The pandemic has accelerated a stronger desire for upskilling in a wide range of aspects. From remotely engaging with internal and external parties to adopting more data-driven business processes, the need to develop numerous digital skills for talents has inevitably increased. 

T-shaped talents: a combination of expertise and collaboration

T-shaped talents is a metaphor to describe individuals who have deep knowledge of their own technical expertise and a broad knowledge of different areas of expertise.

While new technologies today are rapidly changing the demand and expectation of talents’ qualities and skills, gaining a specialisation in a particular area is no longer sufficient. T-shaped talents possess excellent knowledge of and skills in specific areas that facilitate the discussion of projects from multiple perspectives. 

With an understanding of knowledge in different fields, talents with T-shaped skills can facilitate cross-team collaboration when working on the same project. They also encourage a more multi-disciplinary approach to identifying the opportunities and concerns of projects. 

In today’s workplace, the qualities of T-shaped talents have shown growing importance and this explains why T-shaped talents are the most-demand employees in the future of work. 

The need of T-shaped talents depends on your workplace structure 

Nonetheless, whether your company should hire more talents with T-shaped skills should depend on the workplace structure. Technology-enabled companies in particular might consider hiring T-shaped talents with diverse digital skills to brainstorm ideas together while companies that place focus on work quality might consider hiring talents with one unique specialisation. To attract the best-fit talents for your company, one prerequisite trait is to evaluate the working structure before evaluating the type of talent you are looking for.