Latest / Career Skills with Fexingo: Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and Future-Proofing Your Career / How Skill Unbundling Reveals Your Hidden Strengths
Transcript
- Lucas: So I was talking to a friend last week who's been a marketing manager for about six years. She's good at her job, gets solid reviews, but she told me she feels like she's hit a ceiling — not in title or salary, but in how she sees herself. She said, 'I'm a marketing manager. That's my identity. But when I think about what I actually do all day, it's a dozen different things that don't feel connected.' Luna: Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that. The job title becomes a cage. You're a 'marketing manager' or a 'project coordinator' or a 'senior analyst', and that label hides the real stuff you're good at. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what I want to get into today — a concept I call skill unbundling. It's the practice of taking your job title, your role, your daily responsibilities, and deliberately splitting them into the individual skills that make them up. Not for a resume rewrite, but to actually see what you're carrying. Luna: So instead of saying 'I'm a marketing manager,' you say 'I run A-B tests, I write copy, I manage a budget, I coordinate with designers, I present to executives.' Each of those is a separate skill. Lucas: Right. And some of those skills might be transferable to roles you've never considered. My friend, for example, unbundled her job and found that the part she most enjoyed — and was best at — was the data analysis side. She runs the A-B tests on email campaigns, she interprets the metrics, she makes decisions based on numbers. That's a skill that could sit inside a product role, a data analyst role, even a strategy role. Luna: So the unbundling reveals that she's not just a marketer — she's also a data analyst. And that opens doors. Lucas: Exactly. And I want to be concrete here. Let me give you a real example. A few years ago, I interviewed a woman named Priya who had been a high school biology teacher for eight years. She loved teaching but was burned out by the system. She did a skill unbundling exercise and realized that her skill set included curriculum design, assessment creation, public speaking, managing a classroom of 30 teenagers, and simplifying complex topics for a non-expert audience. That last one — simplifying complex topics — is a skill that's incredibly valuable in corporate training, instructional design, and even product management. Luna: And she made the leap? What did she end up doing? Lucas: She became an instructional designer at a tech company, designing onboarding modules for new hires. She doubled her salary and told me she felt like she was using the exact same muscles, just in a different context. The unbundling allowed her to see 'teacher' not as a single identity but as a bundle of skills, some of which were highly in demand outside of education. Luna: I love that. And I think this is especially relevant right now, in July 2026, because the job market is still in this weird place where job descriptions are incredibly specific — they list fifteen requirements — but the actual work people do is fluid. So the title you have might not match what you're capable of. Lucas: Completely. And companies are starting to catch on. Adobe, for instance, has been experimenting with skill-based hiring for certain roles. They don't look at your degree or your previous title — they ask you to demonstrate specific competencies. Patagonia does something similar in their supply chain roles. But the reality is, most companies still hire based on titles. So it's on you to do the unbundling first, and then present yourself as a bundle of skills rather than a single label. Luna: So how do you actually do this? Like, sit down and unbundle your job. What's the process? Lucas: Three steps. Step one: list everything you do in a typical week. Not your official job description — your actual week. The meetings you attend, the decisions you make, the documents you create, the people you interact with. Don't filter yet. Just brain-dump. Step two: group those activities into skill categories. For example, if you spend time in Excel and also review reports from the finance team, that might be 'data analysis'. If you run weekly stand-ups and also facilitate cross-functional meetings, that might be 'meeting facilitation' or 'project coordination'. Step three: rate each skill on two dimensions — your competence and your enjoyment. A simple one-to-five scale. The skills that score high on both are your sweet spot. Those are the ones you want to lead with. Luna: And what if your highest enjoyment skill is something you only do once a month? Like, you love doing user interviews but you only do them during product launches. Lucas: That's actually a signal. It means you have a skill that's underutilized in your current role. That's a clue for where you might want to move. I had a client who was a project manager but spent maybe five percent of her time doing visual design — she designed slide decks and internal newsletters. She loved it. She unbundled, saw the pattern, and eventually transitioned into a brand design role. She started by doing more of that work on the side, then made the case to her employer for a hybrid role, and then moved fully. Luna: So the unbundling doesn't just help you see what you have — it also shows you what you're missing. Maybe you realize you have no skill in negotiation, or public speaking, or data analysis. That's useful too. Lucas: Absolutely. And I think that's the honest part of this. A lot of career advice focuses on your strengths, but unbundling also reveals gaps. And gaps are fine — they're just information. You can decide to fill them or not. But at least you know. Luna: I want to push back on something, though. Doesn't this approach assume that every job can be broken down into discrete skills? What about roles that are more holistic — like a therapist, or a chef, or a manager? Some things are hard to isolate. Lucas: That's a fair point. Some skills are indeed emergent — they only exist when you combine other skills. A chef's 'palate' is the combination of sensory memory, ingredient knowledge, and technique. A manager's 'leadership' is a blend of empathy, decision-making, and communication. But even those can be unbundled to some degree. The goal isn't to reduce everything to a checklist — it's to understand the components so you can recognize when you're using them in other contexts. Luna: So it's