In this day and age, the shelf life of many skills is short-lived. Earlier, you could learn just about any skill, master it and you could have a flourishing career of 20 to 30 years. For better or for worse, things are changing now. Being a specialist at this time is not viable. By the time you finally master a skill, the world has already moved on to another, leaving you hanging and stuck in a loop with no end. Earlier specializing in one skill could win you accolades and whatnot! But now the technology sector has become highly volatile, rendering the most popular skills of the past obsolete. So, it is about time we part ways with the specialist mindset and become a generalist. | Tech Career in Your Dream Tech Company
A generalist attitude with a T-shaped skillset could be the recipe for success and a thriving tech career. A T-shaped skillset is a metaphor describing the skills of an individual - the vertical line represents the expertise, discipline, and knowledge of a particular field, and the horizontal line represents the cross-discipline competencies. This makes you intensely valuable to a company, as with these skills you are displaying yourself as being highly adaptable and thus becoming irreplaceable.
Many companies are now employing a skills-first mindset. They are shifting their heavy focus from degrees to now having the skills required for a job. It's a win-win for both the employer and the employee because the employer doesn't have to spend a lot of resources on training, and the employee benefits from having a clear-cut idea of what is expected out of them and what they need to do to achieve it.
If you aim for a role in a big tech company, having a well-rounded skillset with both hard and soft skills is your cocktail for success.
Here are some guidelines to help you develop an invincible T-shaped skillset to take you a step closer to your dream career:
Create Running Notes of Everything You have Learned/learning
Tech is a vast field, and the trends keep changing. Some trends are just fads that fade away quickly but may have some overlapping principles with other technologies, so having organized notes of everything you have learned so far in the same place could be the best thing you can do. This book or notes could be your holy grail for your tech career, your crash course for all things tech.
Gain More Experience
Your path to your dream career or role may not be always linear. You need to have quite a bit of relevant experience under your belt to have your dream job and there’s no way around it. So early on in your career, don’t lose hope over not having things going your way and focus on gaining real-world experience and learning new things as much as you can. So, when you finally have the role of your dream, you are well equipped to perform it and be the best at it.
Innovative & Proactive Approach
A proactive innovator - someone who disrupts rather than being disrupted, will be in a much more advantageous position. Innovation and a proactive approach will take you far and keep you relevant for a long, not to mention the big bucks you will be earning.
Taking Informed Risks
Calculated risks bring you one step closer to glory. Tech companies appreciate employees who are willing to take calculated risks, put themselves out of their comfort zones, and learn and grow at all costs.
Artificial Intelligence can do everything but it still can’t remotely match the creativity and original thinking of that of a human mind. So, engaging your creative muscles will help you stand out. As the popular saying goes: “Prevention is better than cure”. To prevent going out of business and becoming irrelevant, try pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and engaging in continuous learning to maintain your pace and status in the ever-evolving world of technology.
(Author:- Karishma is a content writer at Techdoquest. She gives youthful and refreshing perspectives on whatever she writes about.)