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.
