Commentary: Forget picking a career specialisation. Being a generalist is a lot more fulfilling
SINGAPORE: There is a traditional task interview question I've never known how to answer: "Where exercise you lot see yourself in five years?"
The truth is information technology's impossible to confidently predict even the side by side five months.
Beyond non wanting to pigeonhole myself, I detect it hard to commit to ane area of interest, and often long to acquire a breadth of skills outside my job scope or have on several diverse assignments at once to challenge myself and satiate my curiosity about varied topics.
While many of my peers in journalism eventually choose a beat to focus on, from politics to teaching, I have zero intention of doing that. I've written most beauty, travel, fashion, physical and mental health, didactics, social issues, sustainability, politics, career and food, to name some — and I bask not knowing what I'll exercise side by side.
Off work, I occasionally help friends with projects in other sectors, from F&B to filmmaking to non-turn a profit work.
To me, becoming a specialist sounds like a recipe for tedium. But while I see curiosity every bit my superpower, some would call it my kryptonite.
In a world where "jack of all trades, main of none" is used to undermine people who would rather remain generalists, intentionally not picking a specialisation can feel like one might lose out in the long run in developing a fulfilling and rewarding career.
ARE SPECIALISTS Actually BETTER?
Practice makes perfect - that is, x,000 hours of practice. Popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, this common rule of thumb is used to explain how people can attain mastery in their given field.
But while the 10,000-hour dominion has since been debunked for several reasons, considering quality of practice hours matters more than than quantity of practice hours, its essence remains: To excel at something, yous accept to commit to deeply honing it.
In sure fields with heavy technical knowledge, such every bit healthcare or IT, being a specialist tin can make you "more marketable", according to job site Indeed.com.
Naturally then, society reveres specialists. For instance, we've relied on infectious diseases experts to make sense of the rapidly evolving COVID-xix state of affairs. Companies also hire people with deep experience in the same sector; a communications specialist from Facebook would probably excel at a similar role at Twitter.
And in my job, having worked with several experts, as well as fellow journalists who specialise in one area, I come across how deep noesis near one domain gives them insights others who simply fiddle in the subject field affair might not accept.
WHEN Curiosity TRUMPS SPECIALISING
But there are downsides to specialising, aside from the nemesis that is boredom. In the workplace, encouraging people to detect a niche early may mean many eye managers prioritise in-depth expertise when hiring for a office, overlooking those with other useful, albeit tangential, skills.
In the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized Earth, writer David Epstein quotes a report by University of Utah marketing professor Abbie Griffin.
On job postings past human resources (Hr), Griffin says, "By the way, dear HR professionals, you're defining your jobs way besides narrowly and therefore accidentally selecting out a lot of these people considering they have zig-zagged through their careers, they appear to flit among ideas, they demand to talk to people outside of their domain, they utilise analogies from other domains."
But by dipping their toes into various pools, generalists tend to be able to connect the dots between seemingly unrelated fields. An frequently-highlighted example is Steve Jobs being inspired by a calligraphy grade he attended to build the elegant aesthetic Apple is well-loved for.
Likewise, this stubborn curiosity to effort whatever interested me fuelled me throughout life. For instance, it was a no-brainer for me to stay on the general path in my concluding semester in polytechnic while my friends chose to specialise. I selected modules from a range of interests: Journalism, advertizing, and even one on presentation skills in Mandarin.
In university, I enjoyed modules in philosophy and biology even though I was a communications major, simply for the variety they added to my curriculum.
But taking upward these seemingly random modules didn't just allow me to strop my curiosity; it too made me an adaptable learner able to leap between multiple disciplines hands.
VERSATILITY, THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
Beingness a generalist became my biggest forcefulness, although I simply realised its value after it consistently helped my career.
I learnt how to navigate ambiguity adequately quickly because I lack the in-depth knowledge that a specialist would have to shape a story from an skillful's point of view. Kept on my toes by curiosity and the desire not to fall behind, I am regularly motivated to recollect out of the box, and ask what's actually happening beneath the obvious.
When I had to find COVID-19 patients undergoing the home recovery scheme, I causeless it would be a simple story about healthcare protocols. But after speaking to a few people, I realised the actual story was the lack of information such patients received that contributed to doubt and anxiety.
"The qualities that generalists tend to have include curiosity or inquisitiveness, and resourcefulness, meaning the ability to observe your own answers," suggests Kelly Bowerbank-Chua, associate director at executive search firm Kerry Consulting.
"Interpersonal skills are important also; having the EQ to get to know people and detect your way effectually to find the answers. Since you are not a subject matter expert, the answers lie elsewhere."
The strengths of being a generalist became more evident amid the pandemic's upending of certainty and stability.
When I started this job during the pandemic, and work-from-domicile was the default, I had none of the physical camaraderie usually crucial to my induction into a new job. But I'd accept taken longer to find my footing if I hadn't built up confidence from years of treatment tasks I knew zero near.
Ms Bowerbank-Chua as well observed that more companies desire "people who are skilful to learn on the job, who accept the skills to be resourceful to find the answers or create the answers".
"If someone has a proven track tape to manage ambiguity or ever-changing products or situations, my clients are more than convinced. If they tin can manage that in another chore, we know there is prove of adapting. It'southward a predictor of success."
KNOWING YOURSELF
The best affair virtually being a generalist, however, is building cocky-awareness.
In an interview with Wharton Schoolhouse of the University of Pennsylvania, Epstein suggests: "You can do all the strength finder quizzes you want, but your insight into yourself is constrained by your roster of previous experiences."
Generalists may endeavor annihilation and everything in order to learn about what nosotros similar or dislike, what we are naturally skillful at or what may need some work, what intrigues our brain and what we notice an absolute bore.
Through the breadth of skills I've picked up at work, I discovered that I had little stamina to handle the monotony of long-term projects, and that I enjoyed the quick churn of the news bike. And while I enjoyed the irksome burn of penning a thoughtful commentary, I also relished the energy and adrenaline of moderating a panel with back-and-forth discussion.
This constant flitting betwixt varied skills and topics makes you more than employable should you leave a job or industry. In the brusk term, information technology also helps your supervisors play to your strengths and interests.
In conversations I've had with friends who desire to switch industries merely lack the courage because they've invested too much fourth dimension in their field, they oft wish they'd been more curious about their options when they were younger.
I also suspect some who quit in the "Great Resignation", a term describing a spate of resignations in recent months, had pandemic-related epiphanies about the importance of taking time off to explore various interests and learn about themselves.
And so I may never know what I'll be doing in five years or excel in even one-half the trades I option up, but being a generalist has fabricated me a master of something after all: Myself.
Grace Yeoh is a senior announcer at CNA.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/specialisation-skills-generalist-jobs-opportunities-career-options-294901
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