LinkedIn still struggles with portfolio careers. It’s not the only one

Why do we have such a hard time talking about non-linear, non-niche, and multi-act careers?

You’d think I had announced I roast babies on an open fire. But it was a LinkedIn announcement stating I’d started as a Business Operations Manager that got internet tongues wagging. From “oh no, we’ve lost another one” to whispers about the vacuum left in freelance advocacy, and other people smacking their lips together with gossipy glee.

The reaction was bemusing.

I don’t blame people. Australians are a curious bunch. We don’t like change, and we love a good soapie drama. Pop that in a blender and it can make for awkward conclusions and hot little internet spot fires.

But it does highlight LinkedIn, and the working world, including (ironically) freelancers, still doesn’t understand portfolio careers. And that makes articulating modern day careers difficult.

Which is strange because I think the last time I met a person wearing one career hat was sometime around 2003.

These days, people fall in one or more of these categories is working on:

· Two jobs

· A traditional job with side freelancing

· A startup on the side of their freelancing or regular job

· Creative projects that pays the bills or acts as a subsidy

· Seasonal and sessional work

· Contracts in the arts, agency, government and other arenas

· Freelancing and their new educational offering

· Consulting, advising, and advice giving

· Advocacy

· Nested doll businesses – e.g. cafes that also do birthday cakes, food trucks, and catering

· Growing books, speaking tours, and influencing

· Side hustles

· Passive income strategies and offerings

· The Next Big Thing

Why then are we flummoxed when change is in the air? Or still having aversions to portfolio careers?

I’m taking a stab at it, but I think it goes a little like this.

LinkedIn, you need an update

LinkedIn may have finally found its groove, but it is still stuck in a user experience that reflects the early noughties working experience. It is out-of-date and cumbersome, feeding out-of-date and tricky feelings.

Add a short-term contract and you end up risking the scrunched noses of recruitment and HR professionals who assume short tenure means you have commitment issues or trouble staying employed.

Even with a freelance-specific business listing, good luck trying to explain the many projects, hats, and approaches without confusing someone somewhere.

You can do what I have done and use the FEATURED section for your portfolio buckets across different working hats. Or maybe line them up with your top five offerings. But still… I feel like the work version of a fabric swatch book offering choice but not a real experience.

Advocacy wise, you can list it as a volunteer role, but when it starts to move into other territory, it too becomes a problem. You can list it as work, but that muddies the waters.

OPEN TO WORK triggers everything from people assuming you’re unemployed to heckling others for looking desperate.

Does the key lie in more frames like OPEN TO PROJECTS or AVAILABLE FREELANCER? Or does the worry about being on essentially a job site stating you’re open to work function well, only needing a change in attitude from the membership?

While the LinkedIn experts saying it all comes down to gluing the ABOUT together effectively, when was the last time anyone but a sociopath felt comfortable cobbling a confident one of those together?

Should LinkedIn take a leaf from Asana and list projects as sub-projects on little boards of working identity?

I keep telling myself it is my fault for doing many things.

But this is not a me problem. It isn’t some penalty for being a Multipotentialite. Nor is it unique to LinkedIn.

What exactly is happening?

Image: golden labrador retriever, aka the Unashamedly Creative Morale Officer, is taking all news lying down as he naps on the wooden floor boards with his new teddy.

Work has changed but we’re refusing to acknowledge it

50% of Americans freelance on top of employment. I don’t how many Australians fall into the same category as the government still collects data on freelancing in a Census sock draw marked DO NOT REPORT. I can only imagine what happens with far less definable multi-work categories.

Instead, we use cringy terms and invite cagey reactions.

Gig economy, side hustle, influencer, consultant, - all curl the lips and attract the sneers. Fractional, freelance, and all these sorts of things have varying degrees of ownership while implying probably no ownership of their own. Multipotentialite turns heads over people sick of being referred to as generalist and wide achiever. Yet the term itself can’t seem to gain traction outside TED. Portfolio career has flip-folder vibes and (rightly) doesn’t get the airplay.

