Specialization over Generalization: I was wrong
I am a teeming young digital marketer who would make use of all the career advice I can get as I go on my journey to grow businesses. Just like me, we have many others who are stuck with the “what next?” question. I started my digital marketing career as a Google Student Ambassador who saw it as an opportunity to get a job at Google. I admired the Googlers at the summit in Accra and just wanted to jump into their shoes. I started self-learning AdWords by studying for and taking the AdWords Fundamentals exam, I went on to also take an advanced exam in Display Advertising to clinch the prestigious Google AdWords certificate. That was an achievement! As part of my core work as a Google Student Ambassador, I have to learn and teach. In the span of one year, I had taught over 300 students about the magical Google AdWords. I didn’t know what I was getting into myself.
Sweet beginning
Mixing Fiverr with Upwork and PeoplePerHour, I was able to get some very few freelancing jobs to survive and also strengthen my skills. Clients were very specific with what they need. They need someone to set up their AdWords account and help them attain $XX as CAC. I started picking up one or two things to build this amazing career I got myself into. I got into Hotels.ng as a digital marketing intern in October 2015. Mark is super big on specialization. Our Growth team had me handling just AdWords, someone handling just social media marketing, someone handling just email marketing (yeah just email), and someone handling content marketing (he didn’t even have to write the content — just create strategy and manage the implementation). The social media person didn’t have to design the social media banners nd creatives as well. I saw what a workplace look like and dreamt big. I wanted to be a PPC expert.
Fast forward to April 2016, I got into Google as an Industry Analyst (Intern). Teams were structured in lines of specialization with me handling market research and industry analysis (pun intended), someone handling just AdWords management (he didn’t even have to create campaigns and ads), some handling just Analytics (big on data and nothing else), and someone handling client relationship. I dreamt big again. I really want to focus on building a reasonable career along a specialization.
Bubble burst!
Little did I know that I was living in my own bubble. The reality of things in Nigeria is far different. As part of an ongoing project, I recently started a research on jobs in Nigeria and my findings were shocking. I got to understand that Nigerian companies don’t celebrate specialists (maybe Hotels.ng is an unconventional Nigerian company). Companies prefer to hire a ‘digital marketing expert’ that will handle all of social media, email, content and even pay-per-click marketing. I was facilitating a masterclass on mobile marketing the other day and was curious to ask my students what they do. One of them actually caught my attention — I am in charge of PR for a company. I handle social media, emails, blogs and Search engine optimization. That was 10-in-1 person taking my class.
As a continue my research, I was hoping to find solace in the digital marketing agencies thinking they should have specialists. When you do nothing but digital marketing as a company, the ideal situation is that you have different people handling different aspects of your core. Well, ideal is not always realistic. I found out that agencies would rather have employees handle clients than handle a specialized path. Let me explain that. If an agency has client A and client B, they would rather have account manager A handle all of digital marketing for client A and account manager B handle all of digital marketing for client B. The ideal situation is to have PPC specialist handle PPC for client A and B and a content marketer handle content for client A and B and so on.
Facebook and Twitter reacts
I took the grief to a Facebook group known for having very active African entrepreneurs. I created a poll to ask a question. I got this:
This data is not representative because most of the respondents are not even founders or hiring managers. But it informs us of what people want. Sadly, what we want is not what reality is presenting to us. We want to be specialists but no one will hire us to come and do just one thing well. They prefer to have us do many things even if we are not so good in other aspects.
Why generalists?
When it comes to the question of whether or not to hire, a number of factors are considered. Most startups hire generalists because of the cost of hiring and retaining a bunch of specialists for the work a generalist can do. Instead of back end and front end developers, we can make do with a full stack developer and still build our web application.
To solve the cost issue, I think making use of contractors like Andela will give you access to specialists at a cheaper rate. You don’t have to hire them, you just use them when you have to.
Who specialization epp?
At the end of the day, the question will be, “How will hiring specialists affect my bottom line positively?” The answer to that is specialization trumps generalization every time. When you are specialized and know your onions very well, you are able to tackle a problem better and faster. That helps your company scale faster. The best example of that is how Henry Ford revolutionized the automobile industry using specialization in form of the moving assembly line. One person removing just one piece improved efficiency and significantly reduced production time. Well, that had an exponential impact on their bottom line.
For startups
Early stage? Do generalists. If you can afford it, do specialized contractors. When you have enough money to hire them, get specialists.
