INTERVIEW
with "Science's Next Wave" (Singapore)
http://nextwave.sciencemag.org
Full
Interview by Dr. Jennie Wong with
ART's Managing Director. Topic:
Preparing Oneself for an
Ever-Changing and Increasingly
Tight Job Market
Question
1: In
an increasingly technology-driven
economy, is there a trend towards
preference for multi-disciplinary
trained personnel in industries?
Yes, and this
is what people often are referring
to when they say, "I wear a lot of
hats." It used to be that startup
firms, due to lack of resources,
required a single person to fulfill
several managerial or technical
tasks. But now, that culture has
crept into large multinationals, as
well, and it is not uncommon to see
people with multi-disciplinary
experiences or training. In fact,
these people often are those who are
promoted through the management
ranks. For example, in an
electro-optics engineering group, a
person whose training is in Physics
(Optics) might also have a
Mechanical or Electronic Engineering
degree. That person might be
considered a good candidate for
Manager of an Optics group, because
it is thought that such a person
could better see all sides of the
technology, and therefore be able to
relate to all groups in the
department. Now, taking this
further, if that same person chose
at some point to move into a
manufacturing orientation from a
purely R&D role, then that
person might later be seen as a good
candidate for a Director or VP of
Engineering and Operations, and this
as a stepping stone to COO. Now, on
the other hand, if the R&D/
Engineering Manager had a particular
flair for understanding customers
and was a very good communicator,
perhaps that person might go into a
technical marketing role, even
perhaps picking up an MBA, and
advancing later to head a Sales and
Marketing group. In many technology
firms, technical people who become
heads of Sales and Marketing are
often prime candidates for CEO or
CTO roles. In a very large number of
firms, the resumes of the CEO's,
COO's, CMO's and CTO's belong to
people who tend to be
"multi-disciplinary" in their
education, work experiences, markets
or job titles.
This is not
to say that one who wants to focus
on being "the best" in a very
specific field or technology should
derail their dreams simply for the
sake of trends. Multi-disciplinary
backgrounds often help provide more
job opportunities, but it all
depends upon the person. The best
advice that I could give would be
for one to follow one's own
interests and abilities, and always
keep an eye on current job trends.
It's important to keep some sort of
perspective on reality, and to also
know that it is possible also to
become so over-multidisciplinary
that one might be considered "a jack
of all trades and a master of none"
-- that is, a person with so many
varied experiences with thin
experiences in each, and then be
considered less desired in the job
market. "More isn't always
better." Quality is what
really counts.
Question
2: Do
you think that getting an
additional qualification in
another discipline, rather than in
one's primary discipline makes a
graduate more employable?
This greatly
depends upon the field and the
industry. Sometimes an employer
wants to see a very intensive and
narrow specialization, while others
might like to see diverse
experiences. For example, if you are
applying for a scientist job at an
electronics firm that specializes in
signal processing, that company
might not like to see that person
spend time during the interview
talking about their business or
accounting training. They might
wonder if the person's best
interests would be served in that
job in the lab. But, say, if that
same company did research that
required significant customization
and visits to sites around the
world, a suggestion that that person
had both a mind for science and for
business might be very well
received.
Question
3: Is
super-specialization out of favor
in today's increasingly
cross-disciplinary approach in
science and technology?
Clearly there
are more requests for people with a
cross-disciplinary approach, but
there still are needs for really
good "super-specialists," -
the "gurus." Sometimes in fact
an industry might seem to be
recruiting all at once thousands of
people who only know one very narrow
specialty. This is especially true
in the software world. But in a
business and technology environment
that is changing very rapidly, there
are more career risks with hoping
that one's specialization will
forever be in demand.
Question
4: In
your view, what type of skills set
will be in greatest demand in the
next five to ten years?
Since it
would take too much time to discuss
each technical specialization's
innovations and promises, and since
technology-guessing would also
require a crystal ball, I'll
restrict myself to a discussion of
general skills.
Strong
communications skills are and will
continue to be very important for
technical people. In the "old days,"
there was a big chasm between the
"engineer's mind" or the
"scientist's mind" and the "mind of
the businessperson," those people
that scientists and engineers
usually derided as "the talkers."
