Complete guide to transversal skills

Transversal skills, also known as soft skills, interpersonal or transferable skills, play a crucial role in various professional contexts, regardless of the profession or sector. Unlike discipline-specific technical skills, they are widely applicable to multiple situations.

In a rapidly evolving professional world, being equipped with transversal skills is vital to adapt, innovate, work in a team and excel. Employers praise them for their positive effect on flexibility, creativity and efficiency within the organization. For their part, employees value these skills for the opportunities for distinction, personal development and professional well-being they offer.

This comprehensive guide explores transversal skills: their definition, importance, and ways to recognize, cultivate and promote them.

1 - What is transversal competence?

1.1 - Definition and importance of transversal skills

A transversal competence is a set of know-how or adaptive skills that can be applied regardless of the field of activity or sector. These skills encompass a variety of jobs, disciplines, and sectors, and are also known as Soft Skills or behavioral skills.

Transversal skills are essential because they offer the ability to adapt, innovate, collaborate and succeed in a dynamic professional environment. Employers value them for the flexibility, creativity, and efficiency they provide. For employees, they represent a distinctive advantage, promoting their professional and personal development.

1.2 - Difference between transversal, specific and transferable skills

Unlike specific skills, which relate to specific knowledge such as accounting, law or IT, and which are essential for certain functions, transversal skills apply in a different and broader way. Specific skills are essential but not sufficient to guarantee professional success in the direction of a long-term evolving career.

It is common to confuse transversal skills and transferable skills, the latter referring to skills developed in a given context and applicable in another. For example, mastering a foreign language, leading a project, or managing a budget are transferable skills. However, transversal skills are broader and more general than transferable skills, because they are more about universal personal qualities than about circumstantial skills.

2 - Essential transversal skills in the professional environment

2.1 - Communication

Be able to express and understand information, ideas, opinions and emotions clearly, in a manner adapted to the type of recipient. Communication encompasses verbal and non-verbal aspects, as well as writing and visual elements.

It plays a fundamental role in building relationships based on trust, respect, and collaboration with colleagues, customers, partners, and superiors. Communication is also crucial to effectively share goals, expectations, feedback and solutions within a project or during the completion of a task.

2.2 - Problem solving

It is the ability to detect, analyze, understand and address complex or unexpected problems. This requires the exploitation of knowledge, technical skills, creativity and a good dose of pragmatism. Problem solving is essential for managing changes, contingencies, risks and opportunities in the world of work.

This competence is vital in order to offer innovative, effective and sustainable solutions that meet the needs and expectations of stakeholders and have a transformative effect throughout the company.

2.3 - Team work

Collaborating effectively with others requires sharing ideas, resources, responsibilities, and successes. Good teamwork requires respecting shared rules, roles, roles, goals, and values, while bringing your own competency profile to the building. This is essential to successfully carry out collective projects, benefiting from the wealth of skills, experiences and varied points of view.

This results in synergy, increasing performance, motivation and overall job satisfaction.

2.4 - Time Management

Planning, organizing and prioritizing activities in line with goals, deadlines and constraints defines time management. It's about being able to assess your workload, set deadlines, follow a schedule, delegate tasks and adapt to the unexpected. Controlling your time is essential to improve your efficiency, productivity and the quality of your work, while preventing stress and burn-out.

2.5 - Adaptability and continuous learning

Adaptability and continuous learning represent the ability to adapt, transform, and grow through a professional environment that is constantly changing. These qualities require flexibility, curiosity, open-mindedness, and the ability to question yourself. They are crucial to fully exploit digital opportunities, overcome challenges, and anticipate future market demands.

By cultivating adaptability and continuous learning, we can stimulate our professional development, in line with the evolution of the job market and by maximizing our professional potential across a variety of contexts.

3 - Develop and promote your transversal skills

3.1 - Identify your transversal skills

To effectively develop and promote your transversal skills, start by identifying them. Here are some effective methods:

• Perform a Skills assessment to assess your achievements, your motivations, your abilities and your professional goals.
• Use self-assessment tools such as Co-pilot Omind which relies on neuroscience and artificial intelligence to measure the transversal skills of your employees. From this data, the tool generates personalized development plans and provides predictive analytics at the organizational level to enrich your talent management strategy.
• Solicit feedback from colleagues, superiors, customers or partners to obtain external insight into your transversal skills.
• Analyze your experiences, whether professional or personal, to recognize the transversal skills implemented and illustrate them with specific examples.

3.2 - Strategies for developing transversal skills

After identifying your transversal skills, here is how to develop them to strengthen your leadership:

• Participate in online training courses, workshops, webinars to enrich your knowledge, improve your technical skills and stimulate your transversal skills.
• Take on new challenges by stepping out of your comfort zone, by taking on new responsibilities, which tests and strengthens your transversal skills.
• Work collaboratively, exchange ideas and share experiences with individuals with varied skills, in order to develop your communication, cooperation and adaptation skills.
• Adopt a spirit of curiosity and openness, learn from your mistakes and successes to maintain the continuous improvement of your skills.

3.3 - Valuing your transversal skills in your career

To highlight your transversal skills in your professional career, move towards a strategy that highlights your distinct profile within the organization, follow these tips:

• During interviews, adapt your transversal skills to the needs of the position and illustrate them with concrete situations, combining your technical skills.
• In your current position, use them daily, share them with colleagues, highlight them to your hierarchy, and ask for regular feedback.
• Consider transferring your skills to a new position or sector by validating your achievements through a VAE, by carrying out a skills assessment, by being accompanied by a career coach or a mentor, and by exploring mobility opportunities.

However, the best way is to integrate them into your resume, unfortunately 95% of resumes do not justify their soft skill. Recognizing this problem, we have set up a certification system based on transversal competence to help candidates demonstrate their abilities. This certificate is issued to the top 10% of performers in each skill and is valid for one year to ensure its reliability. It's our way of helping to balance the selection criteria and giving soft skills the recognition they deserve. Thanks to this system, candidates can add this certification to their resume as in this example:

While our recruitment solution allows companies to assess their candidates, we will soon allow talent to be assessed in order to obtain a behavioral skills certificate for free.

To remember

Transversal skills represent know-how and interpersonal skills applicable in a variety of professional contexts, regardless of your profession or field. They are crucial for successfully navigating a dynamic work environment that promotes adaptation, innovation, collaboration and success. Employers praise them for their contribution to the flexibility, creativity and effectiveness of teams.

They also offer employees the opportunity to stand out, grow and thrive in their careers. To develop and highlight these key skills, start by identifying them using self-assessment tools, feedback from colleagues, skills assessments or even analyses of your professional experiences.

Then reinforce them through continuing education, by taking on new challenges, by working as a team and by regularly asking yourself questions about your professional practices. Put these skills forward in all communication materials with potential employers: CVs, cover letters, interviews, but also in your current position or during a retraining.