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Consider this before you start the hunt
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http://sethgodin.typepad.com/...are-you-good-at.html


What are you good at?
Posted by Seth Godin on January 30, 2009

As you consider marketing yourself for your next gig, consider the difference between process and content.

Content is domain knowledge. People you know or skills you've developed. Playing the piano or writing copy about furniture sales. A rolodex of movers in a given industry, or your ability to compute stress ratios in your head.

Domain knowledge is important, but it's (often) easily learnable.

Process, on the other hand, refers to the emotional intelligence skills you have about managing projects, visualizing success, persuading other people of your point of view, dealing with multiple priorities, etc. This stuff is insanely valuable and hard to learn. Unfortunately, it's usually overlooked by headhunters and HR folks, partly because it's hard to accredit or check off in a database.

Venture capitalists like hiring second or third time entrepreneurs because they understand process, not because they can do a spreadsheet.

As the world changes ever faster, as industries shrink and others grow, process ability is priceless. Figure out which sort of process you're world-class at and get even better at it. Then, learn the domain... that's what the internet is for.

One of the reasons that super-talented people become entrepreneurs is that they can put their process expertise to work in a world that often undervalues it.
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Re: Consider this before you start the hunt [Old Hickory] [ In reply to ]
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lol, wut?
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Re: Consider this before you start the hunt [Old Hickory] [ In reply to ]
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I agree, but unfortunately this is the minority view. In my experience, employers tend to emphasize domain (industry) knowledge over everything else.

Everyone seems to think their industry is unique, but most are more similar than different. The real challenges are universal - motivating people, analyzing external information to determine the next best move, etc. As a former consultant, I easily hopped from client to client in different industries. The initial learning curve was steep, but pretty short.
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Re: Consider this before you start the hunt [Large] [ In reply to ]
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Employers - some of them - prefer the domain knowledge because then they can use them with their process ability - almost like tools. And really, that's what they often need most. Just people who can do a job so they can oversee it, market it, mark it up, and make money.

And some people are more happy to be domainers. This is common among the hard-core engineering types and artistic types.

Alternatively, some people aren't happy with this at all - they want to do social engineering.
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