a tool for self-awareness, not a replacement for the whole person. Lucas: Exactly. And I want to bring this back to the listener's own career. If you're feeling stuck or bored or like your title doesn't reflect who you are, I'd say spend twenty minutes this week doing this unbundling exercise. Just a pen and paper. List your activities, group them into skills, rate them. I bet you'll find at least one or two skills that you've been undervaluing or using only a fraction of the time. Luna: And once you find those, what's the next step? Lucas: You can do a few things. First, start using those skills more in your current role — volunteer for projects that require them. Second, update your LinkedIn and resume to highlight those skills, not just your title. Third, start looking at job descriptions through the lens of 'do they need my best skills?' rather than 'does this title match my current one?' The unbundling changes the way you scan the market. Luna: I think this is one of those episodes where I'm going to actually do the exercise after we're done recording. I've been in this podcast host role for a while, and I know I've picked up skills I don't even think about — like interviewing, obviously, but also research, script editing, audience analysis. I should unbundle myself. Lucas: You should. And I'll do it with you. We can compare notes. But let me say one more thing — this isn't just for people who want to change careers. It's also useful if you want to advance in your current field. Because the higher you go, the more your job title becomes about leadership and strategy, and the less about the technical skills you started with. Unbundling helps you see what you're leaving behind and what new skills you're building. Luna: That's a great point. A senior individual contributor might have a title like 'principal engineer', but their day-to-day might include mentoring, architecture decisions, writing proposals, and influencing stakeholders. Those are very different from coding. Lucas: Right. And if you don't unbundle, you might think you're just a 'senior engineer' and miss the fact that you've actually become a really good technical communicator and teacher. That could open doors into developer relations, product management, or even a CTO role. Luna: Let me ask you — are there any industries where this is particularly effective or particularly hard? Lucas: I think it's most effective in knowledge work, where your output isn't a physical product. So tech, finance, marketing, consulting, healthcare administration — roles where the work is about information, decisions, and relationships. It's harder in highly regulated or credential-based fields, like law or medicine, where the title is tied to a license or certification. But even then, you can unbundle the non-licensed parts of your work. A doctor might be able to move into health-tech strategy or medical writing. Luna: Right, because the unbundling doesn't replace the credential — it just shows you the other skills you've built around it. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's the real power of this. It gives you agency. Instead of waiting for a promotion or a job opening, you can see the raw materials you already have and figure out where they fit in the broader economy. Luna: You know, this episode feels like a natural extension of some of our earlier conversations about skill stacking and skill mapping. But unbundling feels more foundational — it's like the first step before you can do any of that other work. Lucas: I agree. Skill stacking is about combining skills to create something unique. Skill mapping is about seeing the landscape of your skills across different domains. But unbundling is the raw data collection. Without it, you're guessing. Luna: So if someone listens to this and wants to start right now, what's the one thing they should do tonight? Lucas: Take one project you worked on this week — a report, a presentation, a client deliverable — and list every distinct action you took to complete it. Not 'I managed the project', but 'I scheduled the kickoff meeting, I created the timeline, I wrote the outline, I researched the competitors, I reviewed the draft, I presented to the client.' Then pick two or three of those actions and ask yourself: could I do this same thing in a completely different industry? If the answer is yes, you've found a portable skill. Luna: I like that. It's concrete and it's small. It's not a whole career change — it's just a new way of seeing what you already do. Lucas: And that new way of seeing is often the thing that unlocks the move. I've seen it happen dozens of times. People don't lack skills — they lack the framework to recognize them. Luna: Alright, I think we're going to wrap up soon, but before we do — and this is completely unrelated — I wanted to mention something. We get a lot of messages from listeners saying they appreciate that this show has no ads, no sponsors, no commercial breaks. And that's a choice we made from the start. But the reality is, producing a daily podcast — researching, writing, recording, editing — takes real resources. And a small group of listeners already helps make that possible. Lucas: Yeah, and I think it's worth being straightforward about it. This show is listener-supported in the sense that a handful of people chip in each month through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's it. No big ad deals, no Patreon tiers with exclusive content. Just a simple way for people who find value in what we do to help keep it going. Luna: And if that's not for you, no worries at all. Truly. The content stays free either way. But if you've ever gotten a useful tip from an episode — or if this skill unbundling idea clicks for you — and you want to support us, that link is there. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. All lowercase. Lucas: Right. And on that note — back to the topic. One thing I've found is that once you start unbundling, you can't stop. You start seeing skills everywhere. In the way you handle a difficult conversation, in the way you organize your inbox, in the way you plan a vacation. It becomes a lens. Luna: I think that's actually a good place to end. Because the goal isn't just to get a better job — it's to understand yourself better. And that's valuable regardless of where you work. Lucas: Exactly. So grab a notebook, unbundle something this week, and see what you find. You might surprise yourself. Luna: We'll be back tomorrow with another episode. In the meantime, keep building. Lucas: Take care, everyone.