Recently I applied to a role, sadly I can’t remember the role but it required analytical skills so most probably it was a mid-level analyst. I was rejected as I have been many times in my job hunting process. Even more so being rejected at the first stages: the shortlisting
Typically I ask for feedback and I appreciate due to the sheer volume of applicants that I won’t receive it. This time I was lucky, the feedback was that my CV showed me to be too creative for this role. Me too creative? I’ll tell you a little about myself… I hated art. I could never draw, I used to study it in school and whenever there was homework I would buy tracing paper to put on my computer screen and trace whatever I had to draw and then put the tracing paper in a fresh sheet in my art book, go over it and that was my art. A modern-day Andy Warhol (no disrespect to any people passionate about art). Outside of that playing the violin and martial arts and recently photography were the only creative endeavour I journeyed on. So that feedback was both shocking and flattering.
But it had me thinking…. why can’t a creative person be analytical. Are they really 2 extreme ends of the spectrum? Having studied accounting I was told that that and marketing are two ends is the spectrum as well. I have transitioned from one to the other.
I think it’s time to put an end to this foolish traditional way of thinking. Throughout my years I am faced with rugged dichotomies. From my understanding, this stems from a preference of specialism which can be defined as ‘an area of activity, work, or study that someone concentrates on or is expert in’ which in the traditional labour force was preferred thanks to Taylorism. This ideology has led to the belief in work efficiency & scientific management where have people focus on one task and develop their skillset allowed them to produce more output and better allow their employer to commodity their labour
The issue with this as it sits in the transition to the new labour market where tenure at companies is shorter. Decades of figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the average job tenure for Americans in their 20s and 30s was almost the same in the 1980s as it is today. In 1983, the median years of tenure was three, versus 2.8 in 2018. People are job-hopping more frequently due to transitional skills that can be drawn from and applied in a number of roles. I myself have transitioned from project management to sales and in my personal life learnt photography, all have an underlying system it is just a case of understanding
Being a generalist was frowned upon, but I believe being a jack of all trades, master of none so to speak shows rugged individualism and ability to be a continuous learner
Bedroom 2 Boardroom 🚀 