Divercialization Versus Specialization

It was not so long ago when a job applicant with multiple, diverse skill sets routinely beat out (for a job), those offering a single area of career expertise. Consider, the accountant with a finance and IT background, who seemed to bring so much more value to the table than the one strictly dedicated to "crunching numbers" and "nuts and bolts" accounting. The same has often gone for the salesperson equipped to BOTH sell AND service his or her own client accounts. In this latter case, the need for hiring more sales assistants, in-house salespeople and customer service workers is significantly reduced.

What does "Divercialization" mean?
I coined the term Divercialization to represent the exact opposite of specialization; the ability to excel in a single area. Divercialization is a process that takes place when companies and their hiring managers seek to assemble groups of related and unrelated job responsibilities and duties into single, stand-alone job descriptions. These actions basically allow them to hire fewer people to "cover more bases" (aka: take on more jobs; reducing the overall headcount and staffing budget).

Divercialization was probably born in the early 1990's, when many employers began laying off their workers due to the economics of the time. Globalization was happening and companies reduced headcounts to become more competitive, with cheap labor nations. To compete, businesses were striving to get "lean and mean," They began ascribing to the "New Social Contract," of those times, which took away job security and replaced it with career marketability. Employers would no longer plan to hand out gold watches to their long-term employees. They - instead - had their workers "working like dogs to cut costs;" packaging that as enhanced marketability. This, they promised, was a better way for their employees to gain many additional skill sets to offer their next employer.

This new social contract has carried into subsequent economic downturns and millions of workers have been laid off, only to learn that greater marketability is not an equivalent replacement for marketability. Marketability only has value when employers are hiring, heavily. We've come out of another such downturn that took 8 more years to right itself,

The Age of Employee Specialization
The Great Recession of 2007/08 has since passed into history and many companies currently have backlogs of business to address and internal systems that have deteriorated and must be brought up to date. The promise of quicker business growth has also led many CEO s to take changes and hire more employees, particularly those that can hit the ground running with specialized skill sets.

Workers are said to produce more when they occupy specialized roles, so businesses can offer higher quality products at lower prices. Just keeping up with evolving business needs - these days - does not leave much time for employees to do anything other than get products and services out the door, while improving efficiencies within their own departments and functions..

So, what is the advice offered to those people currently seeking new employment?

You'll need to customize your resume or CV, to closely approximate each employer's hiring requirements.

Custom cover letters, will also need to stress specialization and expertise much more than in past years.

Read all ads and job descriptions carefully and completely. Take brief notes of the "must haves" and carefully consider how you will explain and demonstrate the level of specialization and expertise called for by a particular hiring employer.

Be sure not to throw the "baby out with the bath water," by falsely implying that via requiring more specialization and less divercialization, means that an employer is no longer interested in hiring team players, who are willing to pitch in wherever help is needed. You will likely still be expected to comply with a variety of employer requests.

It is becoming even more likely that - as a specialist - you will have to approach learning and using new and existing skills, differently than ever before. Since it may not be expected for you to do the unrelated jobs of others, to grow and stay sharp may require you to ask your employer how you can help out the company outside of your current job description.

Learning new skills and upgrading old ones may increasingly require more self-financed self-study; off-hours and online schooling; and side-work (moonlighting), than in the recent past.
Don't get left behind

The world of work is a continuous swinging pendulum that is subject to redirecting itself at any time and without any notice. As job seekers and careerists, Everyone must stay on top of trends and figure out ways to more easily adapt to them. Unless there is a strong mentoring presence in our lives, we are the only people most responsible for our own individual success.

Even with unemployment nearing full employment, there are still far too many good people long out of work and still waiting for a job offer that may never come. Why? because they have not prepared themselves, adequately, for the current needs of business and industry.

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Author Bio: Marc LeVine is currently employed by Edgewood Properties as its full-time corporate recruiting specialist; charged with building an employment function from the bottom up, staffing the company and developing and administering full-cycle employment policies and procedures.


 By Marc LeVine


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