The boss

In these change-or-die times, we can all learn a trick from a Peruvian beetle with a pointy head

Scientists recently discovered a remarkable species of dung beetle in Peru. Instead of trundling balls of dung around, the Deltochilum valgum likes attacking millipedes several times its size, decapitating them and devouring their insides. Competition for dung is apparently stiff in the rainforests of Peru, and the beetle has taken advantage of its physiological differences to other dung beetles (a slightly pointier head, ideal for sticking into millipedes) and found somewhat tastier prey.

As a rare example of a scavenger evolving into a predator, D.valgum can teach all of us, employers or employees, a valuable lesson. I'm not suggesting that in difficult times we should decapitate our competitors and eat their insides, but there comes a moment in all our working lives when we just get tired of dung-ball rolling, or a time when the economic climate changes and all of a sudden we are all fighting for the same scraps of dung.

Now is the time to either succumb to the evolutionary process or to start rethinking our options for survival. The little beetle had the advantage of a pointier head than its dung-rolling cousins. What is your advantage over others in the employment market? We are recruiting again and every time, I look at CVs and wonder what value the applicants could add to our business.

If you have exceptional organisational skills, put it in. If you are brilliant at closing sales, put it in. If you make a really good cup of tea, put it in. I often read CVs and think, "Why on earth did they think I needed to know that? What were they doing during those missing years? Why can't they spell 'committed'?" Now is the time to excel, on paper and in person. Tell me, as an employer, what it is that makes you the bee's knees (or beetle's bonce).

The beetle is succeeding because it recognised what made it different and applied it. There is no point waking up and knowing you are unique unless you then go out and use that knowledge and those skills or attributes. Those who can apply their strengths will reap the benefits of making positive changes, of influencing things around and beyond them. They will get recognition from their peers and rewards from their work.

If you are unemployed or underemployed but know your strengths, think about where those strengths could best be deployed. Yes, we all need to pay the bills. We all need to do a bit of dung rolling. But sometimes, to progress, we need to re-evaluate our options.

In some cases, like redundancy, we are forced to re-evaluate our options. In many cases, this is a good thing, although it may not seem it at first. If you lose a job you love, it can be devastating. If the only reason you are working is because you need the cash and can't think of anything else to do, unemployment should be utilised as an opportunity to re-evaluate your skills, experience and opportunities.

Take a look around you. Is everyone else fighting for the same balls of dung? Are you scrabbling desperately to hold on to yours? Ask yourself what your dream meal ticket would be. For D.valgum it may well have been those fat millipedes. In a world where an African-American is the president of the United States, where banks and financial institutions are owned by the taxpayer, where evolution is happening right under our noses, anything can happen. As Louis MacNiece wrote, "World is crazier and more of it than we think/Incorrigibly plural."

It's when things are craziest that opportunities to make changes are most numerous. All you have to do is recognise your strengths, and spot the opportunity to apply them in the context that will make the greatest impact.

• Rebecca Jordan is a co-director and co-founder of

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