Transferable skills - Listing the useful ones.

[kevin wooldridge]

For those who get a chance to be in the office, i woud say written and verbal communication skills are a plus, and IT competency through the microsoft packages but also things like AutoCAD, GIS, photoshop etc...'

Do we mean transferable skills that make you more employable as an archaeologist or transferable skills that make it easier to find work outside of archaeology or stretch the realms of archaeology to overlap with other professions i.e Museum curation, tour guiding etc etc. ?

I would say that the single biggest skill that anyone can possess in the current economic climate is flexibility coupled with a degree of mobility to be able to accept work at short notice in strange and odd places. Plus of course good references from trusted and experienced referees .... oh and perhaps a little bit of social nous through networking etc that means someone might pick-up the phone or send an e-mail offering you work before it goes out to advert etc etc. And sure if they do that, cos they know you can dig/survey/photograph/draw/heckle/graft/get wet, muddy and cold, I guess that's a given, but not so sure (at the moment anyway) that it works the other way round.