I’ve just finished a great post by Jill Konrath on transferrable skills. Titled “This Job Taught Me So Much About Sales,” the article is all about how the waitressing jobs she held as a teenager and young woman helped make her a successful salesperson.
I, too, worked as a waitress as a young woman, and I can see her point. I can also look at my career as the worst waitress on the planet—sweaty, rattled, grumpy, and woefully inefficient—and see how my skills, or rather those I didn’t master, translated directly into being the world’s worst salesperson.
Ms. Konrath, a genial sales guru who has earned my admiration over the years, lists seven skills that she was able to use effectively during her sales career. They are critical, though some seem deceptively simple. Here are my three top faves:
- “Constant prioritization”— A good server can’t afford to be asleep at the wheel. (Come to think of it, neither can mothers and probably politicians.) They must always be figuring out who needs what and who needs what more urgently than another table.
- “Success is a Team Sport” — To be successful, a server quickly learns to work well with cooks, busboys, other servers, and the all-important host or hostess. As a Dictaphone salesperson, I learned that if I annoyed the guy who ran the equipment room, I didn’t have a prayer of getting my hands on those ever-so-scarce demo units that were vital to closing sales.
- “End of Day Routines” — Ms. Konrath points out that servers were expected to end a shift with a clean workstation, full salt and pepper shakers, neatly bundled place settings, “and more.” To this day, she ends a day ready to start the next day off smoothly. I know that I can’t walk away from my desk unless it’s tidy and I’ve done my Outlook list of things to do in the morning.
These days, with immense amounts of competition in the job market and the almost-constant need to reinvent oneself, I think it’s important to do an inventory of the skills your jobs have required and be prepared to sell them convincingly to hiring managers and clients.
I always love getting comments on my posts, and it would be fun to know about the transferrable skills you’ve learned in your work.
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