How Pursuing Multiple Interests Makes You More Employable

Episode Transcript

Sari: [00:00:00] Got skills? Of course you do, but can you talk about the skills you have and how you use them? Whether it’s with your cousin, your potential new boss, or the mentor who has 20 plus years in your dream role, skills talk is hard. But it doesn’t have to be.

Michelle: As a spin-off to the Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby podcast, each week on Got Skills? the Skills Baby team is taking a deep dive into a key takeaway from an episode of the podcast, focused on actionable ways for professionals to scale up.

Sari: I’m your host Sari Weinerman, and with me is Michelle Smith. We’re here to help you breeze through the next family reunion interview or mentorship opportunity by better understanding the skills you have and how to talk about them.

Michelle: This week, we’re diving into Season 1 Episode 2 of Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby.

In this episode, Kelly speaks with Tony Tsai, Director of Leadership [00:01:00] Development at University of Utah School of Medicine, about the changes to higher education that he feels would most benefit students. Tony believes that while every student chooses a degree to pursue, they are still responsible for their own skillset.

It is not enough to just take the classes offered in your program. You really have to take command of your own education, pursue things that interest you, and get a well-rounded exposure to different areas of study.

Sari: This is something I’ve thought a lot about, especially having received my higher education from a liberal arts college. The liberal arts setting inherently allowed me to get a very well-rounded education.

I was the theater major taking neuroscience for fun, and my dance classes were a combination of things like biology of movement and anatomy and kinesiology, along with ballet and modern and jazz. This type of variety is a big part of why I’m so in touch with my own skills story. I recognized very early on that I wanted to study [00:02:00] outside of the confines of just one program or major.

Michelle: That is so awesome and so valuable, but it’s also something that most students don’t think to seek out. The way most degree programs work, most students are prescribed a course of study. Taking one or two classes they hate, so they can take those one or two classes they love. But what happens when those students have more autonomy to hand-select every class they want to take, rather than being forced along a particular path.

Tony has some very clear opinions on how higher ed should be structured to support this sort of model. He says,

Tony Tsai: I think higher ed is going to be under a lot of pressure in the future. Part of it is because what does a higher ed prepare you to do exactly? You can’t just say, “well, the university is going to teach me everything I need to know. I just need to get a degree. And then boom, I get a job”.

That’s not the case as much anymore. I would just say you’re still responsible for your skillset and don’t expect that somebody else is going to spoonfeed [00:03:00] skills to you, there are certain things that you’re going to want to learn.

The further along you get in your education, what’s nice about it is that you can choose the things that you want because it’s no longer like you’re in third grade and they make you do stuff. You’re sort of like your mid twenties, you get to choose the type of skills that you want to develop. So that’s to me exciting.

Sari: I love that Tony acknowledges how you can no longer just get a degree and expect to be employed. That’s simply not how it works these days.

In every single course of study for every industry, you spend two to four years studying for a career that’s also changing during that time. Often, you’re following a curriculum that was built years and years before, making it that much more behind what’s actually happening at any present moment.

That’s not to say that these learnings aren’t valuable, but it is to say that higher education does not automatically draw a direct line [00:04:00] to employement.

Michelle: Exactly. Higher education is a wonderful foundation for those who are lucky to receive it. However, it is better to look at higher education as the continuation for your education, not the final destination before joining the “real world”.

Personally, I like to think of higher education as a training ground for life’s more durable skills, like how to think critically manage time and tolerate the tension that comes with multiple concurrent deadlines.

Sari: Exactly. Which is why concentrated study, like what you experienced while pursuing a degree is a perfect time to both generalize while narrowing your focus.

For instance, if you decide to go for the pre-med track, you should absolutely still dabble in that archeological class that just seems super cool to you. The more you pursue unique interests, the more you become a niche candidate in the future.

Who seems more hireable to you? The pre-med student who [00:05:00] took only the prerequisites for med school or the one who took those prereq’s, but also took that law class because they love true crime or maybe an acting class because they love doing their high school shows.

Michelle: I love true crime and I see exactly what you mean. There is so much value in varying your education and pursuing multiple interests because it helps you have more tools in your skills toolkit. Jay talks about students who did just that.

Tony Tsai: I get to be inspired by a lot of students who do very unique things with their career.

One of the people I had mentioned was a person who studied architecture before became a surgeon. And he came up to me and says, you know what? I kind of really like architecture, what should I do? Because everybody else is telling me to give that up because you’re in our surgery now. And I said, well, if you gave that up, you’re kind of giving up a certain unique part of you. I believe that if you keep that part of you, which is very interested in design and architecture, you will find that [00:06:00] later on, there’ll be an opportunity for you to merge two of them.

And then as you merge the two things, it will make you different from other people. And then therefore, then you’re just not just another surgeon. You’re kind of the surgeon that knows how to design buildings. And so in his case, he’s the chief medical officer for a major architecture firm.

Michelle: Wow. What an inspiring story and such a cool way to look at developing your own skillset.

But Sari, what if like you and I, you’ve already gone through school and got a concentrated degree? What if you didn’t get to merge two or more paths? What can you do now to widen your skill set?

Sari: That is an excellent question with a few different answers. One is, I bet if you took time to really dig into every credit you pursued on getting that degree, you’d noticed that you developed more than just the skills associated with your projected career path.

That said, every job that you’ve had since getting that degree, [00:07:00] whether it was retail, in an office, an internship, you name it, has added variety to the education you already received. On top of that, there are so many amazing online courses available. Many even for free, that you can take advantage of right now to help broaden your skill set.

Michelle: That is so true. And often many employers will actually reimburse you for taking paid classes because they to understand how your continued learning makes you a valuable employee for them. The bottom line is that the best thing we can all do is keep learning in any way we can. Tony closes the episode by explaining the three ways you can continue learning.

The first is individually by reading and thinking. The second, is by training with a mentor or someone else that you can learn from. And the third is by practicing, getting out there and putting your learnings to the test.

Sari: Yes. And a great way to get practice is to take [00:08:00] the initiative right now in the very job you already have.

Maybe you’re currently working as a barista in a local coffee shop, but you’re interested in learning more about marketing and communication. Take a course on it, find educational podcasts on the subject, or follow a thought leadership blog. Then, bring your new learnings to your employer and pitch taking over the social media account one day a week, or starting a company blog.

Michelle: I love that making opportunities for yourself based on the many interests you have. It’s the perfect way to not only hone the skills you have, but to develop new ones as well. Remember, you’ve got skills already and you can always get more too.

Sari: Thanks for joining us on this episode of Got Skills? The podcast where we explore how to understand the skills you’ve got and more importantly, how to talk about them.

Got Skills? is a Growth Network Podcast production.

To learn more about Got [00:09:00] Skills? head to skillsbaby.com/gotskills

Find out what we’re up to, the latest news in the skills world, and what events are coming up that you should keep an eye on. Last but not least, make sure to follow Growth Network Podcasts on LinkedIn for more awesome shows to add to your podcast feed. We’ll see you next time on Got Skills?