When asked, it’s a phrase I’ll use to describe my job:
“I wear a lot of hats.”
It’s a silly metaphor, of course, but the silliness is important: you can’t possibly look good or credible wearing every hat.
My first job in A/E/C marketing was as a “proposal jockey,” as we jokingly called it. Ninety percent of my work was on proposals and qualifications packages; it was rare that I worked on even an interview deck.
My current job, though, is vastly different. While proposal generation occupies more than half of my time, the rest of my hours are split across a wide range of other responsibilities. As one member of a two-person marketing department, I am “responsible” for public relations, social media, website management, swag management, branding, project data management, photography, sales tracking, award submissions, and plenty more.
Obviously, this is too much for two people to handle.
But breadth of responsibilities does tell you a lot about yourself and your preferences. I’ve learned that there are three broad categories of tasks:
- Tasks I love.
- Tasks I hate.
- Tasks I don’t care about.
Beyond how I feel about the tasks, there’s also how I perform at them. There are two categories, leaving aside the category of “tasks that anyone could do,” which you also learn about:
- Tasks I’m great at.
- Tasks I’m bad.
Here’s where the danger of wearning-many-hats comes in:
If I hate or don’t care about a task—even if it falls within my job responsibilities—I won’t do a good job.
Taylor Coe 