Are You Amazing (And Do You Know Why?) Or is Delusion Your Most Transferable Skill? Pt. 2

A Layoff-Launched Guide to Career Panic, Self-Worth, and (Hopefully) Sticking the Landing

By Jason Kornblatt

Part II – Transferable Skills and Your Next Move

We ended Part I on a cliff hanger.  So let’s quickly recap.

Transferable Skills.  I’ve always wanted them, and knew they were important, but I’ve also despaired at times, because I wasn’t sure whether I had them…. whether I had the right ones… or the left ones….  I was so concerned, I even put off trying to think about it.  Because, left to its own devices, the ‘primitive’ part of a human brain will often choose to not focus on difficult things.  Difficult things are taxing, after all; and most people hate any kind of tax.

But knowing what your transferable skills are is key, especially when, like mine, you’re professional experience has been in a field that seems to now be rapidly evolving, and/or possibly devolving, but promises, either way, to have an unpredictable future.  If your industry is similarly quaking with shocks and aftershocks, you need to know exactly what you bring to the table, and also how you bring it, so you can confidently make your pitch to employers in a variety of target industries, explaining exactly what you do, why it might be valuable to them; and why, if it is valuable, you’re the gal or guy to do it.

So, not knowing how to address this, I cobbled together the skills I believed were the key to what made me so valuable.   But this feeling of anxiety would still pop up.  I could see that I was presenting myself in the same way I always had, and I started to sense that I might have the wrong idea about my key strengths and transferable skills.  After all, I hadn’t actually had to transfer them to a new employer in over twenty years.

I wanted a reframe.  And, uncertain how to proceed, I turned to someone who knew me, to a certain extent; seeking a coherent, outside perspective.  I turned to ChatGPT, and I’m glad I did.  Here’s how it opened my eyes….

First, if you’re looking for solid feedback about yourself, you want someone who knows a lot about you.  But mom and dad can’t do it; they’re too close, and likely aren’t in your field, and haven’t worked with you.  Your former co-workers might be able to help, but you might not feel comfortable asking them, and they might also be too close.

ChatGPT, on the other hand, has the ability to reframe, has countless terabytes of data and years of experience reframing and, if you’ve personally used it for a long time, you’ve likely uploaded not only your resume, and cover letters, but you’ve treated the A.I. like a co-worker, asking it questions, using it to iterate images, research software, diagnose symptoms, or organize a project.  It has a basic understanding of your thought processes, your passions and focuses, and your strengths and weaknesses.

And so, I asked ChatGPT if, based upon what it knew about me, it could help me nail down my real, transferable skills.

ChatGPT is on the case

I knew, and you should know, that you have to be careful here.  ChatGPT, by default, appears to prioritize appeasing the user over strict truth.  So, your prompt needs to include something like “Please don’t attempt to flatter me (though it never hurts to be polite).  Look at me as a somewhat cynical hiring manager would.”

Still, I can’t lie.  The answer I got from ChatGPT kind of blew me away; because it was able to reframe my strengths in ways that I hadn’t thought about, elevating strengths that it had never occurred to me to point out, and explaining to me why these soft and hard skills would be sought after.  As a longtime TV producer, I’d defaulted, first and foremost, to touting my TV production skills, but Chat explained how I could lead with my creative strengths, such as my ‘distinctive authorial voice,’ and skill at rapid idea generation, my facility for ‘layered concept development and world building,’ as well as recently demonstrated abilities in ‘creative direction, product ideation and branding’ (for my Etsy side-hustle).

This was fantastic, but I wasn’t satisfied.  I wanted ChatGPT to have a fuller picture of me, so I (very hesitantly) uploaded more of my writing; including several chapters of a book I’ve been working on, humorous poems I’ve written through the years, entries from my journals, and importantly, I spent time filling Chat in, in detail, about many of my wins and losses at work.

