Hunter vs Fisherman
Alice looked round her in great surprise.
‘Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!’
‘Of course it is,’ said the Queen, ‘what would you have it?’
‘Well, in OUR country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’
‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’
(Lewis Carroll, Through the looking glass)
If we examine the current state of the Spanish labour market we encounter a reality depicted by unemployment rates of 26.7%, youth unemployment at 57.2%, and we are witnessing 80% of businesses fail and where there appears to be little hope of detecting improvements in the labour reform. There are endless resources proposed to try and survive and emerge within a market plagued by layoffs, bankruptcy proceedings, suspension of payments and the closing of lines of credit for financing businesses.
“Reinvent yourself professionally: how to relaunch our professional life and be happier and more competitive”, “Reinvent: Your second opportunity”, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid? The value of reinventing yourself”…There are now many articles, books, theories searching to find a solution to the weariness, the lack of hope and the lack of self-confidence. Reinvent, recycle, redefine; are all ways to define a “do what it takes to be different, to adapt to a situation, to update… because the situation is not going to change, and if it does it will take time… do what it takes to survive”.
Darwin said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most
intelligent, but the most responsive to change”. Once we have accepted the theory and that we must reinvent, update and recycle, once we have accepted that today it’s the fastest who wins… is it a real improvement with reinvention? Does everyone really reinvent themselves in a way that is truly optimal? Is it effective to reinvent oneself after 20, 25 or even 30 years in the labour market?
We must be aware of the need to update, the need to update previously acquired skills to adapt and adjust to an ever changing market. It’s also essential to know in which areas we must update and to focus on what’s going to provide us with added value as an employee. We can’t ask a hunter to work as a chef in a Michelin star restaurant but we can ask him to provide fish for it. We must be clear about the direction we want to take and the strengths we wish to potentiate.
