A jack-of-all-trades is what companies are looking for now

Till recently, ‘jack-of-all-trades’ was not exactly an expression of praise. Domain specialisation was thought to form the basis of a successful career.

But with the corporate environment changing rapidly, multiple skills are much in demand. Ergo, the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ is in business.

So much so, that consulting firm Sapient has coined a term for this human resource — polyglot. While polyglots are actually people with proficiency in multiple languages, Sapient is using it internally to refer to ‘talent with multi-dimensional skills’.

So how are polyglots different from generalists? “Polyglots come with a problem-solving mindset. They subscribe to new ways of working and bring agility, knowledge and discipline to the table with a shorter learning cycle. Their learn-ability quotient is very high and they are naturally curious people,” says Naveen Narayan, Vice-President, Hiring, SapientRazorfish APAC.

No wonder that from two-wheeler maker TVS Motor Company to robotics systems firm GreyOrange, corporates are betting big on a multi-skilled workforce.

R AnandaKrishnan, Senior VP, HR and IT at TVS Motor Company, says that in the past, the primary qualification for working on an assembly line was manual dexterity. “Today, we look for people who can work in teams, take the initiative, and handle multiple jobs. Production-line workers are expected to be problem-solvers, with the ability to work in collaborative settings,” he told BusinessLine .

Sapient, which works with clients across the world, says companies are now attempting to become digital at their core. The new, empowered consumer as well as disruptive competitors that aren’t from their own categories, are forcing companies to re-look at their business model.

“This kind of dynamic environment calls for a new breed of talent that is multi-dimensional in skills and has business knowledge as well as consumer insights,” said Narayan. And this is where the polyglots step in with knowledge in diverse areas.

Priyanka Kohli, Lead, People Operations, GreyOrange India, points to globalisation as a major factor behind the rise of the jack-of-all-trades in businesses. GreyOrange started with primarily India operations but scaled up rapidly into global markets.

“The skill sets required to build products globally, get certifications, manufacture and deploy them are very different when compared with India-only operations. We needed polyglots who can quickly evolve with business needs,” she says.

But does this mean the death of the good old specialist? Yes and no. “Specialists are now becoming a rare group. Today, organisations employ only those who have skills without which they cannot survive or who have the ability to don multiple hats,” says AnandaKrishnan.

“Both specialists and polyglots have significant roles to play. However, in a fast-growing mid-sized company, it's even more important to have polyglots since processes, success metrics and scale evolve fast,” says Kohli.

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