With the unemployment rate growing by the day, many of you job seekers may have noticed that employers have raised the bar when it comes to qualifications. In particular, a bachelor’s degree and a couple years of experience in a position won’t go too far. A case in point: we had a Harvard JD and a Stanford MBA apply for an unpaid internship here at TheCanned.com.
In addition, soft skills that were once transferable– ability to communicate, clarity under pressure, strength with numbers, general qualitative analysis– are no longer as desirable.
If you’re looking to get a job quick, think in terms of hard skills. When times are good, employers look for the smartest people and train them. When times are bad and training budgets get cut, employers want people who can hit the ground running.
Aptitude and potential don’t matter so much as the specific tasks that you are used to performing on a regular basis. If you were a management consultant, look to get on with a corporate planning team but don’t try to do security selection for a hedge fund. If you were an accountant, look to do equity research or financial operations but don’t look to do strategy consulting.
By focusing on a narrow set of opportunities for which you are perfectly qualified, you will likely land a job quicker.
Of course if you have connections, this is all a moot point.
January 24th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Thanks for the interesting post. I agree that a narrow focus is a smart approach. The specialist (or sometimes one who can simply disguise themself as a specialist) most always wins over the generalist in the job market. Ironically, under tight budgets driven by weak economics, the newly hired specialist is often then asked to perform a greater variety of tasks due to inadequate staffing; hence, they serve as a generalist. This typically results in a diluted employee effort and increased employee/employer dissatisfaction. Appearance of this circle shows the true colors of a (dis)organization. In summary, I believe that specialization can win the job and generalization can keep it.