Build a Diverse Skill Set, You Funky Badass

There’s plenty of voices on the interwebs (and in real life) urging you to build a diverse skill set. Which sounds just as bland as other common pieces of advice like “Don’t care what people think!” or “Do what you love for a living!” That’s really nice in theory, Helen, but I’ll need more specifics than that. Not only that, I’ve had roaring success by doing the opposite of those two latter phrases. As a marketer, it is literally my job to care about what people think. And for most folks, doing what they love rarely translates to something lucrative.

Do these pushes to being well-rounded and having a diverse skill set similarly fall short? The answer is: they can. Most jobs aren’t necessarily looking for someone with a lot of skills; they want someone who’s an expert in one particular skill to fill some knowledge gap they have. Unfortunately, in most cases it works against you if you’re more of a generalist than a specialist. This is especially true in any of those fast-paced environments you see touted throughout the corporate world. Teams in damn near every organization out there don’t have one person doing everything; they have one person working on Task A, another on Task B, and so forth.

You see this on executive board with different people specializing in finance, or operations, or marketing. Something as different as a heist movie will show the same thing: one person hacks the security system/bank vault, one person looks out for guards, one person’s the getaway driver. It just makes sense for a group to split their goal into different tasks and have each person do the task best suited to them. Someone who tries doing a little bit of everything will be stretched thin at best. Or stressed out of their mind juggling everything that needs to be done.

In your overall career, you don’t want to be a generalist.

Generalists aren’t the ones making the big bucks. 🙁

I still stand by that assessment: it’s better to go niche at one thing than try to cover everything else. Except when your diverse skill set is diverse in the right way. As in: diverse in a way that serves your interests and maximizes your income potential.

The Ancient, Legendary “Diversifying Your Skillset” Precedent

Knowing your diverse skill set must complement each other is part of ancient wisdom. One of my favorite Old World stories comes from Irish mythology, in which the hero Lugh wants access to the court of the Tuatha Dé Danann (basically the ancient Irish pantheon of gods). Lugh can only get into the court if he has a certain skill that benefits the king.

“Okay, bet,” he said, but in ancient Irish terms. “I’m a great smith.”

“We have a great smith already,” the gatekeeper replies. “That won’t grant you access.”

“I’m also an awesome swordsman.”

“Which we already have.”

“And physician.”

“Taken care of.”

“Historian. Harpist. Sorcerer. Champion!”

“Check, check, check, aaaaaaaaand check.”

They run down the list of everything Lugh can do; every single thing Lugh is good at is already taken care of by somebody else.

“Alright,” Lugh finally says, “I see how it is. I got just one question then about the members of the court.”

“Ask away.”

And here is Lugh’s question that breaks through it all and grants him courtly membership, despite getting rejection after rejection:

“Is there anyone in the Tuatha Dé Danann that possesses all of those skills at the same time like I do?”

And that gave them pause, because the answer was:

No, and it would be incredibly useful to have someone like that.

Having specialists and experts are worth their weight in gold, but having someone who specializes in multiple things can revolutionize everything as they know it. A great swordsman, who is also a smith, can work freaking wonders by crafting a weapon they know works best in a parley. A great harpist, who is also a historian, can craft incredible melodies about the historically accurate tales of old. And a great physician, who is also a sorcerer, can take treating illnesses to the next level by integrating MAGIC with the healing process.

Now, obviously you’re not building a skill set to earn a seat with the Tuatha Dé Danann. But you do want to build a diverse skill set that leads you to your goals and dreams. Odds are you have a primary skill set already for your current role, or at least going to school for one.

Be warned: this doesn’t come with much concrete guidance.

Bad news is this: I can’t give you specific skills to add because you deserve better than bland, general advice. That means you need to put in the work to identify what skills to learn before you even begin learning them. With that said, I’ve got good news for you too: because you only need answer to yourself, your diverse skill set can include any skill you want as long as you yourself are cool with it. Especially if it’s weird, or otherwise outside the norm. If you can justify to yourself why it’s a good skill to have, then it’s worth it.

That reasoning needs to have more oomph behind it other than “it sounds good, I guess” or anything that involves a tone of indifference or resignation. Gaining that skill won’t serve you as well as it could if you don’t really care about it. Which means, also, that your reasoning being “it’s really cool!” or “I’m super interested in this and it makes me happy” are BOTH super valid reasons!

Build a Diverse Skill Set for Your Career AND Passions

Man, very few people have the exact same interests and tastes in everything under the sun. That’s a good thing, because we need that diversification in every facet of life. It’s how humanity has progressed as far as it did and how it’s added most of the knowledge we have around life and our reality. In your own life, you’ll want a diverse skill set that has overlap with things beyond just your day job. You might not be able to “do what you love” (because, hello, you want a job that pays big) but incorporating what you’re passionate about into your job leads to you – and your bank account – being more fulfilled than ever before.

It can also bring you incredible opportunities you can’t fathom at this point in time. One of my favorite examples of this from the 21^st century comes from a random hairstylist in Baltimore. Janet Stephens has been dressing hair for decades for thousands of people who come into her salon. Her interest in hairstyles led her in solving a huge historical mystery in how a certain ancient Roman hairstyle was done. Now, this might surprise you, but historians in general aren’t generally known for their skill with hairbrushes and bobby pins. This led them to writing off some elaborate hairstyling techniques as “just being wigs” because they didn’t understand how else those updos could be created.

