Become a generalist in a particular field

Become a generalist in a particular field

Now I'm searching for you: find someone who knows both Oracle database and talent management training and supply chain?

Fashion designers don't just come up with a good idea, then put it into drawings and finally make a sample dress. For example, Jil Sander, the designer of +J brand, not only knows how to choose fabrics, but also knows how to do post-promotion and shooting of products.

This means that what we thought of as a professional field involves not only those things closely related to the major, but also a larger scope of work than the professional field you can do? In addition to professional skills, you need to have the potential to be a generalist in a specific field.

In fact, so is your employer. The "20 12 talent shortage survey report" released by human resources service company wanbao shenghua in July shows that many companies are implementing new? Standard? . The economic pressure in the past few years has forced them to strive for twice the result with half the effort. At the same time, they also found that although resources have been cut, they can still successfully complete their tasks as long as they find the right talents.

If the company is in the process of intensified industry competition or brand innovation, you should update your ability accordingly. In the past, having a comprehensive understanding of products or services and the determination to complete tasks may help you to become an excellent sales representative. Now, the standard for judging sales representatives has been upgraded to whether they have the ability to solve problems, such as promoting income growth when profits fall.

In addition to the pressure from changes in the external environment, when the career platform changes, your skill set needs to be improved accordingly. This combination not only includes knowledge and skills in the usual sense, but also involves relatively soft factors such as mentality, values and personality. Kenny Wei, senior manager of international business of Capgemini Consulting, believes that a mature senior talent can be measured by the standard of generalist, because he has reached the level of specialization in his own special field and has perfectly integrated professional ability with general ability.

Everything depends on your expectations for your career development.

What is your specific field?

Compared with management, ordinary company people may feel more about doing their job well in the workplace. Because of the division of the company's functional departments, it is decided that many people will undertake the same kind of work for a period of time, and the content will not change much.

But this does not prevent the company people from starting from their own professional fields and expanding specific fields related to their work.

Jiang worked for a large Internet company and worked in the software testing department for nearly four years. After he was promoted from an ordinary software developer and tester to the head of the department, he needed to communicate more with the product team at the non-technical level, and sometimes he participated in some direct projects as a department representative.

Gradually, he felt tired. ? It's not that the workload is getting bigger. What scares me is that they sometimes come up with some ideas that I didn't think of when I was in a meeting together. Jiang's thoughts may have nothing to do with his work, but they touched his nerves. He thinks that a lot of the company's business comes from games, and some of his recent projects are also related to the game industry. Compared with colleagues in other groups, he is not sensitive to this industry at all.

After that, he began to take the initiative to care about the products that other groups were developing and testing. If it is about the game project, he should pay attention to the progress of the project and the feedback after the product is put into the market, not just the technical problems.

After a while, he even judged the importance of that product by observing which projects the company invested more resources in. For him, software development and testing is his own professional field, while the internet game industry has become his own specific field. Because of his technical background and a better understanding of game products, he was later recruited as a business manager by a smaller company.

IT programmers are not necessarily good at programming and testing, and industrial designers are not necessarily only dealing with drawings and machines.

Even if you are in a certain industry, you may have a better understanding of another industry for some reason. If you can broaden your professional field according to your work, it is equivalent to finding a specific field for yourself. Similarly, this specific field can also be delineated from the vertical career development, and its scope has no established standards, which will change accordingly with the advancement of career.

Planning in specific areas

After finding your specific field, you need to choose the skills involved in this field in a planned way for self-training. Without proper steps, it may be chaotic.

Zhangqian is now the strategic planning manager of the investment department of machinery company. The first two jobs are the supply chain of consumer goods companies. According to his career plan, he will be engaged in management in the future. He took his first job as a good platform, which enabled him to form a certain understanding of the industry and also cultivate professional knowledge in supply chain. Since the second foreign language in college is German, he also plans to pass the German Grade Examination in the first year of work without too much pressure.

But is this one? Full open? His plan makes his work and life chaotic: he wants to use his rest time to read German review materials at work; When there was an inter-departmental cooperation project, he actively applied to join in the name of helping. After doing too much extra work, he couldn't concentrate on his work.

Two years later, I changed to a new company and had a relatively complete training program for new employees. In the communication with the new boss, he also learned that the promotion from supply chain work to related management work should be divided into several stages, and each time the scope of responsibilities is expanded, new requirements will be put forward for his professional ability. In his specific work, he gradually realized that his interest was not in the supply chain field, and he might have more room to play in other industries, so he changed careers and found his current job after graduating from MBA.

Find space for the development of new skills.

