Reducing capacity from high skilled to lower skills employment

By Darren Hamburger

Times are tough, money is low, so it's time to get a job right? Well not quite so fast. While it's true we all need money to survive, however whether you should jump into lower skilled employment or a reduced capacity job really depends what your end goal really is e.g whether you should just take any job or look for employment which better fits to your skills. This brief article will discuss things to consider when taking a lower skilled job if compared to your skills and prior employment experience which may had been superior to the low end job your thinking of taking. This article has been inspired by my own error I had previously made where staying in a lower skill job was realised to be to the detriment of my other higher end skills.

Reasons people may choose to take lower skills employment:

There are many reasons a person may wish to take a job below their skill capacity for example a psychologist working in a factory packing boxes. Below are a couple of the reasons which may influence a person to take a lower skilled job:

  1. Loss of confidence in past employment

    2. (a) Sometimes during the course of employment an event may occur causing the employee to loose confidence within themselves. This also includes workplace bullying, stress, mental health even perhaps a significant error that causes immense embarrassment or even fear etc

  2. To buy time until you have decided which alternative career path you wish to take (a temporary decision)

    3. (a) Sometimes a person wishes to leave their current professional path, yet at the time is not sure what they wish to do. The decision to take a lower skilled job is to keep money rolling in while the person plans their next career path

  3. A fill in position while studying an alternative career path

    4. (a) A person may no longer be able to tolerate working in the primary role, thus plans to get out and study another career path. A lower skilled job will remove levels of responsibility, place less demands to make it easier to study the next career path while being paid

  4. Financial stress

    5. (a) Sometimes money is tight and to stop the debt collectors we just have to take any job now to stop the financial hemorrhage. I guess in these situations any income is better than no income. It could also be said any paid work is better than Centrelink for a number of reasons I.e employment history, more money, networking ability etc.

  5. Workers compensation / Burn out

    6. (a) Sometimes a person who experiences a workplace injury may decide they are not ready to work in full pre employment capacity. Therefore taking lower skilled roles may lower the persons stress

  6. Location

    7. (a) A person may simply not wish to travel the longer distances due to other commitments, thus is happier to take a lower skilled position to appease sitting in traffic or being packed into long hauls in public transport

  7. For a Change

    8. (a) A person may wish to do something short term to experience something different. This is not an entirely bad idea, as their are times if we work in lower skilled jobs and experience employment from a different aspect we may quickly realise how much better the initial career path was

  8. Early phase / Retirement

    9. (a)Given Australia has an aging population, it is prudent to stipulate those who are nearing the retirement phase of their life may wish to opt out of the responsibilities of high end employment and are willing to settle for lower end employment

  9. Unable to enter the workforce since have significant employment history gaps

    10. (a)For those who have long employment history gaps may also use lower skilled employment as a means to and end just to get back into he workforce

There are most probably a whole range of other reasons people take lower skilled jobs, however lets move forward and take a brief look at the disadvantages of taking such actions.

The disadvantages of being stuck in a job which does not meet or exceed your skill level:

  1. Your professional skills of the past will wither away as you will use your knowledge and skills less. Therefore over time you will find you may start to forget your skills or certain aspects of your skill which lowers your proficiency.
  2. No ongoing professional development is a major issue and is probably one of the major factors behind skills declining to irrelevance. It's unlikely the employer will pay for or allow time out of work to maintain or develop skill sets which are of no relevance to the lower skilled job.
  3. Continued growth of irrelevance as time moves on is a realistic issue to taking employment positions far under your skill level. This means the longer the amount of time your are outside of your career path, the less relevant your skills maybe viewed in future job interviews.
  4. One word Boredom. Lower skilled positions may have less autonomy, less task variation which overall become very demotivating.

How could you save your skills while working in lower skilled jobs?

The answer for this question lays within how much you wish to be proactive in saving your skills in the first place. Saving your skills will take more additional energy to keep appraised of the latest updates in the career. Some options are as follows:

  1. Voluntary Work on the side
  2. Reduce the hours of your skilled employment, however still do a small amount of work
  3. Read: Books, articles, journals etc
  4. Listen and Watch: Videos, audio books etc
  5. External studying
  6. Peer supervision
  7. Research and write articles

What are the challenges when working in reduced capacity jobs?

I tend to think the challenges of downgrading to reduced capacity jobs are primarily a mixture of cognitive, financial, identity and lifestyle changes. Knowing that your income is likely to suffer which means in turn your lifestyle will also need to be reordered to fit into your new income bracket. Another challenge is wrestling with the cognitive side of the issue. For example the fact when you know you are able to do much more than the low skilled job requires. This may lead to feelings of degradation, humiliation, depressed affect because the self esteem is targeted to I'm now just a..... This may also be greatly dependent on how much of a fall the person has chosen for example from psychologist to working in a factory packing boxes. The longer you are out of your chosen field of expertise, the more difficult it will likely become to be seen as relevant.

Last words of wisdom?

Think carefully, think very carefully before ditching your higher skilled work to settle in a lower skilled position for the longer term. The old saying the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence could never be more true, because taking the lower skilled employment may become an issue in the future should you change your mind and later wish to re-enter your primary career path. Minimising the amount of time in lower skilled jobs is also another tactic. I feel it is prudent to always keep in mind how you use skills or at the very least keep your skills relevant. The above discounts the fact the change to lower skilled employment precedes the action is for medical / health reasons. Lastly, Instead of taking a lower skilled job, it is preferable to try and match future employment to your transferable skills if your not wanting to maintain employment from your primary career path. This way, you will still be able to use your high level skills while at the same time demonstrate your adaptability in other roles.

Until next time...

Darren Hamburger


Page Last update:09/10/2018

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