You can’t take an AI’s feedback about you as gospel.  But this work is helping me figure out how to better explain my value.  I’m not simply a TV producer.  I’m an ‘expert in crisis communication, with the foresight and confidence to prevent trainwrecks’.  I’m ‘a hyper-prepared, empathic briefer, who anticipates a guest’s fears, and coaches them towards confidence’.  I’m ‘a creative strategist and narrative lead’.  And, I’ll just add, I think the reason it took ChatGPT to help me frame all of this, is that I’m a team player focused on getting the job done, and not on the mirror (except to make sure no one has to sit in a meeting run by a piece of spinach with a producer on its back).

Knowing how to zero in on your unique skills, and understanding how to frame these talents, are essential for your job search.  But what if you don’t actually know what you want to do with those skills?  Or where you want to take them?

For anyone seeking to understand their options in the workplace, and which role they want to play in it, here are a few additional probing questions to ask an AI like ChatGPT, to get your juices flowing.  Since these are questions I, myself, have asked, I’ll show you some of the answers I received:

• “What’s a great job that you think I’d be terrible at?”

For Jason, ChatGPT says: “Air Traffic Controller: Hyper-structured environment. You need oxygen to improvise.”

• “Which TERRIBLE jobs would I be great at?”

For Jason: “Customer Complaint Whisperer: You can disarm people with humor and empathy. You’d turn complaint calls into existential therapy sessions.  You’re great at seeing the real issue beneath the noise, and articulating it clearly.”

• “Name jobs that sound boring, but which you think I would secretly love.”

For Jason: “Content Moderator (for AI or Social Platforms). You already parse emotional tone and flag problematic language in real time. You’re a cultural tone barometer. This is moral philosophy, linguistic triage, and absurdity management rolled into one. Bonus joy: The weird, surreal stuff people post would make you laugh—and occasionally cry—in exactly the way you like to process the world.”

• “Could I be a (fill in the job).  Why or why not?  What would I like about it… and hate?  In what ways would I need to get certified or gain skills for the roll?”

Yes, Chat thinks I’d make a fantastic psychologist or “life coach”...  (But first, maybe I’ll figure out mine).

• “Assuming that you want me to be very well-paid, very useful and very happy, what three actual, specific jobs (even if not currently open) would you want to see me in, (for full alignment)? And which three jobs, if you just wanted me to be kind of happy, well paid and useful (for a strategic compromise)?

NOTE OF CAUTION: If you decide to try any of this, and are considering uploading any of your own creative work or journal entries to ChatGPT, please make sure that your account is set for full privacy.  In “Settings,’ under “Data Controls,” turn off the switch that says “Improve The Model for Everyone.”  That ensures that your chats will stay private, and won’t be used for Open AI training purposes (supposedly).

I don’t want to give you the impression that I believe you need to turn your decisions over to an AI.  This is a tool; and some of the things people are using it for, I’m not particularly thrilled with.  For instance, using it to write the entire first draft of a book, and then ‘adding their voice in’ later.  It just seems to me to be very, very morally gray.  But, we’re all just figuring it out.  That’s coming from someone who is committed to giving ChatGPT full credit, even if it comes up with an incredible sentence, and literally tells me, “it’s yours now. It was written IN THE STYLE OF Jason Kornblatt.”

No. If I’m treating you like a co-worker, ChatGPT, I’m going to shout out your work.  For instance, ChatGPT just took my love of Monty Python, and gave me this absolutely fantastic line: “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, yes… but bring a flashlight.”  Get it?  Because when life turns dark, you’ll need a little strategic inspiration to help you find your way.

And speaking of figuring it out, needing inspiration, and battling your way out of inertia, here’s something that fired me up as a writer, and the spontaneous, ridiculous decision I made, in my pursuit of keeping myself going creatively, which has landed me in a bit of a self-created self-help conundrum.

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Ack!  This ends part 2 of:

Are You Amazing (And Do You Know Why?) (Or is Delusion Your Most Transferable Skill?) A Layoff-Launched Guide to Career Panic, Self-Worth, and (Hopefully) Sticking the Landing

I’m bummed!

But, guess what? Click here for Part III - You Vs. You!  In it, we discuss Jocko Willink, terrible poetry, how to self-challenge your way out of inertia, and whether the universe might actually try to help.

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