Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | E | ETC.: A Review of General Semantics

General semantics for better transferable job skills.

Article Excerpt
When people learn highly specialized skills and later their particular type of job disappears through economic or technological change, they may have difficulty in finding new work; they need to identify their transferable job skills.

Transferable job skills include basic skills that we can take from one job to another, for example, office skills, or writing, communication, critical thinking, and leadership skills. What connections can we find between general semantics and transferable skills? Can transferable job skills be enhanced through learning and practicing a general semantics orientation? Can developing GS-related transferable skills ease the pain that young people often encounter when trying to decide just what to do with their lives?

Carole Kanchier defined transferable skills this way: "These are generic and can be used in a variety of jobs and settings...." Kanchier categorized these skills as follows:

Communication -- writing, editing,... researching,... speaking,... translating, interviewing,... speaking a foreign language. Humanitarian -- advising, coaching, counseling, mentoring,... training,... explaining, listening, negotiating. Creative -- performing,... cooking, designing,... inventing ... Organizational -- leading, deciding, delegating, scheduling, supervising,...