Latest / Career Skills with Fexingo: Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and Future-Proofing Your Career / How Skill Redundancy Makes You a Safer Hire
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this concept in engineering — redundancy — where you design backup systems so that if one part fails, another can take over. Same logic applies to your skill set. Luna: You're saying having a backup skill is like having a backup parachute. Lucas: Exactly. And the research backs it up. A LinkedIn workforce report from 2024 showed that 78 percent of hiring managers prefer candidates with skill overlap — people who can cover multiple bases — over deep but narrow expertise. Luna: That's a huge majority. But doesn't that conflict with the 'specialist is safer' advice we hear? Lucas: It does, but here's the nuance: they're not asking you to be a jack-of-all-trades. They want redundancy — overlapping skills in adjacent areas. Think of a marketing manager who also knows basic data analysis. Not a data scientist, but someone who can run a regression in R or interpret a cohort table. Luna: Right. That person can step in when the data person is out sick, and they can ask smarter questions. Lucas: Exactly. And that reduces what's called a 'single point of failure.' If you're the only person who knows how to run a certain report, your absence is a crisis. But if three people have overlapping skills, the team is resilient. Luna: So redundancy isn't about being mediocre at many things; it's about strategic overlap. Lucas: Right. I saw a great example at a mid-size SaaS company. Their lead content writer left, and normally that would have stalled their blog for weeks. But the social media manager had been learning SEO and basic copywriting on the side. She stepped in, kept the editorial calendar moving, and they didn't miss a beat. Luna: That's actually a career insurance policy. The social media manager became more valuable because she wasn't one-dimensional. Lucas: And when promotion time came, she was the one they bet on. Because she'd already proven she could handle more than her job description. Luna: I've seen the flip side too. A developer I know was the only person who understood the legacy codebase. He was indispensable — until the company restructured and they realized he was a bottleneck. They actually promoted him sideways to get him out of the critical path. Lucas: That's the paradox right there. Being the sole expert on something can actually cap your career growth. You become too valuable to move. Luna: So how do you build redundancy without spreading too thin? There's only so many hours in the day. Lucas: I think the key is adjacency mapping. Look at the skills that are most critical in your team or industry, then pick two or three that are close to yours. A graphic designer could learn UX basics. A sales rep could learn CRM admin. A project manager could learn basic SQL. Luna: So you're not becoming a data analyst; you're learning enough to be dangerous — in a good way. Lucas: Exactly. And the return on that investment is huge. A 2023 study from Burning Glass Institute found that workers who added one adjacent skill saw a 12 percent salary bump within two years, compared to 4 percent for those who deepened their existing specialty. Luna: Twelve percent? That's significant. But I imagine the timing matters. When should you start building redundancy? Lucas: Ideally before you need it. When your current role is stable, that's the time to invest in an adjacent skill. If you wait until layoffs are looming, you're learning under pressure, which is harder. Luna: And you're competing with people who already have those skills. Lucas: Right. So the play is: every quarter, pick one small skill to build. Not a certification, not a bootcamp — just a 10-hour commitment. Watch a course, build a tiny project, apply it once at work. Luna: Over a year, that's four skills. Over two years, you've built a whole second layer of capability. Lucas: And that's exactly the kind of profile that hiring managers love. Someone who has a core strength but can also flex into adjacent areas. Luna: It's also the kind of profile that's harder to automate. A narrow, repeatable skill is easier to replace with AI than a hybrid skill set. Lucas: That's a great point. The more your skills overlap in a unique way, the harder it is to replicate your judgment. Luna: I'm thinking about this from a team perspective too. If I'm a manager, I should be encouraging my team to build overlapping skills. It makes the whole group more resilient. Lucas: And it makes you a better manager. You understand more of what your people do. Luna: So what's the one thing you'd tell someone listening who wants to start today? Lucas: Pick one skill that your team or industry relies on that you currently don't have. Then spend 30 minutes this week finding a free resource to learn the basics. That's it. Luna: And if that feels like too much, just think of it as buying career insurance. A small premium now to avoid a big loss later. Lucas: Exactly. And honestly, if this episode was worth a coffee to you, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That link helps us keep things ad-free and focused on real career strategies. Luna: Yeah, it's a small gesture that makes a big difference for us. We appreciate everyone who chips in. Lucas: So back to redundancy — one practical framework I like is the 60-30-10 rule. Spend 60 percent of your learning time on your core skill, 30 percent on an adjacent skill, and 10 percent on something completely different. Luna: I like that. It keeps you anchored but still building bridges. Lucas: And over time, that 30 percent can become a second core. You end up with a T-shaped or even pi-shaped skill profile. Luna: Pi-shaped — meaning two deep areas with a broad base? Lucas: Exactly. That's where the real career security comes from. Being excellent at two things that reinforce each other. Luna: And being the only person who combines them. That's a moat. Lucas: That's the goal. Not just redundancy for the team, but uniqueness for your career. Luna: Alright, I'm convinced. I'm going to look at my adjacent skills this weekend. Lucas: Do it. And let us know how it goes. We read the comments.