Transferable Skills Portfolio

The Transferable Skills Portfolio is a PDF template that allows doctoral candidates and postdocs to document their competences and skills. Multiple completed templates can be compiled into a portfolio, which can, for example, be used as part of a job application.

As the name suggests, the portfolio should only contain competences and skills that are not subject-related but rather interdisciplinary and applicable to professional contexts beyond one's own research. A “competence” is understood as the ability to successfully manage areas of responsibility, clusters of tasks, or demanding situations. “Skills”, in turn, can be seen as individual components of competences.

The question of whether competences or skills are subject-related or interdisciplinary cannot always be answered definitively. A useful guideline is to ask whether they would also be applicable in fields that have no connection to one's own research:

Example 1:

• “During my doctorate, I taught myself the programming language Python to better analyze the data I collected as part of my social science research.”
  
  In this case, “Programming in Python” can be integrated in the personal Transferable Skills Portfolio, as it is undoubtedly a competence that can also be applied beyond one’s own research.

Example 2:

• “In order to analyze the 3D structure of molecules, I learned to use a state-of-the-art electron microscope during my doctorate.”
  
  This knowledge is not suitable for inclusion in the Transferable Skills Portfolio because it cannot be applied outside a specific research context.
   

For the Transferable Skills Portfolio, it does not matter where the interdisciplinary competences and skills were acquired during the doctoral or postdoctoral phases. They may, for example, have been developed independently during one’s own research (e.g., programming in Python as in Example 1), through a Transferable Skills course offered by GRACE or through another provider (e.g., a doctoral program).

When deciding which competences and skills should be included in the Transferable Skills Portfolio, the Transferable Skills Core Areas may serve as a useful reference. They provide an overview of the competences and skills that can be acquired through the various course categories of the Transferable Skills Program offered by GRACE.

There are two key reasons:

• First, the Transferable Skills Portfolio serves to present one’s own competences and skills externally. It can, for example, be included in a job application to show potential employers how you have developed beyond your own research – and in which areas.
• Second, the Transferable Skills Portfolio can serve as a tool for specifically planning the acquisition of skills and knowledge beyond one’s own research and for strategically developing them with a future career goal in mind.

The templates (see Links & Downloads) for the competences and skills acquired during the doctoral or postdoctoral phases should be continuously updated.

Afterward, the completed templates can be merged into a portfolio. The template “Cover Page Transferable Skills Portfolio” can be used for this purpose. The templates contain the following information:

PDF template competences and skills

• Skill name
• Time, place and method of acquisition (e.g., transferable skills course / self-study)
• Detailed description of the competence or skill (e.g., based on which tasks, challenges or problems did I acquire this competence or skill? What specific abilities have I gained or what have I learned? How can this skill be applied in work contexts beyond research?)

PDF template cover page

• Name of the person who created the portfolio
• Date the portfolio was created / updated
• Doctoral subject
• Graduate school / doctoral program
• Table of contents and list of skills
• Structured skills profile of the skills acquired during the doctoral or postdoctoral phases (e.g., how do the skills complement each other? What was the rationale behind acquiring these particular skills?)

In order to make the entries in the Transferable Skills Portfolio unchangeable (e.g., for inclusion in a digital application file), the portfolio can be saved as a PDF. For this purpose, select “print” in a pdf reader, choose PDF as the print option and save the file. The saved version will then no longer be editable.

Additional documents can be added to the Transferable Skills Portfolio. For example, if a competence or skill was acquired through a Transferable Skills course offered by GRACE, including the course certificate in the portfolio can be useful.