What is your work superpower?
How to describe your “difficult-to-describe” work skill
Superpower… really? At work? Bear with me.
The process of interviewing candidates is … inadequate, to say the least. I really just have one question. Are you going to add skills to our team that will be invaluable? It is nearly impossible to obtain this information via an interview type conversation and as a candidate, similarly challenging to relay it.
What are the questions one needs to ask? How should a candidate package and deliver these skills to a potential employer? We might believe we are good at what we do, but can we verbalise this in a convincing way?
Start by defining what does being invaluable mean. My simple definition: Can you solve problems? Do you reduce inefficiencies? Do you connect dots? Do you get things done? Ok, those were four things.
Candidates can ace technical tests, but can they survive and navigate in a wicked learning environment ¹ ²? In short, a wicked learning environment is what most of us work in. We are not working in controlled labs where we can control the variables. We work in politically motivated, very technical environments that deal with people and their emotions. It’s messy, most of the time.
These moments of introspection led me to ask: How do you even name that thing that makes you invaluable, let alone know what it is? There are a few different names I have called it in the past. “Soft skills” was another good fit. But sometimes it isn’t the soft skills, for some it is the technical speciality that you are good at. Maybe you suck at networking or teamwork but you are so good technically, that people still hire you for that skill. Maybe you are a generalist that know a little detail about a lot of things, but the way you can navigate teams is just phenomenal.
So I soundboarded this question to my (very talented) sister and she without hesitation said, “Oh, you mean your work superpower?”, and I immediately liked it. Spiderman’s superpower is his ability to crawl on walls and shoot webs. It is what makes Spiderman Spiderman, but these things are also super, not everyone can do it. Let’s face it, our job is generally quite boring for people outside of our area of expertise (and sometimes also for those from within), so superpower just sounds more exciting.
So what is the thing that makes you, you but also super?
If I lost you by now — here are some examples that I hope will help. These are examples that are very difficult to describe, but very valuable in the workplace.
So what is yours? A good data engineer? No, wrong! You didn’t read the examples. Read it again, I’ll wait… Phrase it like this. “Ability to spot code discrepancies super fast”, or “cutting through the bs of over-technical meetings”.
I can list many more, but the crux of my message is that you should try and figure out what yours is. Once you figure it out, then you can confidently lean in towards it and find an eloquent way to tell people about it.
If we have a work superpower, then, following this analogy, I suppose we all have our kryptonite as well? The triggers at work that cause us to underperform. Simple message here, avoid them or learn how to manage them, but don’t try to master them. There is no point in pouring effort in becoming better at your weakness. Just learn to minimise the exposure you have to it.
I don’t have the silver bullet for how to find new candidates. Relying only on referrals is also not fair to people considering to make a career change or just starting out. Perhaps we should have a multiple choice in addition to the interview. Provide a list of 10 “work superpowers” and ask the candidate to give themselves a score between 1 and 5 as to how much it applies to them. It might not be reliable, but I am sure it will be a great source for some interesting conversations.
Spoiler alert, the interview process is not going away anytime soon. So let us become better at articulating our invaluable skills even if yours is saving the world, one excel sheet at a time*.
*another thing that seems to not be going away soon
1. Epstein D. RANGE Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World. 1st ed. MACMILLAN; 2020.
2. Potgieter, C. (2021) Range over depth - the value of a generalist in your data team, Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/towards-data-science/range-over-depth-the-value-of-a-generalist-in-your-data-team-174d4650869d (Accessed: 02 May 2024).
