Richard Horswell brought up a subject which is dear to my heart yesterday. On receiving his weekly alert of people who have joined or renewed Skillfair he wrote in saying
My answer to him was that I find people generally will look at the skills lists as things they can do or have done in the past whereas I firmly believe that we should choose these skills judiciously. Only choosing those that we want to receive alerts of projects and tenders of. Background skills and what we have done in the past that gives us the gravitas to complete our current tasks can be explained in the profile summary. Doing this will take out the element of consultants looking like "jacks of all trades" and keeping us all as experts rather than generalists.
There are those who genuinely do have all these multi faceted skills available but they tend to be consultants who represent associates so obviously their needs will be wider, but again an explanation in the profile summary that they are one of three / twenty / a hundred will be helpful to clients searching for the right person for their needs.
Of coourse Richard can simply unsubscribe from the alerts but then he would be missing out on hearing about people that he may benefit from knowing about. As to Market Research not being a specialism I think it definitely is and isn't to be devalued.
"I'm wondering whether I would be better off not receiving these, and I'll tell you why. Firstly it worries me how many multi-talented people we have on the panel ! Seriously, I ask myself how some individuals can have so many specialisms....If I look below for people with Market Research skills (my specialism) I find experts in utilities, police, IT, performance reviews, OR, budget management, website design, banking, campaign planning and much more. And this is just a small sample of members. Perhaps MR is not really a specialism at all, but something lots of people feel they can handle...."
My answer to him was that I find people generally will look at the skills lists as things they can do or have done in the past whereas I firmly believe that we should choose these skills judiciously. Only choosing those that we want to receive alerts of projects and tenders of. Background skills and what we have done in the past that gives us the gravitas to complete our current tasks can be explained in the profile summary. Doing this will take out the element of consultants looking like "jacks of all trades" and keeping us all as experts rather than generalists.
There are those who genuinely do have all these multi faceted skills available but they tend to be consultants who represent associates so obviously their needs will be wider, but again an explanation in the profile summary that they are one of three / twenty / a hundred will be helpful to clients searching for the right person for their needs.
Of coourse Richard can simply unsubscribe from the alerts but then he would be missing out on hearing about people that he may benefit from knowing about. As to Market Research not being a specialism I think it definitely is and isn't to be devalued.
8 comments:
This an interesting point.
Perhaps we get "pigeon-holed" by our most recent expertise. This may be just a simple human trait. At the same time, it could be that it is difficult to demonstrate expertise in more than 2-3 distinct specialisms.
But then again if the given specialisms are unrelated to a certain degree it would still be an unconvincing statement of capabilities.
I think in the final analysis I would agree that whilst it is tempting to get as much revenue in as possible there is the risk of limiting ones chances by an inadvertent "handyman" image :-)
Thanks for instigating this dilemma Angela which I have been losing sleep in trying to balance since I became "independent" four years ago as I am one of those guilty of listing an arm length of business and management skills to my name.
I guess my justification is that often those searching for help do not themselves know the kind of skills they need and therefore use the wrong category.
Another reason is that my background is in managing and advising small companies which forced me to develop and apply a broad range of business skills that I am keen to transfer to other businesses.
Finaly one of my main motivations for working as a freelance consultant is to continue to learn and develop new skills and apply them in different contexts. This drives me to broaden my search.
However, I do agree with both comments above that this strategy has not been as effective as I would like and I should finally start to narrow down my services and focus on fewer business sectors. It is the how that I have still got to work out!
Perhaps I should search for someone on Skillfair to help me?!
An appropriate debate at a useful juncture in my own consultancy career. Like 'Anonymous' - why don't people leave their names - I come from a generalist background, and believe that ought to be an advantage, giving an overall perspective not necessarily found amongst specialists.
Accordingly, my skills profile shows the range of subjects I dealt with over fifteen years at Board and Executive level within medium-sized businesses. I had believed that one can gain 'expertise' through marrying research and practice resulting in successful execution of data-driven or qualitative reasearch. Much as many (but not all) consultants do, especially in the SME arena.
However, clients want specific skills AND specific instances where experience has been gained, and generalists are less able to produce those instances by the very nature of their background and generalism (?).
The question might be why clients would want generalists, perhaps scoring 7 out of 10 in the expertise charts, when they can find experts scoring 9/10 with definitive experience.
Perhaps the issue is about understanding the results of Skillfair in identifying the opportunities available. It seems to me (after a short two month period, admittedly) that posted opportunities fall into two main categories: those for specific requirements or projects which require particular skills; and those requiring general consultancy support, and thus might match both my and Anonymous's profile, COMBINED WITH a size of organisation which allows applicants to show the wide range of skills held WITHIN the organisation.
In summary, I think I need to identify those areas (Martin's two or three) where I can demonstrate expertise, and reduce the number of project notified which frankly will not be applicable given the track-record requirements. That strategy might also prove the concept that 'less is more'...
The hope, of course, is that one can use the expertise to interest clients in the more generlaist skills held.
Now, off to my profile page!
John
Interesting comments. You can of course combine the two by having a finely tuned profile and then undertaking occasional searches for projects that are on the periphery of your expertise. Also if you are successful in winning a project won't it be great added value for the client to find out that not only can you satisfy his need for this particular project but also help him in other ways which he can then contact you about in the future, thus introducing your additional skills in a far more subtle way?
I have to say, when I get an email from Skillfair giving details of new members, the interminable list of skills shown against some names totally switches me off. I simply don't read through them - which is exactly what that person doesn't want. Personally, I think selecting 2 or 3 key skill areas has got to be the way forward.
Some good points about the consultant alerts - we're looking at allowing people to select their 'key skills' to be shown on the alert rather than listing everything - which should make the alerst more relevant and interesting.
I see the lengthy lists of specialisms displayed by some as a complete turn off. I worked for 14 years as a newspaper reporter, I know lots of journalists and the vast majority would admit that they have no other specialisms than asking questions, spotting and writing a good story. Yet, I am led to believe by the long lists of specialisms displayed on Skillfair that some people are experts in numerous fields.
I think there's possibly an issue here about how the skills lists on Skillfair are presented. We use the same list for people to say which projects they're interested in as we display on the profiles.
I've changed the consultant alert for now to use the start of people's profilesa s I think this is more interesting and meaningful but there may also be scope for ranking the skills in some way, just don't want to make the process of adding them too complicated!
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