Latest / Career Skills with Fexingo: Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and Future-Proofing Your Career / How Skill Shadows Reveal Your Unused Potential
Transcript
- Lucas: I was reading a study last week — this is from the International Journal of Human Resource Management — and it found that roughly forty percent of professionals have what researchers call 'skill shadows'. Luna: Skill shadows — I haven't heard that term before. What does it mean exactly? Lucas: It's the abilities you've developed in one context that you completely overlook in another. So you might be a marketing manager who runs A/B tests every week — manipulating datasets, pulling statistical significance — but you don't think of yourself as having data analysis skills because your identity is 'marketer', not 'analyst'. Luna: Oh, I see. So you actually have the skill, but you just don't register it as a skill worth putting on your resume. Lucas: Exactly. And the study's authors argue that these shadows are one of the biggest sources of untapped career leverage. Because if you can surface them — if you can bring a shadow skill into the light — you suddenly have a capability that most people in your field don't even realise they have. Luna: So it's not about learning something new. It's about recognizing what you've already been doing. That's actually kind of refreshing. Lucas: Right. And the reason it matters right now — mid-2026 — is that the job market is shifting faster than most people's skill identities. Roles that existed two years ago now require a blend of abilities that didn't used to go together. So if you're only seeing the skills you're 'supposed' to have, you're probably missing a bunch that could set you apart. Luna: Give me a concrete example. Who's someone with a skill shadow they didn't see? Lucas: Let me tell you about a woman I'll call Priya — she's a product manager at a mid-sized SaaS company. Priya spent two years running customer discovery interviews. She's done probably over a hundred of them. And she's really good at it — she can get people to open up, she picks up on hesitations, she synthesizes themes across conversations. Luna: That sounds like a pretty standard product management skill, though. Where's the shadow? Lucas: Here's the thing — Priya also spent her evenings volunteering with a local nonprofit that runs a helpline for new immigrants. She was doing active listening, de-escalation, cultural sensitivity training. But she never connected those two things. In her mind, the product interviews were 'research' and the helpline was 'volunteering'. Different categories. Luna: But they're both about listening deeply and building trust. That's the same muscle. Lucas: Exactly. And when she finally put them together — when she added 'crisis communication' and 'cross-cultural facilitation' to her LinkedIn — she started getting inbound interest from roles she never would have considered. One was a user research lead at a health tech startup working with refugee populations. It was like the job was written for her. Luna: So the shadow was hiding in plain sight. She just needed someone to point out the connection. Lucas: That's the core idea. And the researchers have a practical technique for surfacing these shadows. They call it a 'context swap'. You take an activity you do regularly and ask: If someone in a completely different field did this exact activity, what would we call their skill? Luna: I love that. So instead of asking 'what am I good at?' you ask 'what would a consultant call this?' or 'what would a therapist call this?' Lucas: Right. So a teacher who writes lesson plans — that's curriculum design, but also project management. A retail manager who handles inventory — that's supply chain logistics. A graphic designer who builds templates — that's systems thinking. The label changes, and with it, the perceived value. Luna: And I bet the job market rewards that relabeling. Because job descriptions are written by people who use specific keywords. If you don't use those keywords, you're invisible to the algorithm. Lucas: Huge point. There was a study from 2024 — I think it was LinkedIn — that showed candidates who used 'skill shadow' language — meaning they listed abilities from adjacent fields — had a thirty percent higher callback rate for roles that required cross-functional skills. Thirty percent. That's not trivial. Luna: Wow. So it's not just feel-good self-discovery. It actually moves the needle on your career. Lucas: It does. And I think there's a deeper reason why skill shadows are so common. It's because we've been trained to think of skills as things we formally learn. You take a course, you get a certificate, you have a skill. But most of our real competence comes from doing — from practice, from repetition, from being in situations that force us to figure things out. Luna: And we don't give ourselves credit for that. We think it's just part of the job. Lucas: Exactly. So the first step is just awareness. And the context swap is a great way to start. But there's also a second technique the researchers recommend — they call it 'the outsider inventory'. Luna: Outsider inventory — what's that? Lucas: You ask someone who doesn't work in your field — a friend, a partner, a former classmate — to describe what they think you're good at. Because they don't have your internal categories. They see your behaviors without the professional labels. So they might say 'you're really good at calming people down' when you think of it as 'stakeholder management'. Luna: That's brilliant. Because an outsider doesn't know what's supposed to be a skill and what's not. They just see what you do. Lucas: Right. And sometimes what they see is more valuable than what you see. There's a woman I know — Sarah, she's a project coordinator at a construction firm. Her husband told her she's amazing at 'making complex things simple'. She'd been doing these monthly progress reports that translated engineering jargon into plain English for clients. To her, it was just part of the job. To him, it was a superpower. Luna: And that's technical communication. That's a skill that's in demand everywhere. Lucas: Exactly. She ended up pivoting into a product documentation role at a software company — completely different industry, but the core skill was the same. And she doubled her salary. Luna: So the outsider inventory — that's something listeners can do this week. Just ask two or three people who know you well: What do you think I'm really good at? And listen without editing. Lucas: Absolutely. And I'd add one more thing — don't just listen to the compliments. Listen for the patterns. If two different people say the same thing — even if they use different words — that's probably a shadow skill. It's something you're doing consistently but not claiming. Luna: Speaking of patterns — I want to bring this back to the current moment. We're in June 2026, the job market is still tight in a lot of sectors, and automation is creeping into more white-collar tasks. How does skill shadow thinking help someone who's worried about being replaced? Lucas: I think it's one of the most practical defensive moves you can make. Because automation typically targets the surface-level version of a skill — the part that can be templated. But your shadow skills are often the parts you do unconsciously, the ones that involve judgment, context, human connection. Those are much harder to automate. Luna: So by surfacing them, you're not just expanding your resume — you're also identifying the parts of your work that are most durable. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's really the theme of careers in 2026 — it's not about accumulating more certifications. It's about seeing what you already have more clearly. Luna: Yeah, that resonates. And it reminds me — we get a lot of messages from listeners saying this show has helped them think about their careers differently. And honestly, that's why we keep doing it. If you've found value in episodes like this one, and you want to support the show staying ad-free and independent, you can do that at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small way to keep this going. Lucas: Yeah, we really appreciate that. It makes a difference. And it lets us keep digging into concepts like skill shadows — which, I'll be honest, I think is one of the most underrated career levers out there. Luna: Alright, so let's end with a practical challenge. For anyone listening — pick one activity you do at work this week. Just one. And do the context swap. Ask yourself: if a consultant did this, what would they call it? Put that new label on your resume or LinkedIn. See what happens. Lucas: I love that. And if you do it, let us know. We'd love to hear what shadows you uncovered. I'm Lucas. Luna: And I'm Luna. We'll see you next time.