Transferable Skills Are Made, Not Born

This is for all you job-hunting philosophy students out there. I know you're out there, I can hear you breathing. Hey you! Yeah, you - the one by the white sedan! Let me give some unsolicited advice, to you and to myself: make a conscious effort to extend the range of your abilities. You can, though it might take work.

In the course of my groundless floating (i.e. surfing the Internet), I ran across an interesting bit which prompted this post. It's not even remotely original, but in a volatile job market that practically demands career changes, the lesson is worth reiterating.

When job hunting, you may have to consider positions you haven't been trained for. If you've been trained in (ahem) philosophy, you've educated yourself into a corner (now really, besides universities, how many places hire professional philosophers?) unless you make the effort to apply all those skills you learned in new situations.

This transferability doesn't come automatically. That the skills of philosophical training must be listed is evidence that those very same skills are neither obvious nor obviously transferable.

In fact, I'm tempted to say that every skill requires effort to extend. Case in point: in an FBI study on attackers of police officers it was found, among other things, that a number of incidents could have been avoided by those officers. Many assailants carry concealed weapons which ought to have been detected but weren't.

An irony...is that officers who are assigned to look for concealed weapons, while working off-duty security at night clubs for instance, are often highly proficient at detecting them. "But then when they go back to the street without that specific assignment, they seem to 'turn off' that skill," and thus are startled--sometimes fatally--when a suspect suddenly produces a weapon and attacks.

In other words, cops who get good at spotting hidden arms while moonlighting don't necessarily carry that skill over to their day job. It's the exact same action, only the context is different, namely the role of a police officer. Understand that I am neither blaming nor excusing the victims for their injury, only pointing up a fact. We're all prone to similar oversights.

But should we acquiesce to the facts? Shall we throw up our arms and leave our status quo of abilities be? No: what we should do is beware of our tendency to let habits ossify - and determine where we can put Skill X to good use. This transfer of skills is precisely what's needed in order to get a job when you have to switch gears.

Now the more specialized you get, the more deliberate the transfer must be. Otherwise how can you explain the stupid things philosophers sometimes do? Some plagiarize, others cheat on their spouses, still others set themselves up as experts on 9/11. Philosophers aren't the only idiots; I am simply saying that their abilities, which can apply to many situations, do not do so of their own accord.

I may well be revealing more about myself than about philosophers in general, but it seems to me we've got our blind spots like anyone else. I think our blind spot tends to be an undue pride in our intellectual abilities: we think we're hot shit, that we can do anything simply because we've studied this abstract, complicated thing. C.S. Peirce voiced this criticism over a century ago, and it remains true today; it doesn't seem profound, but that's only because we don't appreciate how needful it was to say it.

We must make an effort to apply our skills appropriately. This means observing the field - where we'll be doing our critical thinking, for example. It means not only analyzing that field and case studies, but also imagining ourselves in various situations: how, O Great Spinozist, how do you teach English to a dozen kids in your class when they've already sat through a full day of school? what book do you find that advice in - and how do you know you'll do it right (assuming it's good advice)? You might have a leg up on, say, a ditch-digger or an air-traffic controller, but it's not always evident.

So. How can we help ourselves make that shift of skills? I'd like to whip up some ways to do that. But, my friends, that's another post.

(Image thoughtfully pilfered from here on Student Work in Photography, Drawing, and Graphic Design)