New skills must be used in practical work to bring you added value, so how to make others quickly recognize your new skills and gain room for development is also a problem.

Li Yubin is now an engineer in the hybrid technology department of an automobile company. Joining the hybrid technology department from an engine support designer three years ago was a small career transformation and a promotion. His method is simple. I went to the boss and asked directly if I could try the mixing technology department. He also knows that I am not inexperienced in this field, so he helped recommend me during the internal recruitment. ? He was transferred to participate in a transnational technology transfer project and was exposed to a lot of cutting-edge knowledge. Because I am very interested in automobile design, I pay attention to and study other parts and the latest technology besides my own responsibilities.

To form an understanding of enterprises and industries, the sources of broadening their professional scope are not limited to their own work, but also from customers, suppliers and partners. Accordingly, when you are looking for space for your new skills, you can also seek opportunities from these aspects.

In fact, for highly specialized jobs like IT, finance and engineering, the way of career development is not necessarily based on superb professional skills. Yu zhang, a former information system engineer, gave up because his professional skills could not keep up with those of his colleagues. He proposed to transfer to the internal training department and began the training of some engineers. Among all trainers, his technical background gave him extra points.

Re-evaluate your skills regularly.

For a clear and definite career development path, the professional field may never change, but the career development and its corresponding specific field are dynamic.

Jiang works in a consulting company and was recently promoted from a senior consultant to a project manager. For him, a project manager needs all the knowledge background, experience and professional skills? Has he always been conscious? Do it in advance? Let yourself take on some jobs that should belong to the project manager. However, the pressure of his new position made him realize that what he needed to overcome most was actually a change in his mentality: he was always uneasy about the work assigned to his team members, and he checked and revised it himself after receiving the information and reports, but it took up his working time. Finally, his boss pointed out to him that his overall view and task allocation ability are still lacking.

As people in the company rise to a new career platform, the specific areas suitable for their abilities will also change accordingly, so it is necessary to reassess the skill set. Knowledge and skills that are common outside the professional field may be automatically transformed into professional abilities at a higher functional level. For example, for general team members, communication skills and financial knowledge are common abilities to broaden their professional fields, and they are necessary skills after being promoted to project manager. Fitness, values, mentality and personality characteristics are difficult to transform and cultivate in a short time, and need to be measured and evaluated from a long-term perspective at the beginning.

Xu Yan

Manager of Talent Search Department of Manpower Group (China)

A= reporter

X= Yan Xu

A: Even in the same position, great changes have taken place in the requirements of employees' abilities in the past and now. What is the main reason?

Xu: First of all, due to the economic globalization and the intensification of market competition, some enterprises choose to expand their business into larger areas or more regions, which requires the skills of company personnel to expand accordingly. For example, Huawei has carried out a lot of international business in recent years, and the language requirements for engineers have changed from additional conditions to necessary conditions.

Second, the increase in raw materials and labor costs makes companies more inclined to reduce costs when they want to maintain the same profit level, so talents appear? Multifunctional? Requirements.

Third, the skills of junior staff are generally improved than in the past. In the whole company structure, the skill requirements for talents at other levels have increased.

A: What problems should the company pay attention to if it wants to broaden its professional scope by increasing its skills?

Xu: When making a plan to improve ability, we should first consider three basic factors: educational background, personal interest in career development, and existing ability models including personality and way of thinking.

Secondly, we should consider the work itself. As for whether we can cultivate multiple skills at the same time, we should treat them differently according to the specific work. Although there is no specific standard, generally speaking, if it is a variety of skills, it is best to master it step by step. After each direction is selected, it is best to accomplish the goal persistently.

In addition, before upgrading to a new platform, we should pay attention to planning the skill requirements of the next platform, such as consciously making a three-year/five-year plan for ourselves. The longer you plan for yourself, the sooner you will begin to evaluate your skills. Skills such as speaking need to be cultivated consciously very early, and soft aspects such as personality and values can be cultivated to a very low level.

As for professional ability and general ability, we need to pay equal attention to them, and find ways to cultivate our own series of abilities through various specific work in peacetime.

A: Is there any good way to get new skills recognized and help career development?

X: Skills can only show their value in practical application, so its help to career development is reflected in the effect of completing the work.

Company people can first seek opportunities from within the company, such as taking the initiative to ask superiors to take on more job responsibilities; If you engage in technical work, you can also seek opportunities for new projects or tasks; Or change functions through internal recruitment when conditions are ripe.

When looking for opportunities outside the company, whether you change careers or continue your original work field, you should pay attention to digging the correlation between the job itself and the skills you already have, and reuse mature skills as much as possible. ;