I was first introduced to the concept of skills registers several years ago by Bruce Badger who is one of the founders of OpenSkills, a worldwide association and network of IT professionals.

Skills registers are a great tool for people who wish to promote not just their experience, but also their skills, talents, and abilities. As such, skills registers could be of value for those changing careers, particularly when it comes to highlighting their transferable skills.

While OpenSkills presently caters more for people with an IT and computing background, I thought I would nevertheless write a short post about the basic purpose of skills registers, how they work, and how career changers can make use of them.

For those who are new to the idea, skills registers are literally an itemised list, or register, of a person’s skills, talents, and abilities, and in a way are similar to skills inventories, which I mentioned a few weeks ago.

Whereas skills inventories are more of a personal list of your talents and abilities, skills registers such as OpenSkills, allow you to publicly list these, plus your employment history or “engagements”, by way of an online database.

This database can then be searched by employers, globally in the case of OpenSkills, looking for someone with the skills, and expertise, they require.

A wide variety of skills can be listed, whether this be specific software or application knowledge, “soft skills” such as leadership or communication abilities, and even what some people would consider to be “non core” aspects of a job, such as training or presentation skills.

Often for career changers it is the “non core” skills, or those regarded as being of secondary importance, that can become key transferable skills, and the way skills registers allow you to promote these sorts of skills that can be especially beneficial.

This also applies to situations where key skills from one career, or job, can easily be redeployed and used in another career field, and a skills register is an ideal way to highlight these.

If for example you are a bar manager wishing to become a caterer, you may find it particularly helpful to be able to give prominence to skills that are common to both roles, such as customer service, leadership, and organisational skills, for instance.

Some skills registers can be more than just a way of promoting your abilities and talents however. OpenSkills for example has members worldwide, and this offers the opportunity to tap into a global network of like minded professionals, which is a potential source of job leads and contacts in itself.

As I said OpenSkills at the moment is focussed towards the IT professions, but there are plenty of other skills registers around if you go looking for them, as a quick Google search reveals.

Some are specific to particular industries, or geographical locations, but a little research may uncover one that suits your particular work interests.