Speaking the Specialist’s Language

As a Generalist, one of the most frustrating things about a job search is trying to effectively sell yourself on your transferable skills. These are usually based on the aggregation of all your experiences. Your skills may not fit neatly into a codified box.
For a lot of companies, recruiters are tasked with finding a unicorn to fill their open positions. This unicorn must have all skills and experiences plus have significant knowledge of the product, service or platform that the company specializes in. The recruiter relies on the terminology provided by the hiring manager vs. what skills make up that terminology.
When you come from an industry or market that is not an easily understood comparison to the market you interviewing for, it can be a tricky conversation if you are not speaking the same language. How can you articulate your transferable skills when they don’t understand what you are saying?
Let me give you an example. I am in the San Francisco Bay area. Every company here is “tech-based”, even if they really aren’t (but that is a whole other opinion piece…). They speak the language of tech and product. So when I present myself as a marketing executive, especially coming from the entertainment space, I try to focus on the elements that they will understand.
When the recruiter says: you don’t have Product Marketing experience. I counter with: my roles were much more complicated, I was tasked with overall brand as well as product success. In the cable network world, while I needed to make sure the network was successful as a whole, each series, film stunt and limited event series was its own product. Marketing had a hand in developing that product — working with programmers, producers and licensing (the product team) — to determine best timing for airing, premiere strategy, how we would go to market (pricing and go to market strategy). The features and benefits were the cast, crew and plot. The audience differed for each offering. We needed to understand the competitive landscape — direct and indirect. And we had a short window of time to make this product win. We measured our progress along the way — live and same day ratings, within the 3 day window, within the 7 day window and then longer viewing via save up and binge. We evaluated our marketing campaigns to determine talk value and buzz, amplified areas that we saw as trends via social listening and adjusted communications and outreach based on reaction. We iterated with new promos, social postings and digital marketing. The success or failure of the product was determined in a very short window of time. If viable to continue, we analyzed what worked, what didn’t and incorporated feedback into version 2.0.
There are many areas where generalists develop skills in one industry that the core strategies, analytics and implementation are more important than knowledge in the category. Generalists can always quickly learn a new category, it’s what we do. We absorb, learn and assimilate. Whether you work in partnerships, business development, or sales, quickly evaluating and understanding business objectives both for your company and your partner is where you start. Relationship building, listening skills and negotiation are “soft skills” that are hard to teach but critical to being successful in this area. If you are in finance, business affairs, data analytics — you have your speciality, but just because you start in one field does not mean you can’t make a jump to another.
I would love to hear from you about your experiences. How do you translate your experience and explain your skills?
