Compatibility – adamtcroft.com

I’ve got good news for you today.

The days of selling yourself, market positioning, branding, networking, influencing, and convincing others to hire you are done.

They’re over. 100% dead.

If you feel like you have to build your resume and impress other people – you’re officially way behind the times.

In fact – we couldn’t be in a more pro you time for you to succeed at what you want with others. It’s a thing that, when I point it out, will come crazy easy for some of you.

You’ll wonder why you’ve been making it so hard on yourself all this time. I kid you not.

That means the rest of you will bristle at it and want to email me about how I’m wrong – that’s fine – just warning you that I probably won’t reply.

So if that’s dead – how? What’s “new”?

The Most Important Thing

While everyone in the universe has been teaching you that your resume and skills are the single most important thing to your career – here’s the truth:

Compatibility is the most important thing. By this, I mean two things:

How compatible is your skills set with a need?
How well do you get along with those that need help?

That’s it. Nothing more complicated. I know you think it should be harder – that you should have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get good gigs, money, whatever it is that you’re aiming for, but it isn’t.

Every interaction you have is, at some level, a test of compatibility. That goes times infinity for first impressions.

So –

“Networking”? – Compatibility test
Making friends? – Compatibility test
Going out on a date? – Compatibility test
A day with your spouse? – Compatibility test(s)
A job interview? – Compatibility test
Working with your boss? – Compatibility test

“But Adam – how is this any different than selling yourself??”

Ah, perfect question – thanks for asking!

I imagine selling yourself to be an act not to dissimilar from an infomercial.

“Hey you there watching TV at 2am when you should be sleeping! I’m a sound designer and I’d LOVE to tell you about ALL of my new sound design packs that will bring your podcast/game/film/web show/student project TO-THE-NEXT-LEVEL!

In fact, if you act within the next 5 minutes, I’ll throw in THREE EXTRA PACKS OF SOUNDS ABSOLUTELY FREE! Remember, you have to call me within the next FIVE MINUTES!”

Now, no rational human being talks like that. None of you have ever run up to a game developer or audio director and said those exact words.

But oh man – think about your average approach to an interview…

“I’D BE SO GOOD FOR YOUR POSITION BECAUSE I KNOW WWISE, I KNOW FMOD, I KNOW PRO TOOLS, I CAN DESIGN SOUNDS.

IT’LL BE AMAZING, I PROMISE. HIRE ME, OKAY?! PLEASE HIRE ME?? I’LL LOWER MY RATE – JUST HIRE ME NOW.”

Exaggerated for humor’s sake, yes – but friends – even pros I know do this.

So what would an interview look like if we approached it as a test of compatibility between two parties instead?

Interviewee: “Hey employer – what do you think you need for this role?”

Employer: “I need someone who I don’t have to teach how to use Wwise. Preferably someone who is familiar with something like Unreal Engine. They need to be comfortable on both Mac & PC, with Pro Tools, familiar with gun sounds and it’s a huge bonus if they’re familiar with understanding the difficulties of mixing sounds for a multiplayer game environment.”

Interviewee: “Oh, that’s awesome! I know Wwise, but not Unreal – I’m more familiar with Unity. I haven’t been on a Mac in a while, but I know Pro Tools really well and I imagine I can pick up the Mac interface within a few weeks. I’ve worked on guns in films, but yeah, I haven’t had to deal with mixing issues in a multiplayer game environment.

Have you also thought about how well this person needs to be versed in source control? What about programming or scripting – would that be a part of this role?”

Employer: “Ah yes! If you know Perforce, that’s a HUGE plus. But no, there will be zero programming in this role. In fact, if you want to program or implement your own sounds – that would be a big detriment.”

Interviewee: “I know how Git works very well – so if I could ask questions about Perforce, I’m sure it wouldn’t be a big deal. I’m used to implementing my own sounds, but I imagine you have a very specific process here – so that’s great! I wouldn’t want to break things, so I’m happy to learn how it all works.”

See how different that interaction is? It’s still very one-sided in this case – we’re only talking about the job role and nothing about what the interviewee is looking for in a work environment – but there’s no begging or pleading or “selling” here.

In fact, it doesn’t have to be awkward at all. It’s literally just learning what the employer needs and figuring out “yep, I’m that person!” or “Nope, wow I just dodged a big bullet!”

As I referenced above – the compatibility test is two-sided as well! It may be that, from one person’s perspective, the relationship goes together like peanut butter and jelly. But the second person might think the combination of peanut butter and jelly is super gross.

To use a better example – perhaps in the above example the employer is happy and extends the interviewee a job offer. But maybe the employer isn’t offering enough money to pay the interviewee’s rent without a roommate.

In that case, the employer failed the compatibility test – not the interviewee! Crazy, right?!

Everything is like this

Again, everything is like this. And, not everyone is compatible with each other – that’s okay!

You’re going to go to networking events and find friends, it’ll be awesome. You’ll think some other people there are rude, weird, full of themselves, or smell funny.

You’re also not going to want to work for every company on the planet, or date every person in the world, so on – so forth – right?

But your interactions with people involve a feeling out process, and once you feel like you gel with one another – it’s usually cool from there on out. There’s always situations where people grow apart, or friendships change because someone went crazy – but that’s why there’s always at least a small layer of “hey, are things still cool between us?” in all of our interactions.

If you practice empathizing with others by shutting your own mouth and listening – you’ll find that it becomes tremendously easier to find common ground with others and feel out how close you’re meant to be.

In fact, I bet you already naturally do this pretty well!

So, don’t make your life more crazy, stressful, or complicated than it needs to be. Breathe, enjoy your interactions with other people as much as you can (I get that it’s harder for some than others) – and realize that everyone has something neat and interesting to share with you.