All I can figure is we struggle with normalising a common reality.

It begins with viewing less than fulltime hours as non-committal or less powerful. It continues with what I call track devotees who believe in tenure track thinking for all careers. It is held in place by the rarest of birds, those with a singular focus, who revel in the ‘high achiever’ moniker so much, they move into you must niche down evangelism.

Elevating oneself through one true calling is the common theme. But more than that, we’re forgetting a life is not a neat measurable, little summary.

We’re obsessed with tangible measurement, and it makes our relationship with career a little screwy. Turnover, career progression, follower counts, web analytics, residual klout scoring ideas, our personal brand value, - it all proves that we are doing something. This works well for people in business. You can even measure the wellbeing of an organisation in the doors spent and productivity returned thanks to Bentham, Taylor, Becker, and later, Gallup and McKinsey.

Until you get to the wibbly wobbly stuff. Like how much we know, the value we add, and the tiny bits of glue each of us carry around that give extra spice and meaning to working. Or the working lives where people don’t want to level up, or people who do different things to keep their heart and brain amused.

But you get the picture. What we have here is a failure to communicate.

And I am experimenting my way through it. And I am finding it oh so rewarding.

Some Multipotentiality questions you might want to consider:

• Are you choosing to niche because that’s what you think you should do, only to find you feel disconnected from work you want to do?

• Instead of trying to put everything you offer under a neat umbrella, what happens if you focus on yourself as the glue that binds everything together?

• Are you communicating the benefits of working with a Multipotentialite effectively like how inflation friendly centralising with one freelancer is over having a team; avoiding siloed thinking; lower project management load for the client in your copy, social media posts, and other marketing?

In the meantime, here are some things to read

Here’s the Multipotentialite’s guide to pitching properly. Are you drowning? Here’s what to do. Here’s how to create better social media.

In the wake of the Studio Ghibli AI art filters, let’s look at Hayao Miyazaki's thoughts on an artificial intelligence. Speaking of AI, Tim Burrowes unmade has the AI robots calling the election for Albo. And I’m personally rethinking my AI usage after discovering a short conversation of 20-50 questions and answers with ChatGPT (GPT-3) costs half a litre of fresh, drinkable water. The generative AI’s carbon footprint figures are terrifying. And it’s steeped in inequality, too. Put this all together and we don’t know enough to make informed AI usage decisions.

Meanwhile, are you taking your job too seriously? I learned a lot from the documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin - here are my thoughts. Let’s look at the real reason you’re scared. What to do to escape marketing’s insatiable appetite.

And events to attend

Share your awesomeness every Thursday in the Freelance Jungle and celebrate what you’re working on.

Thanks to Annetta, Martina, Rhiannon and Rhea for joining me for last Friday’s Office Hours. You too can open the door to chatting about the world, creativity, and more on Monday 28th April via Patreon.

Join me for virtual coworking every second Friday of the month. We start at 9:30am and run until 11:30am Sydney time. Details via Patreon.

More educational events coming soon.

Oh, and cool things to check out

If you're in Albury, Wagga, Tamworth, Armidale or Western Sydney and you have a girl aged 14 to 19 who likes trying new things, send her along to teen girls fire camps! They are free and loads of fun. https://events.girlsonfire.org.au/events.

Guy from the Big 6-0h podcasts pays homage to iconic Aussie advertising jingles.

Anna writes about what non-fiction authors can learn from fiction authors.

Martina reviews Rick Morton’s Mean Streak, a book about the robodebt debacle.

Anfernee is moving away from fractional work. Here’s why.

If you’re looking for a great destination, head to the Blackwood Hotel and see the amazing installation of the area’s history by Jinny.

Need some help? Book me for coaching and let’s reinvent your business via a creative change workshop or strategy.

Love and protests that I am not going anywhere,

Rebekah