Skillsets are an interesting element of life to define.
Most people have a suite of skillsets or toolkits built into their beings and don’t even realise it.
Preparing a meal from start to finish – that’s a skillset. Using a computer without assistance – that’s a skillset. Even shopping for food alone is a skillset. Throughout life, everyone has to learn to do different things as a part of growing up. After doing these routines several times it just becomes second nature and we don’t even think about it anymore.
However, these skillsets are there and ready to apply to a broad selection of different situations that can arise. Unless faced with an extremely specific task, such as building a rocket ship, most individuals can apply their passive skillsets to any given situation – even the aforementioned rocket ship scenario can be tackled via the skillset of simply finding another individual with the experience to deal with such a task.
In today’s world, the domain of work is too vast to list. In broad strokes, we’re looking at millions of differing job roles. Each role demands a certain set of skills and knowledge to do competently. That’s where the phrase “climbing the ladder” comes from. Certain career “paths” are all about “climbing”. What this actually means is the process of acquiring and applying a new skillsets to everyday tasks.
Moving forward I believe it would be beneficial to everyone if businesses began to look at an individuals skills and applicability rather than just experience alone. Anyone can bounce from job to job and claim they have “experience” on paper. However, when looking to fill a specific role it is imperative that the employer see the individual and not just a list of credentials on a page.