Event Success

CHAPTER 17The New Path for Event Professionals

As event teams are increasingly tasked with collaborating more directly with other departments, we believe the industry as a whole will come to recognize the value of having a broader diversity of skills and experiences within their ranks.

The higher premium placed on a diversity of skills—as opposed to the traditional value attributed to a high degree of proficiency in a single area—is a trend that has impacted a range of industries and roles in recent years. It's why many employers are more open to nontraditional backgrounds when recruiting talent and why the most direct path from education to career isn't always straightforward.

Historically, if you wanted to be a marketer, or a salesperson, or a human resources professional, the best pathway into those careers was the most direct—namely, a degree and prior work experience in that specific field. In recent years, however, more employers have come to prioritize candidates that bring different, more diversified skills to the table.

Now the most employable salesperson, for example, might have earned an undergraduate degree in psychology, spent a few years in human resources, and taken some online courses in sales and marketing. Rather than the candidate with both a bachelor's and master's degree in journalism, the most employable reporter today might have earned a degree in criminology while volunteering for the school paper and spent some years working for a nonprofit before joining ...