What the Heck does Infinitely Fungible Mean?
Tags: Personal Development, Consulting, Skills Development, Life Lessons

Why was the mushroom invited to so many parties? Because it was a fun-gi! Yaaass, puns are great. I’ve had entire text exchanges with nothing but puns.

OK, fungibility (which spell-check is telling me is not a word even though fungible is so why wouldn’t fungibility be the ability to be fungible? Ughh, English) surprisingly has nothing to do with fungus or its plural, fungi.

I had a conversation just a little while ago (today is Dec 16, 2020 for those from the future) with someone who I’d never met and during the conversation he said the words “infinitely fungible.” I had to hit up the Googs to figure out what it meant and make sure I understood what he was trying to say.

I know what infinitely means, and I was pretty sure I knew what fungible meant, and I’m pretty good at figuring things out from context but I had never heard someone say that before! I was caught off guard, baffled, perplexed. So I decided to write about it.

The conversation was centered around my interest in a position with the company he works for. It wasn’t an interview — I’d actually just received a “going with other candidates” notice from his company — it was just a conversation to explore why I was interested in the company, what I wanted to do, and some friendly advice between two strangers.

The encounter was set up by my partner; she knows him from her job where he works as a contractor. We hop onto Webex and get to chatting. He tells me about the company culture, opportunities within, and how the hiring process works. I tell him about what I’m looking to do, how I love working with people, developing processes, and create organization and accountability — yadda yadda.

I go on to mention that I’d actually already received the “no” regarding the position I’d applied to at his company and he says no big deal. Typically what happens, apparently, is the hiring managers put out generic job descriptions and the job rarely follows the job description exactly. Which is interesting to me. In all of my recent positions there has been a clear job description which helps define performance indicators and define how the person is doing. But I understand a big company has a much more dynamic workforce and jobs are constantly changing scope and the hiring managers don’t always have the capacity to modify every description.

I tell him that one of the things that has always dissuaded me from applying to bigger companies is that I cherish my ability to be creative and bring that to the table. I don’t want to just be Employee Number: 8473029 who checks a bunch of boxes.

It’s the main reason I insist on making a good-looking resume, with bold text, a header image, and describe my experiences in paragraph form. I go the extra mile to send thoughtful cover letters (sometimes with jokes about my dating profile). I want a human being to read and understand the things I’ve done!

But, after talking to my new friend, I realized that there’s something to be said for the way they hire as well. As a large company they attract a) thousands of applications and b) the best and the brightest. He mentions that when he’s in meetings he’s impressed that everyone in the room is smarter than he is — and this is coming from a person who says things like “infinitely fungible” in casual conversation! So this big company has to make sure that the people they hire do check certain boxes, that they can speak to all of the qualifications, and then go above and beyond that as well.

He suggests highlighting the experiences I’ve had working with other organizations, especially diagnosing problems and implementing solutions. They like to consider themselves “doctors” for organizations, suggesting treatment plans to get an organization on the right track. That’s a pretty good analogy. I’ve always considered myself great at understanding a problem and suggesting a way forward — so I’m going to add “doctor” to my resume now.

So after all this, we get to the part where he mentions that, a lot of times, especially in a consulting role, what they’re looking for is people who are “infinitely fungible.” I opened a new tab and Googled it because I needed to know exactly what that meant.

Fungible essentially means that something is interchangeable. In economics an example would be gold. One piece of pure gold is worth the same no matter what form it’s in: nugget, coin, jewelry, etc. Infinitely simply means with no end.

So in human terms, I think infinitely fungible means that a person brings value to the table, no matter what the situation is.

Not everyone is infinitely fungible. It definitely takes a certain type of person and I’m definitely that type of person. I sometimes wish that I could be an expert in ONE thing — but that’s just not me. I like learning and knowing about lots of different things. An inch deep and a mile wide instead of vice versa.

If you can work to make yourself more fungible, you should. If your sole focus is one thing and you want to be an expert in that thing, by all means, do that. But if you’re like a lot of people who aren’t quite sure what that one thing they want to do is — yet, learn and absorb as much as possible so that you can use those experiences to position yourself as best possible.

Whether I move forward with a big company or small, I’m going to keep working on being infinitely fungible and being able to adapt and apply myself to a wide variety of situations. I want to be valuable — no matter the scenario — and be the person people think of when they face an obstacle.