What is Career Diversity?

Career diversity is a term that is often used to identify two different types of strategies that professionals may use in pursuing a livelihood. One approach focuses on the development of one career path while actively pursuing a different career at the same time. A second strategy focuses more on the acquisition of skills and credentials that can easily be transferred from one business setting to another. Each of these two approaches helps to ensure that as the business world changes, the individual is able to continue earning a living while making use of his or her core skill set.

One concept of career diversity has to do with what is known as multiple careers. Here, the idea is to actively pursue one type of career while also becoming established in a different type of career path. An example of this type of diversity can be seen with business leaders who continue to remain at the helm of prominent corporations while also actively pursuing careers as public speakers or authors. For example, a company president who writes a series of books that deal with business strategies which work in different economic climates can be viewed as actively pursuing two careers simultaneously: functioning as the president of a major company and as an author.

An alternative approach to career diversity is the cultivation of a set of credentials and skills that allows the business professional to easily move from one industry to another, with relatively little additional training required. Sales professionals often make use of this type of diversity as they migrate from selling one type of goods or services to selling products that are totally unrelated to the previous employment position. A salesperson with this type of diversity may successfully sell plumbing supplies but later secure a position with a telecommunications company, employing the same basic sales techniques to the task, and be equally successful.

Whether the career diversity involves the pursuit of two different careers at the same time, or the development of skills that work well in a number of different settings, the main benefit of the diversity is the ability to generate a great deal of financial security, regardless of what changes are occurring in the business world. Should one career or opportunity come to an end for some reason, there is always another business arena to enter and continue generating a steady flow of income. From this perspective, either means of developing career diversity can be viewed as an ideal approach to ensuring financial security, something that is very important in today’s ever-changing business world.