Tag Archives: experience

Lessons learnt from hardship








Why having a wider skills set is better!

I was at home in my bed at the weekend nursing a twisted knee which was mind – numbingly painful. As I lay there moaning and groaning in pain. A random thought arose in my mind. That thought was that a person needs absolutely no experience to set up their own business but when they wanted to say apply for a business development position or other, they probably wouldn’t get the job because they had no specific experience. How odd I thought to myself. People who run their own businesses are just as capable as the people who do the regular 9 to 5 jobs of their counterparts. To run your own business, one needs to be pretty decisive and not shy away from doing the dirty work. In many respects you need to be a jack of all trades, and in many cases that is where the lessons one has learnt in life come in handy. You have a pretty big in-tray of work daily as you juggle marketing, sales management, administration, order processing etc. You don’t have specific targets as such but one big moving target all the time which is the product and/or service you are selling.

The global recession has resulted in many business failures because finance has dried up leaving a lot of entrepreneurs to pick up the pieces. So my question is shouldn’t these people be top of the interview pile when they to apply for vacant positions because they have so much to offer?  Does one really need to have specific experience in a specific field to be good at the job, or is experience gained over a certain length of time in a general field more worthwhile? I believe that in a depressed economy, it may be more economical to employ someone who has a wide range of skills rather than one skill. I think time has come when it should be perfectly possible and indeed permissible to have one person performing two functions. People who have a wide ranging skills set are more likely to have the appetite and capacity for learning new skills and taking on additional responsibility.

How to develop interest in something

Imagine a scenario where you have successfully obtained a job after a grueling interview and selection process. You have had two interviews. One with the HR Manager and the other with the Director and have also completed a practical exercise. You answered all the questions with great accuracy and intelligence and aced the practical exercise. The job you have been recruited to do requires knowledge of several industry sectors that you aren’t really familiar with but the employer has decided to put you on their payroll on merit.  It is your first day on the job and your first task is to find out about an industry you know nothing about and have zero interest in.

So what do you do, where do you start? The first thing to do is not to panic. Interest can be developed. You just need to ignite a little spark in you. It is said that it takes around 10,000 hours (416 days) to become an expert in something, and there may even be set backs along the way in your quest to achieve this. Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb failed 10,000 times before he got it right so don’t let your head drop if you fail a few times. So what does the master plan of developing interest in a subject involve? Interest is basically a by-product of experience. Generally, the more experiences we have in life, the more exposure we get to certain things and this in turn helps fuel the appetite for developing our interest in something. Exposure therefore is a pre-cursor to developing interest. What must follow is a pursuit to actively and purposefully develop the interest. Here are a few tips to do just that:

  • Gather information about the subject
  • Immerse yourself in the subject matter
  • Learn some basic knowledge about the subject by devoting 15 minute each day
  • Gradually ramp up the time you spend learning about the subject
  • Enroll on a course if possible – structured learning aids the process of developing interest in a subject because the information is presented in a way that is easily digested by the reader
  • Talk to other people – have discussions about the subject
  • Renew your interest and knowledge in the subject by staying in touch with the literature – sign up to blogs, subscribe to newsletters and RSS feeds, bookmark favorite websites.

In summary, the above points represent simple tips that can be adopted to help us generate interest in a subject and in the long run develop a better understanding of it. All that is needed is a little adjustment on your part and a can-do attitude. If you can do that then you are already half way there.