Those were the days when literally,
technical people and sales and
marketing people rarely interacted,
and they might actually have been
housed in separate buildings or
cities. Scientists in R&D and
marketing people rarely spoke, and
engineers never got to meet
customers. During the '90's these
walls really started to break down
between departments. In
manufacturing industries, it became
clear that product excellence didn't
come about by having sales and
marketing in one place
conceptualizing a product and
telling engineering to design it,
and then for engineering to design
it and to tell manufacturing to make
it, and then for manufacturing to
throw the product over the wall at
the end and to tell the quality
assurance people to "inspect it and
make sure that it be passed on to
shipping." Now, with costs of new
product introductions and R&D
being so high, and sometimes with
razor-thin profit margins, companies
want technical and business people
to work together, to communicate
frequently, to build quality in at
the front end, and to think in terms
of pleasing the customers. It is not
uncommon for engineers in large
companies to be rotated among
marketing, sales or finance groups,
in part to train them to be the
multidisciplinary managers of the
future, but also to provide
immediate technical input to
non-technical departments. In the
case of startups or medium sized
companies, it is now very typical
for technical and business people to
be working together intimately and
constantly. A saleswoman might
herself be an engineer who is
overseeing product design, and an
engineer might be sent out to a
trade show to meet customers or
investors. So as part of being a
technical person, just as you might
need to have taken calculus, you
need now to expose yourself to
making formal and informal
presentations. This could be in a
formal classroom setting, such as
taking a foreign language course,
including conversation modules (not
just recitation of grammar rules),
literature courses (which force you
to read a lot and write a lot), or
going for an MBA. Even
extracurricular activities such as
participating in a debate club,
radio station, or business club
could help expose you to
opportunities to make formal
presentations that will prepare you
for your future career as a
technical person.
International business will become
ever more important, and in the case
of Singapore, an ability to
understand other cultures well will
be more critical than ever. Solid
English speaking and writing skills
will continue to be important, as
will solid Mandarin speaking and
writing skills. And other Asian
languages could be very useful for
business, such as Japanese, Korean
and Cantonese. Bahasa will become
very valuable as Malaysia steps up
as a major technology producer (and
an employer of Singaporeans) and as
Indonesia stabilizes as a major
manufacturing center. Thai and
Vietnamese might also become
particularly useful as their
industrial development moves
forward. In Europe, Africa, the
Middle East and Latin America,
French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic,
Turkish, Hindi, Tamil, German and
Russian each will be spoken by tens
or hundreds of millions of potential
future customers who need to be
reached by expanding Singaporean
businesses. Beyond learning
languages, understanding the
countries that speak these languages
could be very valuable, and that
might mean taking a summer session
in another country or a year abroad.
Not only would the experience be
invaluable for personal enrichment,
but also employers would see a
greater receptivity to working with
colleagues and customers. Not only
in five to ten years, but right now,
many companies are structured
intercontinentally, with design or
research or marketing or
manufacturing groups spread across
many countries.
This trend
will continue, and Singaporean
technical people who can communicate
effectively with neighbors and
people in faraway countries will be
critical to Singapore's success.
Once employed, it might be a very
useful experience to seek an
international posting. And it might
not even be the most desirable thing
to get a posting to Silicon Valley
or Shanghai - where everyone else
might be going. Imagine being the
only Singaporean posted with a
multinational in Brazil or South
Africa? These experiences
could provide you with insight that
most other Singaporeans will never
have, and in the process, you could
make yourself potentially very
valuable to employers. If you are
looking for a marketing job in China
or California, how much competition
do you expect to face? But what if
you are one of only a few in your
field who really knows Latin America
or Africa? In the next five to ten
years onward, Singaporean industry
and employees will face a lot of
competition, particularly in the
easy or obvious markets explored so
far. Soon it will be critical for
Singaporean entrepreneurs to have
employees who really know the entire
world. Simply knowing English and
Chinese will not be enough, because
millions of mainland Chinese will
also be bilingual in English and
Chinese in ten years. It's what you
can do with these language skills
that will matter. And it's important
to always remember that yesterday's
underdeveloped country is today's
industrializing country and
tomorrow's technological country,
and at each stage of development,
they are your potential
customers.
Nowadays
there is a lot of soul-searching
about Singaporean competitiveness,
because the discussions usually end
up going for the line that "everyone
is a competitor," but really, there
are tremendous opportunities for
Singaporeans if one's workforce is
prepared to look for what is not so
obvious. Singapore's potential
customer base is vast, and that only
a tiny percentage of them have been
yet reached. Whether it's stringing
solar arrays across the Sahara to
electrify Africa, or selling
tomorrow's version of multimedia
products to entertain several
billion world teenagers in the next
decade, there are lots of
opportunities for Singaporean
technical people who see the
benefits of communicating with their
customers.
Question
5: Under
what circumstances would switching
fields in early or mid-career be
advisable? How should one prepare
for the ultimate move?
Sometimes you
have to switch fields in early or
mid career and sometimes you just
want to do so. It might be that your
first job out of school was in a
field or company or product area
that you simply dislike. Perhaps it
was an offer that seemed hard to
ignore, or perhaps family or friends
suggested that you take that job. If
you really dislike the situation
you're in, you need to leave it as
soon as possible, because the more
time that you spend in that job, the
greater is the chance that employers
will "type cast" you as being only
good for that field, market or
product. Similarly, if you are stuck
in a job in a field or market or
technology that is dying out or that
is offering few good opportunities
in the place where you want to live,
you need to change jobs before it is
too late. It might seem that the
likely move is to go to a headhunter
to hear about other opportunities,
but since most search firms are paid
by their client companies to find
people currently experienced in the
target job, not just people from
other fields desiring to enter that
field, you might find that
headhunters cannot be of much help.
