How do people manage to transfer their skills over?

[flibbage0]

As a senior Pharmacist with extra qualifications and experience in private outfits, retail pharmacy, and the NHS including mental health work alongside psychiatrists and psychologists, I am currently seeking to transition out of the pharmacy field due to a ceiling in terms of pay and progression (~£55k).

I have observed people from science backgrounds, such as biochemistry or chemistry, transition from hospital work to data analysis roles, including positions in insurance companies, or even completely changing careers to become IT sales engineers or similar roles. However, I am curious about how they manage to make such transitions with little experience in those fields without starting from the bottom again. Is it through nepotism or the gift of gab?

For example, whilst I have previously secured a job as a 1st line helpdesk support worker, I have also applied for roles such as a junior data analyst within the NHS, which I thought would be an easier transition due to my prior experience working for the NHS and knowledge of frontline issues and cost-saving initiatives (based on projects and audits that I have undertaken). However they don't seem to be interested and on LinkedIn all I receive are recruiters messaging me non-stop asking if I could work as a retail pharmacist (Boots, Lloyds etc), which I have no interest in doing as I have already done it.

Any advice you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

 

[flibbage0]

Here is the approach I use.

I take the competencies/requirements of my current/past job in order to identify my transferable skills.
Really think about what they involved, how I applied them, how I demonstrated them.
Keep a very wide lens on this, some people are incredibly poor at looking at their job role from a wider lens.

I'll give an example:

"As a TNT call centre agent I tracked parcels for customers" - no, this is not going to get you anywhere unless you want to do the same job at DPD.

"As a TNT call centre agent I handled inbound enquiries, using a range of logical funneled questions to identify problem consignments and retrieve them successfully from a database, made fact-based decisions using the system data available to me, translated internal industry jargon into digestible customer friendly statements, and presented that information to customers in the form of accurate and timely updates delivered in a confident and clear manner"

Do this exercise for the various subtasks you've performed in your role over the years.

Then map that to requirements that are shared, similar to, or have other parallels with the requirements of your new job.

If you can't think about your experiences for yourself through this broad lens, you will have a good deal of difficulty "selling" them as transferrable skills.

You might think of this as having "the gift of the gab " so to speak, but it really isn't, it's evidencing your competencies in a generic enough fashion to allow a potential employer to see the value you could bring to their organisation.

Hope that helps a bit.

I worked with someone once who scoped and specified an entire quote to order process for a jewellery retailer, including presenting items in a digital storefront, selecting an item using search criteria, checking out, stock checking, order fulfillment and so on, yet when asked about her industry experience she claimed she knew nothing about either retail or the jewellery industry.

Absolute nonsense - she just couldn't identify her transferable knowledge and experiences in the first place.

I definitely think this is probably something I could improve on. I like completing the task as quickly and efficiently as possible and moving onto the next task/project however I don't realise how much work I have actually done to get that far. Pretty much a blur. The problem is that I'm used to being ABC, 123, bullet point type maybe due to time constraints working in the NHS?

 

[flibbage0]

I should have clarified that I'm under 30, senior in level not age (although I sometimes feel like it)

 

[flibbage0]

Before you take the step of switching, I have pointed out a broad range, what you need to learn.

Data science is not excel. Data science is a joining of all areas into one.
Multi disciplinary area.

Statistics, data base query languages (relational data and graph data), r and python languages including common libraries. This does not end there, you need to know the mechanism of statistics in order to clean data, such as replacing missing values with fillers as not to alter the data.

Then you need to know how to design visualisations and how to visualise the data without overcomplicating the graphs/ dashboards.

Then need to know NLP, ML as a min, you need to understand categorisation methods etc and advance statistics that go with it and understanding training models (such as reading training lines from the graphical output).

Abstract maths, domain knowledge architecture/ engineering.

Then you need a basic understanding information governance.

Understand

Logic Programming - Introduction

Logic Programming for AI Topics. Group 11: Simran Cashyap (suc05), Max Sheremet (ms1005) and Charence Wong (cclw05).

www.doc.ic.ac.uk

You can see the list of skills you need from graphical design, statistics, computer studies to mathematical Philosophy and some others. I have covered a good range, however there are a few more depending on area of industry.

Thanks I will have a look at that website, would you say it's one of those things you either have a knack for or don't? For instance in the healthcare field we were always told you either understand the concepts of cardiology really easily or you don't get it at all.

The only thing I can compare it to is the old adage of Marmite you either love it or hate it.

 

[flibbage0]

As a curveball option, is there any scope for you to be entrepreneurial and open an independent pharmacy, as a starter? Could be a rewarding experience. I appreciate that it’s probably not the easiest nor most practicable suggestion!

I have looked into it and crunched the numbers, not worth it and I have a family friend that sold up in the last few years and he's heavily advised me not to. (He's a multimillionaire, knows his stuff)