active language that underscores the doing. For example, I would discourage a woman from describing a skill in these terms: "I was part of a group of people who organized an event."

I would ask her to describe her own active participation in that group in search of her own skill. Then she might say, "I researched the possible places where we could hold our conference." I would also discourage her from using nouns or roles (I am a secretary) to describe her abilities. Taking a title or role and breaking it down into specific functions she performs (e.g. answering phones, attending to administrative details, scheduling) lends clarity to identifying the specific strengths which she possesses.

In addition to active language, I have also found personal authorship to be empowering for the client. Having the client choose the exact words and phrases to describe skills is important to accurately reflect her own sense of competence. This process can be painstakingly difficult, especially for clients who are weak in verbal skills. But women are more assured about their skills after they have described them in their own words.

Eventually a prospective employer will ask a woman what she does well. If she has done a thorough self-assessment, she will be able to describe her talents more easily and confidently in her own words.

Career Counselling Gives Women Permission to Dream

A career dream is a picture of someone wanting to accomplish something that is special or important to her. It is a vision of fulfillment, success on her own terms; some involvement that brings great pleasure, excitement, or nourishment to the individual dreamer. This type of dream is at the heart of career counselling; it is the basis of a personal vision which women need to develop.

When a career counsellor gives a woman permission to dream out loud, she is being invited to consider her career options with her real self in mind. At the psychological level we have to wade through all those messages that discourage her from becoming who she really is. Don't be selfish. Be realistic. Consider others first. Don't be impulsive. Don't aspire to greatness. Don't compete. Don't want for yourself. We have to replace those messages with encouragement to dream.

Barbara Sher (Wishcraft), likens people who are encouraged to become what they really want to be to a plant growing in fertile soil; the encouragement fosters growth, we are saying to those women it's OK to want, to need fulfillment to be who you really are. It can be a great affirmation when set against the great wave of social pressure that says "adapt, stay just where you are."

Barbara Sher has reaffirmed my belief that dreaming, contrary to popular opinion, is realistic. Within each person's dream is a driving force, a kind of deep personal need to succeed at something. When people are encouraged to find and realize their dreams they can gain access to inner energy. They are more likely to stay motivated to cope with the "inner" (psychological) and "outer" (social) obstacles that they will bump up against in pursuit of a dream. Part of working with a woman's career dreams is working with her discouragement. Because, on the flip side of every dream is the fear that it can't be done.