Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Out for Blood
Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.
A couple of years ago, companies insisted upon hiring specialists. They've changed their minds. Now they want exceptional, well-rounded, super-smart generalists--the pick of the litter, the best of the best. They want multitalented, multifaceted, multitasking problem-solvers with experience in vertical industries.
That's the word from recruitment experts and headhunters. The days of just doing your job well are long gone. In the late 1990s, you could earn a great deal of money just by being a brilliant techie. Today, brilliance alone is not going to land you the big money or power jobs. You also have to have a mess of skills and be able to think beyond out of the box--if you can believe it.
Every year, the IT job market (especially) redefines and fine-tunes what it thinks it wants. If you don't stay plugged in, you risk falling behind and being branded "redundant." Once that happens, your career is on the skids, and you might as well hightail it out of town and find a Third World country that's a decade behind us, that will laud you as the next Bill Gates.
Last year, companies identified cost-cutting and regulatory-compliance expertise as a top priority, according to IT work-force consulting firm Foote Partners in New Canaan, Conn. This year, compliance knowledge has moved down a few notches on the requirement scale and has been replaced by other skills, most …
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