That is, until Stephens came into the picture. In between her basement “hair lair” and noticing some Latin mistranslations on the hairdos, she figured out exactly how these ladies of old actually did their hair and literally rewrote history by doing so. Now she’s well-known as a hairstyle archeologist published in prestigious journals, and has an awesome YouTube channel showcasing more styles through the ages.

She combined her passion with her career and made a worldwide name for herself in the process.

While we need experts and specialists, we also need to do our best to avoid limiting ourselves. Experts by definition entrench themselves in their subject, knowing everything about it; if you let it, that can lead to limiting yourself and sacrificing doing anything new with it. In the case of those ancient Roman historians, they worked with what they knew, which (at least in this case) didn’t involve checking possible translation issues or consulting modern-day tradespeople.

Finding ways to use every part of your diverse skill set is the way to enhance everything you do. I very much include myself as further proof on this. At my current company there are plenty of phenomenal marketers. I’m no slouch in the marketing world (despite what my Instagram might suggest) but my coworkers are freaking rock stars at what they do. There are also incredible coders in the engineering department who can write tight, sleek code I can only aspire to. Thing is, I am one of two of the only people who has skills in both marketing and in coding. Having those in my diverse skill set makes me a very valuable asset when our emails and other marketing pages/communications/tool are built using HTML.

Best of all, I didn’t even originally learn HTML to help me in my career. I started learning it in high school solely because I thought it was cool, and that it might be useful to know someday. And here we are a decade on, with that part of my wheelhouse serving me excellently.

How to Actually Build Your Diverse Skill Set

Sure, figuring out what smarts might make your resume pop has an element of luck involved. But not that much luck. Sometimes, recognizing which new skills will complement your old ones are easy. Understanding, say, the basics of psychology will do wonders for your thesis rooted in sociology. Others you wouldn’t expect, like the hairstylist solving something ancient Roman historians couldn’t. I wouldn’t have expected my HTML skills to have a bearing on a marketing career, but life is full of surprises. Knowing this I recommend taking a wide swath of what interests you/you’ve got a skill in and chucking it into the Skills section of your LinkedIn profile. You never know who will need your particular, unique skillset down the line, so don’t limit yourself by showcasing on certain talents or expertise.

To get more skills, check in with yourself on what you’re willing to acquire. Marketers can pick up certifications in several needed fields via HubSpot Academy and Google Academy. Coders have a slew of useful courses for teaching the basics of other languages, which can be huge if you need to know those two for a particular job. Salespeople might pick up an interest in a particular industry, learn the ins and outs of it, and display their knowledge to break into said industry. It’s related to Part 1 of Getting a High Pay Job, which is all about doing the research to target the roles you want. Picking up new skills is the same thing: target which skills you want to acquire, whether for pleasure or for professional advancement.

This doesn’t have to mean ignoring any skills you have now either.

Any one of the skills you’ve honed from your hobbies or interests may prove useful later. Look again at Lugh, whose Irish nickname Samildánach literally translates to “equally skilled in tons of arts”. After entering court the King, Nuada, pegged him as a game-changer in their war against a hellish race called the Fomorians*. And he was. Did that mean his “unrelated” skills like poetry went wasted? Hell no – you think military commanders wouldn’t benefit with having excellent word play expertise? That kind of thing is unmatched when it comes to negotiating treaties, rallying the troops, and producing propaganda that best serves his interests. Come on.

The Greatest Skill You Have in Your Wheelhouse

If you really have no idea where to start, there is one skill you can use right now to increase your income potential. You are not allowed to scoff at me for suggesting this because this skill is the reason why I’ve found academic, social, and career success. While also using it as a healthy stress reliever and a form of escapism. In your case this skill can do all of that and much more.

That skill?

Reading.

Being able to read is one of the most underrated skills in modern society. You can’t drive, earn a high school diploma/college degree, follow a written recipe, or choose a dish at most restaurants without knowing how to read what’s in front of you. It’s considered a basic skill, which often causes it to be dismissed instead of being utilized to knock your net worth out of the park.

Don’t just take my word for it, either: reading is what Mark Cuban attributes to his initial career success. Before he was a billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks he was a software salesman. And how did he become one of the best in roughly six months?

He read the frickin manual, that’s how.

Turns out not a lot of people ever bothered to RTFM (read the frickin’ manual), so people started really thinking I knew my stuff…. [but] everything I read was public. Anyone could buy the same books and magazines. The same information was available to anyone who wanted it. Turns out most people didn’t want it.

Mark Cuban

Remember that oft-cited phrase “Showing up is half the battle”?

This is what they mean.

In my case I could start reading up on marketing news: what the hottest marketing trends are, which marketing companies are doing interesting stuff, which companies are expanding their offices (and therefore hiring) and so on. This is a skill you definitely have if you’ve gotten this far into the article. See what using that will do in your own career, if you need a starting point.

Building a Diverse Skill Set: Necessary in All Situations

Diversifying your skillset worked in ancient times. It works in modern times. It works for modern-day people working with ancient times. You get the picture.

Take some inspiration from the High Paying Job series and put in some brainstorming/research into what other skills you can add to the set. Start acknowledging the skills you have outside of work and see how you might be able to incorporate them in your 9-5. If you’re well and truly lost, put your reading skills to good use and start hitting up the news in your industry/career niche. Keeping your mind open as you do so leads you to finding new opportunities and making your own luck. That’s why striving for a diverse skill set is so important, and how building it enriches your future far beyond what you could’ve guessed. What’s your future going to hold after learning these new talents?

Cover image credit: Akin via Unsplash

*If anyone with Hollywood connections is reading, THIS WOULD MAKE AN EXCELLENT TV SERIES. Just FYI.