What you are about to read is more the pilot of a television series than a non-franchise movie. As a primer, I will begin by asking the question, how does one advance a career in an organization? I raise this question following two weeks on a new job after staffing transfers and personnel deficiencies necessitated my move to the responsibilities of a cashier.
Under any other circumstances, I have would accepted the change and embraced the learning experience. Given I learned the way of the cashier during the last week of when property owners could pay taxes without a late penalty, it was far from an ordinary learning curve. Now a week removed that deadline, I can begin to see how this experience may benefit my advancement within the City and my career generally.
I was once provided with the simple visual of two narrow rectangles that represent the termini of a career. One rectangle was oriented horizontally (landscape), and the other rectangle was oriented vertically (portrait). As it was presented to me, landscape represents the understanding of many concepts but limited scope. Portrait represents expansive knowledge of a few concepts. It is easy to remember the meaning of the two by thinking of landscape as a fresh young individual surveying the landscape of jobs and portrait as an individual who has mastered a career art, gained great notoriety, and now has a professional portrait.
You may remember an earlier article I wrote on patience and the reality I lack the long-term variety. I have had enough short-term patience to learn new operating procedures while accepting the fact being a cashier is a step down in responsibility. According to those I trust within the organization, learning this and other new positions will diversify my skills and increase my value as an employee. However, I cannot help but wonder how this twist in career paths changes my stage in moving from landscape to portrait rectangles.
As the logic of my brain goes, I began to realize for the representational rectangles to hold true, their scale does not necessitate symmetry. Rather, I am beginning to believe the portrait rectangle is nothing more than the landscape rectangle vertically stretched, making the true definition of portrait also “of many concepts” as opposed to “of a few concepts”.
Theoretically, I can see the image as a modified Cantor Set such that it is limited and reverse (see work by German Mathematician Georg Cantor). Applying Cantor Set rational to career progression, it then makes sense to diversify the job titles held. When interviewing for promotions and eventually management openings, demonstrating to an interview panel the ability to fill-in when others are absent helps distances a candidate from other applicants. Being able to show the ability to learn new operating procedures under various conditions may be motivation enough to accept a job transfer.
My recommendation is quite simple. Many likely already know what I have recently learned: a variety of experiences, even if they are short durations, certainly cannot hurt a career, but may prove beneficial later in a career. Consider the opportunity when learning a new job through a transfer is offered. Diversifying job titles held increases individual value to the organization, for when unforeseen challenges arise, being able to fill a position deficiency on short notice with no training required means no intermittent service is recognized by residents/consumers. The purpose of an organization being to serve or provide for external stakeholders, when apparent continuity is maintained, there is great benefit to all. And please remember, many parallels exist between transfers and promotions within an organization and making a career change to another organization.
