To land the career of your dreams, you might need to change the way you think about your current job.
Part-time work can develop your transferable skills
Most of us have been there at one point or another in our lives: slogging away at a part-time job, maybe as a student filling our summer with gainful employment or perhaps as a more experienced worker trying to make ends meet in between “real” jobs.
It can be all too easy to treat those part-time hours casually—and miss the golden opportunity they represent to build high-value, in-demand skills that may just make the difference in landing your dream job later on. It all comes down to your mindset and whether or not you’re open to the idea that part-time work can be more than just filling time.
“I’ve definitely seen instances where entry-level workers enter their job search thinking that they don’t have enough experience, despite the fact they’ve already had a summer and/or part-time job,” says Andrew McCaskill, LinkedIn Career Expert and creator of The Black Guy in Marketing newsletter. “While it might be easy to write-off these jobs as ‘not real’ or ‘not enough work experience,’ the skills you gain during these work days are actually quite invaluable and can be leveraged for future roles.”
In a recent email conversation, McCaskill and I talked about how every employment experience represents an opportunity for growth—and how to leverage those experiences and skills for maximum effect in your job search.
Part-time skills, full-time value
If you’ve ever worked part-time in a service industry like fast food or retail, you know these roles don’t usually come with a lot of glamor. But, leveraged correctly, these are exactly the type of positions that can serve as your personal “bootcamp” for vital workplace skills you will need for the rest of your career—no matter where it takes you.
“Working a part-time or summer job in industries like fast food and retail can actually help you develop some of the top soft skills that hiring managers are looking for, including management, communication, customer service and leadership,” says McCaskill.
To make the most of the opportunity to skill up at a part-time job, you may need to shift your mindset. This isn’t just a way to earn a few extra bucks—it’s a chance to study how to become the very best at what you’re doing, no matter how menial or mundane the task might seem.
As an example of this mindset shift, McCaskill points to the skills you could gain while working at a restaurant. “You probably have great time management skills in managing a number of tables at the same time, and have fine tuned your communication skills through interacting with customers and coworkers,” he says. “Or maybe you demonstrated leadership and teamwork when acting as a shift lead.” All of these skills are in high demand across multiple industries.
Or consider what you could take away from the experience of being a camp counselor. “You would most likely have experience delegating tasks and communicating messages effectively to different groups,” says McCaskill. “These are all great ways to demonstrate the impact of these managerial-related skills, particularly if you’re newer to the workforce.”
Ultimately, says McCaskill, the best way to make the most of any job is to think about the skills you will gain along the way, as well as how you can use these new skills and experience to help you find the right opportunity down the road.
It’s a mindset shift—and it can yield huge rewards.
Top skills to learn anywhere
Soft skills, or as I call them, professional skills, are a key factor in career success as the workplace becomes more and more collaborative. “Soft skills are increasingly in demand in the workplace right now because they can be gained from life experiences and are transferable to every industry,” says McCaskill.
“And, with a rise in remote and hybrid work, and now AI, the need for human connection and people skills have become more important than ever as companies are looking for talent that can step up and manage teams—no matter their environment.”
A partial list of the top professional skills I share with audiences includes:
- Work ethic
- Punctuality
- Leadership
- Communication
- Work-life balance
- Stress management
- Critical thinking
- Problem solving
- Emotional intelligence
- Flexibility
- Networking
Can you think of any job where these abilities and traits aren’t needed? I can’t. “The value these skills bring to the workplace is all about human connection and the way we interact with one another,” says McCaskill.
Marketing your skills
McCaskill points out that more than 50% of hirers on LinkedIn now explicitly use skills data to fill their roles. “Being able to identify your skill set, and highlight those skills at all parts of the job search process—from your LinkedIn Profile and your cover letter to in-person in an interview—can help you stand out in the hiring process and make you a stronger candidate,” he says.
Once you’ve figured out the skills you have and to market, McCaskill advises adding them to your Profile. “This is one of the first places recruiters want to learn more about you and your experience,” he says. “The key here is to show, not tell.”
Showing rather than telling simply means demonstrating the impact you had when utilizing these skills. “Maybe your experience leading a shift at a restaurant increased the number of tables served,” says McCaskill, “or perhaps as camp counselor you helped to coordinate and manage successful events for your camp’s program.” In other words, focus on the value your skills brought to the employer—not just the fact that you have the skills.
As more companies continue to use skills data to fill their roles, McCaskill urges jobseekers to highlight where and how they used their skills throughout multiple experiences. The good news is, LinkedIn is making that easier to do through some new Profile tools:
List Top Skills in Your Profile’s About Section: “Tag up to five of your Top Skills in a dedicated area of the About Section that stand out visually, to give hirers the quick context they need,” says McCaskill.
Connect Specific Skills To Specific Projects: In addition to associating skills with jobs or education, add the work you’re most proud of in the Projects section of your profile and tag the unique skills you used during those projects.
Demonstrate skill proficiency by earning credentials: You can also tag a skill on a particular credential on your Profile, like Professional Certificates and Certification Prep, to give you an extra edge. “Our data shows that over the past two years, professionals adding credentials to their Profiles increased globally by more than a third,” says McCaskill.
How your skills show up for Recruiters: Not only can adding your skills to your Profile make you more desirable to hirers, it can also make you more discoverable. “Hirers using LinkedIn’s Recruiter tool have access to advanced keyword search filters,” says McCaskill, “and can discover you based on the skills you list on your Profile and also in your resume, if you choose the option to share it with recruiters.”
Never stop skilling
In a skills-first hiring landscape, McCaskill recommends that jobseekers stay competitive by continuously honing their skills. “Whether you’re looking to grow in your current role or industry, or build your expertise to get started in a new role, keeping your skills sharp is very important,” he says. “A great way to stay fresh and competitive is by taking a few LinkedIn Learning courses aligned to the most in-demand skills.”
Today’s workplace is ever-evolving, which means there’s never going to be a time where we should stop learning and developing skills. No matter how senior or junior we are, none of us ever fully “arrive” because there is always more to learn. It’s up to us to leverage every experience—part-time or otherwise—to capitalize on what it can teach us for the next opportunity.
