05 Jun

We are living through tumultuous times. Between pandemics and wars, tumultuous markets, and recessions, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that both Gen Z and Millennials have less agency and employment security than any other generation since the end of the second world war. The big question that is not yet being debated, beyond academics and some HR professionals, is what is the future of jobs, and what do those in the job market, or those entering it, need to do to continuously stay in demand and be productive over their lifetime?

It is not just about earning money. It is also about feeling valued, feeling productive, and feeling like you have reached your full potential as a professional. And to be able to achieve this is of course going through lifelong learning. In a recent survey, over 80% of polled respondents identified individual capability building as not just important to them, but also to overall growth of the organisation. While looking at continuously reinventing yourself, the question is what you learn to stay relevant and be future-ready. Associated with this is to also look at the time you take to pick up those skills. Just as organisations need to learn faster than their competition, so do individuals.

There are many theories about the kind of employee you need to be to stay relevant in the job market. One of the more popular ones has been to look at the T-Shaped Employee,variously attributed to David Guest , Mc Kinsey and Time Brown of Ideo (T-shaped skills).

A T-shaped employee is someone who has both a broad range of skills and deep expertise in one or more areas. The vertical stem of the "T" represents the individual's deep expertise in a skill set, while the horizontal bar represents their broader range of skills and knowledge. This combination of skills and expertise allows the employee to work effectively in a variety of roles and contexts. For example, If you work as a developer – you have deep expertise in the language that you need to know, but you also know enough about other areas like project management or testing. This enables you to work across teams seamlessly, to deliver impact. So, as an employee, you learn a language and then you take several 101 certification programmes to understand the basics of what others are talking about, as the world becomes more super specialised. Your LinkedIn timeline feed bears testament to this — your contemporaries posting about their certificates in a myriad of fields that have nothing to do with their current role.

Also read: The secret to career, money and happiness: Financial planning

But is this enough in today’s market? A market where generative AI is good enough to do many lower-level jobs – write code, write content, write campaigns – I suspect the answer is no. To stay relevant, you need to know more than the basics. And, there needs to be a method for your acquisition of skills and qualifications. I saw this extremely insightful post by the author of “One Hour Strategy”, Jeroen Kraaijenbrink. He is an academic and a consultant – and he talks about a new kind of employee for a new kind of economy that is emerging. And he calls this kind of employee a V-type employee. He says, “This adjacent knowledge is expertise that is not as deep as their core knowledge, but also not as shallow to simply enable collaboration. It is medium-deep, medium-broad, enabling them to be versatile and agile.”

What does this mean for you? To be relevant you do not just need to be a superficial generalist. You need not just to be an expert in your area but must be more than adept in other areas so that you are a package of many functions in one.

It is the way most of us worked in start-ups. We picked up skills fast so that we could move faster. We could deliver faster. We could fail faster. And we could iterate faster. It is about speed, not perfection. Don’t wait to be perfect – because ‘perfection is the enemy of good’. Make a list of what your adjacent areas are, and start skilling up.

Also read: Emotional intelligence skills are key to workplace success