Conseil Carrière : Comment évoluer quand on est trop généraliste ?

Good morning my friends. Someone contacted me on the WhatsApp number I provided and asked the following. I am a generalist in it. I am someone who came to it after a career change, a successful career change. The proof is that sometimes it works. But today, after having worked in development for a while, then he worked in data, and suddenly he has this feeling that his career is a bit fragile in the sense that he does not have a particular specialty. He is a generalist, which means he knows a lot of things, but he is not exceptional in any particular field. So he is asking himself questions, what should I do? Another follow up question is, should I go into management? That is also a tricky question. I will answer it towards the end of the video. So there you have it. First of all, when I did job interviews with people, I did interviews that are called technical. That means I was the one who asked, or I was among those who asked technical questions to people. So one of the big problems with some IT profiles is that they are too specialized too early. This means, for example, we have a typical case. We have people who want to do cyber security. They have no idea about systems management. They have never done six admin jobs, never done any development, they don't know how to write a line of code, they have never connected to a cloud, nor to a Linux machine, nor to a Windows server, nor anything at all. They don't know how to manage a switch, nor to manage a router, etc. Nothing at all, none of that. But they have sometimes done cyber security in schools for more or less long periods of time and they arrive. So the problem we had with this type of profile was that they were specialized too early and they are incapable of working in a multidisciplinary team. Because that's the idea. When you arrive in a company, you are in a situation, in a concrete real life situation, you're dealing with a network engineer, an iba, a database administrator, a cloud architect. You're dealing with a bunch of people. So you're not supposed to replace them, right? Everyone has their own job, everyone has their own scope of responsibility. Yes, but you're supposed to work with them. You're supposed to be able to interact and understand what they're doing. So that's where it gets interesting. For the person who wrote this message. Actually, here's the thing. I prefer someone who's a generalist today even. Even if they say they're not excellent at everything, but they have a good foundation, they have a solid foundation than someone who specialized too early. Now here's why we're hiring you. And I'm going to ask you a question that I often ask during interviews and that many recruiters may ask in a slightly different way. And I'm going to tell you what I expected as an answer. The idea I'm with the person putting in the. In an office, he has bills facing the room. And I say to him, do you see the guy in the corner over there? Well, when you have a problem with a Windows server, I've never met someone in my life who's as good. There's nothing he doesn't know about Windows servers. You can give him the most complicated thing, a RAID partition that's been corrupted and the server boots up, giving you blue stuff. And in master records that have to be repaired by hand and things like that. I'm talking to you about very serious things. He can do it.

Okay? Okay.

You see, the other guy over there isn't necessarily good at everything.

Okay.

On the other hand, in networks. In networks, I mean, if he can't solve your problem, there's no one else. Don't try to Google it or anything. If it's not him, it's no one else.

Okay?

And now here's the question. And so if we recruit you, if you're going to join our team, why would we approach you? When would we approach you? When would we. Are we going to consult you? And so what I expect is a response. I expect as a response to have a person. Here we are under the weather, you see, it can be calm and then suddenly it can explode into a storm of wind and rain and so on. The weather is quite, quite treacherous here. So just quickly, in the description of the video, in the link attached at the weekend, you will see who the partners of this channel are. They are based in France and they have helped quite a few people that I have sent to them to find a job. So people who are looking for work and you look on their site, people who have gone through them, who have taken their support, have been recruited by big companies, Renault, Canal plus and so on, EDF and all that. And also under certain conditions, their support is covered by France Travail, so they comply with a support charter and all that. So there you have it. Very, very square people in the description of the video. Now, the answer to what I expected was that I want to feel like I have someone who is, okay, I have someone who is a generalist. That's the first thing. We like people who are generalists.

Okay?

So for the guy who asked the question, yes, it's great to be a generalist. That means you have a good background, you have expertise that is built on something solid. Now here's the other. Are you a cross specialist? So to him and to all the people who are generalists, during your career as a generalist, you have discovered something that you have a good connection with, right? You have touched on something that suddenly becomes easy for you, right? For example, personally, I was on Linux, on the network. These are things that I liked. These are things that I appreciated. These are things that I was good at, that I invested time in. I also spent money on certifications, I took exams. So after a while I developed a very strong credibility on that. So the recruiter, this is what he wants to see. He wants to see this. You can imagine I'm not going to give you a drawing, but you can.

