Ever since I read the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein, I’ve felt very validated and inspired by his take on how having a range of professional experiences enhances one professional experience after the other. I wrote about leveraging this diverse skill set myself when breaking into tech, but I have had mixed luck when trying to convince employers of this benefit. The problem is that they have a hard time knowing how to handle a non-linear career path. A lot of people like the idea of hiring folks who don’t fit into a particular box and see the definite benefits, but they lack the skills to know how to best leverage those diverse skills.

Working assumption

The common working assumption is that folks will do fine in the box we put them in or on the ladder we set before them. But folks (like me) don’t often fit well into this standard because our skills are often out of balance on most leveling docs, and this creates a lot of frustration because you’re expected to use your skill set proportionately. So if you are really strong on soft-skills but need to grow on the technical side, you’re expected to hold off using your upper-level soft-skills until your technical skills catch up. This was the case with me. But my soft skills will likely always be stronger than my technical skills, so why wait? Why not leverage the soft skills now? Well, because it takes some creativity.

There’s hope

I have honestly felt pretty hopeless about this particular working assumption ever getting resolved, especially in a tech career, until I met Dr. Sarabeth Berk Bickerton, author of More Than My Title and leading expert on hybrid professional identity. She calls these folks “hybrid professionals” and identifies as one herself. She describes them as individuals who integrate multiple professional identities into a cohesive whole, allowing them to be very versatile and valuable in the workplace. Instead of merely switching between different roles and climbing a predetermined ladder, hybrid professionals combine their skills and experiences from various fields to create unique value propositions.

“Hybrid professional identity defies traditional job titles because they work at the intersections of disparate identities.” -- Dr. Sarabeth Berk Bickerton

But what about the CaREeR mAtRIx?

Most companies will have some sort of leveling documentation to define what growth looks like at their company. Career matrices are pretty common in tech. Others call it career pathing, career ladders, job-leveling matrix, etc. The common thread is that you start in one place and grow linearly, or evenly across all criteria until you move up to the next level.

But how can the unique value proposition of a hybrid professional be realized unless the career matrix is adjusted for their uniqueness? As a hybrid professional myself, I am keenly aware of the working assumption in the large majority of enterprises that relies on the belief that all employees, first of all, want to follow a predetermined career path and, secondly, can predictably develop all of the necessary skills evenly.

For example, a company will hire a junior engineer with the assumption that they have just graduated college, don’t have a lot of work experience, and need to grow their soft-skills to the same degree as their technical skills. This assumption is built into the career matrix which the employee is then judged against. There is no room in the system for the employee’s technical skills to be out of balance with their soft skills. They are expected to deliver and grow completely in balance.

But what if you hired someone from a code camp who is entry-level at software development but has had another couple of successful careers in other fields? They already know how to work with other teams, manage projects and people, and shepherd products. They just need the technical skills to be able to do all of those things more successfully. Are you really going to make them follow the same career matrix as the person that just graduated college? Should you assume that they don’t have the desire to use those advanced soft-skills at all until their technical skills catch up? Should you assume that their soft-skills won’t be valuable to you until their technical skills are equal?

Well, according to Dr. Berk and my own personal experience, you will be missing out on the unique skill set this person has to offer, and they will get bored, feel unvalued, and likely move on.

Solution

As an individual contributor, what I have done in the past to scratch this itch of wanting to deliver beyond just my technical abilities is to simply offer the company those other skills to use. I would proactively come up with ways that I could contribute and communicate those ideas very clearly, and either the ideas were gladly accepted or the leader would get nervous about me getting out of the box they put me in. But either way, the ambiguity of whether or not I could use these skills was removed and I knew my next move.

The times this really worked most effectively in my favor was when I was at a small startups of less than 75 people; the fewer the better, honestly. As a company grows, their creativity and flexibility tend to diminish. Nevertheless, the employee needs to be clear about what their value is and offer, offer, offer. It’s then up to the employer to take it or leave it.

As Dr. Berk points out, successful teams need all types of workers to be high performing:

• Experts and specialists
• Generalists
• Hybrid professionals

The employer needs to allow hybrid professionals to show their full value, and if that requires a little creativity, then they should trust that the extra effort will pay off in the long run. The alternative is that they simply will not be able to retain these workers because they will get frustrated and move on. This requires creative leaders willing to adjust career matrices based on an individual’s unique offering.

Conclusion

I have, of course, loved working with absolute experts and jacks-and-janes-of-all-trade-generalists, as well. They’re so good at their crafts, have all the answers, and I've learned a ton from them. But I have also experienced the fun of working with other hybrid professionals, people working at the intersections of their various expertise and experiences. I hope you get to as well because there is a lot to learn from them, too.

If you want to get better at fostering this creativity in your own career or on your team, Dr. Berk’s resources are a great place to start! Another good thing to do would be to start becoming intentional about recording the unique contributions on your team and assessing what each individual has to offer. Then reward that uniqueness!

The app that we’re creating will help you track this sort of thing, as well, and we’re chomping at the bit to get it to you! If you want to be a part of the waitlist for our Beta program, then click below!