CareerSherpas: Climbing the Mountain

I’ve always found the question “What do you do?” to be very difficult to answer. Not one of the jobs I’ve had, nor the direction I’ve taken my career, really fit nicely under any standard description. Sure I have a title that says something about a role I was hired to fill, but what I really do is a bit harder to capture.

At one time I thought I was unusual in this, but the more time I spend talking to people the more it seems common amongst knowledge workers. One of the groups I worked with on a day-to-day basis were call center representatives. Now you’d think that this would be a fairly easy to explain position that had fairly simple boundaries.

Am I right? How many variations can there be on answering a phone?

Well, when it comes down to it there are lots of things that you could be doing in answering a phone, quite possibly hundreds! It all depends on how you see the work and how much detail you think is needed to get the message across.

For example, a person could be part of a service group taking incoming or making outgoing calls. Once you cross that bridge, you could be talking about different tiers of service, whether you’re conducting advocacy calls, sales calls, coaching sessions, training calls or any combination in between. When people are aware of what they do and have some experience behind them, they tend to see more nuances in their work as well.

What sets people apart in answering this question is whether they know why they do what they do. The old story about two men digging a ditch comes back again and again, but still makes a great example:

Two men are digging a ditch and both are asked the same question, “What are you doing?”

The first man replies, “I’m digging this ditch.”

The second man replies, “I’m building a hospital.”

There are lots of things that come out of this story, but it shows a very clear difference of perspective of the value that the worker has of the work being done. The message for leaders and organizations is to guide employees to the kind of purposeful enlightenment of the second man.

If you think about it, both men are working in the same way in the same environment.

Which would you hire? Can you say what purpose your work has?

In any case, what do you do?

Peter Fitzgerald is the founder of CareerSherpas.com and is currently working on his first book, connecting individuals with ideas and opportunities, and (periodically) attempting to learn the bagpipes.

Something to consider any time you’re either at an employment loose end or in need of knowledge to get something done is a turn to consulting firms. They offer a cheap method to finding (or becoming) talent for an organization to fill short or longer term gaps.

In my search I stumbled across this list of consulting firms. As always, your mileage may vary and different offices, recruiters and account reps within the same organization are likely to provide different levels of service.

Have any experiences to share? Share them in the comments below!

Peter Fitzgerald is the founder of CareerSherpas.com and is currently working on his first book, connecting individuals with ideas and opportunities, and (periodically) attempting to learn the bagpipes.

Peter Fitzgerald has been chronicling his process of navigating from losing his job to a new and brighter tomorrow. To read other posts from the series, see “Job Transition: A CareerSherpas’ Odyssey”.

What Worked?

What Would I Do Differently?