Imagine a curve, okay?

A knowledge curve that is quite broad, that covers a lot of things. So here you are, the generalist. But in some places there are spikes, right? In one place, it may be enough for one place, or in two places you have spikes. Spike there, spike further. So that means that not only are you a specialist somewhere, okay? You are very good at something, but we can also work with you. Plus you understand us. Plus, if we call you into a multidisciplinary team and there is a project where there is a problem, where there is a conversation with a client and it touches on a lot of things, right? We are here, we are talking today we have a deployment of such a solution. It is hybrid. There will be a part that will be on premises, there will be a part that will be on the cloud. We will have a line that we will draw between the two. We will install a vpn, going to put a firewall here, we're going to put an IPS there. We'll also have a problem with the database. You don't need to be an expert in everything, but you need to understand what we're talking about. And you need to integrate all of this and be able to integrate yourself as a professional in this process. So there you have it. So what's left for you today is to specialize, okay? What's left for you is to specialize. So it's. I have no worries about you, but you have to specialize. Secondly, did I. He said to me, shouldn't I go into management? Listen, this is a very controversial question. I can't give you a clear cut answer and tell you, yes, go into management, or no, don't go into management. Let me tell you A bit about the problem. First of all, most of the time you don't go into management because you want to. You go into management because someone else wants you to. You become a manager in a company. A company is not a democracy. You become a manager because someone decided to, and you don't become a manager because someone decided to. So if your company offers clear, documented, transparent paths to management, I would say why not? But in general, it's not like a card that you have on the table. You say, well, I can't progress in my field, I'm too general, I'll become a manager. No, it's not always something that's available to you. It's not something that's always on the table. You see, that's the first point. The other point, even if you become a manager because you have a path that leads you, it's not something that will necessarily give you more job security. Do you know what I mean? Why? Because I also. Look, there are a lot of companies that realize that they are too top heavy, as they say. They have too many layers of management. No, I've seen companies, Honestly, you have three people working and you have five or six layers of managers above 1, 1, 2, 3, 4. And they're there to sign. You have to write them down to approve. You have to get their authorization and then get the authorization of the one above. And sometimes you have two layers. You have two layers of management who don't agree. There's one who says yes, the other one tells you no, and so on. So these companies are paralyzed by these layers of management and which cost a lot of money and nothing gets done. So today there are many companies that realize that they are very cumbersome in relation to this. And the managers also jump. They can say that, well, they want to reduce the management layer by 30%, so you can jump too. But you tell me, if you are an executive, you can also have your job relocated to India. I mean, there is no security, there is no recipe. I don't want to give you a recipe. Say, this one is perfect. On the other hand, if you can't go into management, I can perhaps give you another option. It is to specialize technically and become very good. Because the better and more specialized you are, the less likely you are to jump of getting fired. But that can happen in the case of a redundancy plan. Or sometimes it's half the company that leaves, right? I mean, it doesn't depend on who's good, who's bad. I mean, they'll say, okay, we're going to cut half the staff. And sometimes it's not really. There's no clear logic. So you can jump even if you're very good, but on the other hand, if you're very good, even when you jump, you'll be able to find work more easily. That's what's interesting, you know what I mean? So being good, being excellent either makes you, so to speak, indispensable in your company. So at that point, well, it's solid, or what's happening that it's going to. It's going to allow you, to allow you. If in spite of everything you get, you get affected by a redundancy plan, it allows you to jump to another, to another company without too much. Without too much trouble. In any case, that's it. My friends, thank you for listening so far. It's been a pleasure to be here with you. Also, in the last video, I showed you how I record an audible. It was important for me to show you that. Do you know why? Because I'm going to prepare my books in this audible format. The Toxic Book, among others. I think I'll start with this book. It was important for me to show you that this is something I do, huh? Because there are a lot of authors or others who will use automatic voices, robot voices or voices that clone their own voice and everything. And honestly, personally, when I buy an audible or I buy a sample or I take a sample and I listen to it and I come across robotic voices, generally I don't go any further, I stop right away. So that's why I wanted to show you that it will be a real voice with its qualities, with its faults, with sometimes its variations, sometimes its hesitations, right? It can happen, but it will be a real, authentic human voice. There you have it, my friends. I'll remind you one last time of the link to Cus in the description of the video. And I'll see you tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. See you soon.