The solution in that case is to look
for a transition job, which will get
you out of your current situation
and toward your new goal, while
still capitalizing on your strengths
and current experiences. In these
cases, headhunters might be of
valuable assistance, because often
their hardest to fill jobs are for
jobs requiring a person with one
foot in one field, and one foot in
another.
Remember,
always assume that you are competing
with candidates who have done
exactly what the employer needs.
This isn't always true, but it's
better to assume the worst when you
are changing careers. From most
employers' standpoints, no matter
how desirous you are of changing
careers and no matter how
experienced you are in your
departing career, if you have not
done the job required, you are
considered an "entry level"
applicant. So if you have been
working in engineering at a top
computer company for five years and
have a high salary, but you want to
go into sales at a telecom services
company, for example, you are really
competing at the level of a person
fresh out of school with the salary
requirement that is way out of line
for your experience in sales. An
easier approach to entering the
sales world from engineering, for
example, is to seek jobs as a sales
engineer, applications engineer or
technical marketer. An employer then
might really appreciate your
technical training, even if it is in
a different field, and they might
like the fact that you want to be
with customers in a sales
environment. After a few years in
this new role, you might apply
internally for a job in sales, or
you might be able to look elsewhere,
now with some relevant sales
credentials. By taking these
transitional paths, you can avoid
the pitfalls of unemployment or
having to take pay cuts to get
toward your goal. Also, by taking
gradual steps toward your goal, you
can gain actual exposure to your
target career, and you might
actually discover that years ago you
made the right choice going into
engineering or going for your Ph.D.
And because your move wasn't a
drastic one, it still might be
possible to go back to your original
career path, and this time, you
might have even more options because
employers often like technical
people who are risk takers.
Question
6: With rapidly changing economic
trends, widespread restructuring
and job cuts in the private
sectors and an increasingly
competitive job market, how could
one stay relevant and competent?
It is
important to always listen to what
your colleagues are doing at other
companies in your industry, and to
be aware of what might be happening
to them. Sometimes headhunters also
can give some insight into industry
trends in your field. It is typical
to find oneself submerged in one's
daily work, to the point that is
seems that there never is time to
chat with old classmates, to attend
industry conferences, professional
organization meetings, or user group
meetings, but these extracurricular
gatherings might be the best way to
hear specifics about industry
changes that could be affecting your
career even if it isn't obvious at
your workplace. You could be working
at a small company or even a large
company that appears to have their
own unique, almost insulated,
business culture, and your boss
could assure you that "you are a
member of the family and will be
taken care of." But in reality, no
company, no matter how good or
well-funded it is, can remain aloof
forever to world trends in their
industry. Your company might value
you tremendously, but even if they
wish you the best, your particular
on the job training and exposures
might limit you career
opportunities. Remember, most
companies view their employees as
"parts of a whole," as a team that
together are to produce profits. In
this simple formula, few companies
seriously contemplate that by
narrowly defining their employee's
daily duties and experiences, they
could be limiting that person's
professional growth, and ultimately,
creating a person whose skills could
become too narrow, overpriced or
outdated. When many companies decide
to lay off such an employee, they
usually only look at their
justification for laying off a
"square peg for a square hole" in an
increasingly pegless world, rather
than examining their own years of
neglect or short sightedness that
never gave that person a chance to
adapt to the new work environment.
Even if you
love your boss and your boss loves
you, you are the captain of your own
career, and it is necessary to not
assume that your company will train
you or keep your skills up to date
or will pay you what you are really
worth. Try to request that your
employer give you new challenges or
assignments that could help you gain
valuable experiences and exposures.
Other times you might need certain
state of the art equipment,
instruments, or software that might
keep your skills relevant and your
marketability high. Further training
or university studies might be
valuable to keep skills fresh. In
many cases, simply being around
people who know more than you, or
whose professional depth synergizes
well with yours, can help keep you
at your best. This might mean asking
for a transfer to another department
or company location.
In many
cases, however, it simply is
difficult to really grow
professionally, and to keep your
skills up to date, without taking a
job at another company, sooner or
later. In this job
environment, it is difficult for
most people to stay more than five
years at any one company. In fact,
even if one wanted to stay more than
five years, most companies do not
seem to last in their current
configurations for five years.
Mergers, acquisitions, product
sell-offs, technology changes, and
financial shocks, might suddenly
cause an otherwise happy employee to
suddenly be "on the market." That's
precisely why one needs to keep
one's skills high. And that's why
it's always a good idea to have your
best resume up to date and for you
to be willing to consider superior
career opportunities at better firms
even if you have a job. As
headhunters will tell you, "The
worst time to look for a new job is
when you need a job." But that's
another story.
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