When there’s only a couple of people in a young company, employees often have a hybrid mix of roles and responsibilities. A blanket job title would be ‘Jack or Jill of All Trades’.

But as the company grows, is there still a need for those Jacks and Jills? Is the hybrid employee an asset, or does the saying “Jack of all trades, master of none” hold true?

Young and flexible, old and arthritic?

Tom Gross, VP, R&D at Covarity, feels that small companies’ resource constraints make it necessary to find employees who both possess a mixture of skills and experience.

“In an early stage company there is no question that hiring key individuals [who] can wear multiple hats is imperative. Economically, it’s infeasible for a startup to cover off every function with one or more dedicated people.”

Dan Silivestru, a consultant who has been a hiring manager for several eBusiness teams, elaborates on the value of hybrid employees.

“Knowing more than just what your core title says you should know tells me you have a curious nature and likely enjoy exploring more than the average person. Ultimately, those are the kinds of people I want to be working with.”

Dan notes that complementary skills can improve core skills.

“Having hired and worked with individuals possessing mixed skills, those people bring more to the table. For example, having developers that also posses usability skills makes them, in my opinion, better developers, as they think of the user experience as they develop each piece of the solution.”

“As a hiring manager I’m always interested in finding people that have a unique combination of skills and experience in order to round out my team, but in many cases depth is equally important as breadth.”

Cost, growth, and change

Finding and connecting with hybrid-skilled candidates, however, can be difficult. It can be hard to understand from a resume where a hybrid candidate’s strengths and experience really lie, particularly when the role is senior.

For those charged with putting hybrid job requirements into writing, it’s not easy to standardize requirements that, by definition, don’t easily fit a template. It’s especially hard in large companies where job titles, duties, and salary bands are typically well defined.

As Tom also explains, the cost of finding hybrid employees may not be worth it.

”...as a company grows and the hiring rate increases, it becomes impractical to continue searching for truly multi-skilled candidates. These people are hard to find, hard to close, and generally have a harder time finding their niche in a larger organization where politics and policies can start getting in the way.”

When operations are standardized, Tom continues, experts become more valuable.

“For most people in technical roles I believe it is better to develop depth in a few high demand disciplines rather than trying to develop too many. Most small to mid-sized companies have relatively homogeneous technical environments and processes and are looking for experts in these specific areas. Larger companies have broader demands but also have the resources necessary to hire experts in multiple areas.”

There is a general assumption that doing a variety of work and developing a variety of skills results in an employee who isn’t truly great at any of them.

According to Tom, there is credibility behind this belief.

“With today’s technical rate of change, ever increasing complexity, and demanding business expectations, anybody spreading themselves too thin will start falling behind in their effectiveness compared to peers that have chosen to specialize to a greater extent.”

It’s still not half-bad to be a hybrid
Those who have hybrid skills and experience usually got that way with “just do it” initiative based on curiosity, ambition, or from working in an environment where things simply needed to get done. It’s not really something taught in academia or written into corporate policy.

Dan offers this advice for any tech employee: “Look around you and identify your primary contacts . . . the people you interact with on a daily or weekly basis. Your goal, in my opinion, is to pick up some of their skills.”

Perhaps that’s the crux of the hybrid employee’s value: you don’t get that way by accident or coercion. It requires sustained effort, the ability to turn obstacles into assets and ground-level dedication to what needs to get done.

And really, shouldn’t companies want that in every employee?