In my position, I am fortunate that I get to meet and interview a lot of people.  A number of months ago, we interviewed a gentleman that had many years working with Autocad.  He was in a similar line of work to ours and we were looking for someone we could train to draw shop drawings.

The interesting thing is, he had lot of experience but very few skills.  He was familiar with Autocad and had been using the 2006 version at his previous company but when we asked about what other software he had used, he really had only used Autocad.

In your work life, there are two things that will give you value.  One is experience.  This is the stuff you get by doing your job every day.  Just being at work each day will expose you to different situations, different problems and you will have to dig deeper to understand them and to solve them.  By doing this, you gain valuable experience which then translates into a value for your company.  The reason your company would give you a raise each year is because over the course of the year, you gained experience and your knowledge grew.

The other thing that will give you value is skills.  Some skills might be taught at work but for the most part, skills are things you can learn on your own.  And you can add as many of them as you would like.  For a draftsman, it might be learning Autodesk Inventor or Autodesk Revit, or maybe learning to use Finite Element analysis software or computational fluid dynamics software.  For a PM it might be learning Microsoft Project or Primavera scheduling software or Sketchup for making quick 3d sketches to convey your point.  Maybe you want to learn the skill of managing people, or how to interview people so you can be better at hiring.  Maybe the skill of training people or delegating would be something you would want to know.  If your in a manufacturing company, maybe you want to learn six sigma or lean manufacturing.  There are so many options.

The thing you don’t want to do is let your skills get stagnant.  If you find yourself in the position of wanting to change companies or earn more money, having lots of skills will give you a huge advantage over other people.

So in addition to the experience your company is offering you every day, what skills will you work on this year?  If you could just add a couple new skills to your toolkit each year, in 5 years you would be so much farther ahead than the other people around you.

And the guy we interviewed?  He didn’t get the job.  At our company, everyone is learning and growing every day.  There wouldn’t be a fit for a person who didn’t feel the need to learn any new skills and to expect that their experience alone would get them a job.