Snapshot Question: The Many Meanings Of Best

[silveradept]

Two-parter for those wishing to answer. Please provide reasoning and detail to your heart's content.

a) If a question asks you what kind of work best uses your skills, what does that mean to you? Please answer this question completely before proceeding to the next one, so that your answer is not tainted. Write it in the comment box or something.

b) If a question asks you what kind of work best uses your skills, can/does it mean what kind of work most uses your skills? If yes, should it? If no, why not?

Context will follow after some amount of responses are collected and when I can get to a keyboard...

Comments

[emsporter.livejournal.com]

The kind of work that BEST uses my skills? Would be work that my skillset is tailor-made to fit. Like a key in a lock. I've no idea what that role would be for me personally; my skillset is a bit ... diverse... at the best of times, and I still haven't worked out What I Want To Be When I Grow Up.
That would mean a job that I'm utterly competent and capable of all the time. The problem with that idea is that it doesn't leave much room for expansion; either of my skillset, or within the employer. if you're indispensable in your position, you can't be promoted.

The kind of work that BEST uses my skills is unlikely to be the kind that MOST uses my skills. There are a LOT of jobs out there that people mostly-fit. What the employer needs is skillset ABC, and you have aBCd - so you do your best on requirement A with skill a, you rock at B and C, and you find things that scratch the itch to use skill d outside of work.
Depending on what skill d is, the workplace may get surprise advantages from it; gradually meaning that the role fits you better over time than it did when you started out. You may also find that the experience of stretching yourself makes you better at A.

There's another way to look at this one, too; you might have an epic skillset in, oh, event management; but the roles that are most available are actually secretarial/organising/office management, so you use MOST of your skillset in the only employment available, rather than the job you're 'best fit' for.


Hmmm. I think on balance that I don't want a job that's the perfect fit; I want one that leaves me room to grow. But perhaps "room to grow" is "best use of my skillset". Hmmm.

[silveradept]

Thanks for the input. Best and most were two different things, definitely.