Transferrable Skills & Jobs I've Had

You can't explain to people sometime (when they're younger, ie teenager) about the inherent value of transferrable skills. However, as an adult, I've grown to appreciate these types of skills more and more as time goes on. It's only recently that I've begun to realize the power that lies within harnessing the skills and using them to your own advantage.

It made me think back to the list of jobs I've had throughout my life, and wanted to share that here for posterity's sake, in no particular order:

• Babysitter
• Bather/Brusher for a Dog Grooming Salon
• Putt Putt where my former meat eating self worked w/icecream, brats/hotdogs & patrons
• Nurses aide at a nursing home (that lasted less than a month)
• TCBY (that lasted two weeks)
• McDonald's (I quit 20 minutes before I was supposed to start)
• Receptionist for a multi-agent insurance agency/broker
• Data entry for a small family owned business that sold personal safety mace like stuff
• Making Vending Machine packaged food (a few weeks one summer for extra money)
• Data entry for CompuServe as a temp when I first moved here
• Freelance writer for both a central ohio parenting and senior citizen magazines
• Newspaper Reporter/Magazine Contributer/Theatre Critic while in College at BGSU
• Internships at the Cleveland Metroparks and the BGSU Alumni Public Relations Office
• Page Layout/Composition Coordinator for a central Ohio newspaper group
• PR Coordinator for a state professional society
• my current post as communications director for a state professional organization
• MRDD County Respite Care Provider
• MRDD State Certified Supported Living Care Provider

I think that about covers all of the paying and non-paying major things that I've done. My volunteer work spans working with animals in every capacity possible, hospice patient work, therapy dog work, etc. When I was growing up my mom was involved in community theatre and thus ultimately I ended up being a theatre minor in college and pledging for our honorary theatre fraternity Theta Alpha Phi. I was mostly into stage management and handling the behind the scenes nitty gritty anal details and making sure that everyone and everything was where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there.

In my first "real" interview out of college (and a job that I ended up getting and keeping for nine months before coming to current said position), my boss-to-be asked me what kind of management experience I had. I thought only for a brief moment and then related to him the stage management experience I had during and throughout college, and what that entailed. He then replied that he would take that hands-on, real, practical management experience over an MBA any day, and thus began my education into transferrable skills.