Why Musicians Make Great Employees

A couple of years ago I decided to add "Musician" to my LinkedIn headline. My music career, or lack thereof, doesn't pay the bills, but I do have pretty consistent gigs. While I won't go as far as to label myself a professional musician, it's fair to have it as a part of my headline, as it displays my passion and unwavering dedication for manipulating sound waves in various forms.

Since deciding to outwardly display my "night job" on LinkedIn, it's made room for some fantastic conversations with other musicians that occupy the same professional spaces. These conversations inspired me to think critically about music's influence on work, and vice a versa. Of the many hypotheses I've come up with about music & work, none are more worthy of a few hundred words than "musicians make great employees"

Rather than bore you to death with an essay on the subject matter, here's a bulleted list as to why musicians make great employees:

1. Teachable: One way or another you have to learn to play music. There's many ways to skin this cat. Online, in person, videos, books, apps, sheer grit with trial and error (strongly would not recommend). The point is that no one becomes a capable musician without some guidance along the way.
2. Perseverance / Dedication: Learning an instrument is rewarding, but can be very difficult. If I had a nickel for every person that I've conversed with that tried to learn guitar and said "my fingers just don't bend that way" or "it hurts", well, I'd have a lot of nickels. Beyond the painful beginnings of learning an instrument there is also a point in your journey where you plateau because you're not advancing your skills on your instrument at an acceleration you're used to in the beginning. This is a seldom discussed second stage of learning to becoming even more proficient with your instrument, and often times it's even more difficult to transcend this stage in growth than the original hump of learning the basics. I didn't even start to think about this until a well professional drummer and teacher brought it up in a group setting comparing it to other learning experiences in life. It's the key difference between musicians that have gigs and the ones still stuck in their garage or bedroom. This concept is translatable to all learning too.
3. Problem Solving: Music is truly infinite. It can be beautifully complex while deceptively simple at the same time. To be able to make meaningful music you need to have the ability to recognize patterns, intervals, rhythms, harmonies, melodies, ways to modulate to different keys, etc. There are moments where you're forced to work within your own limitations, and moments where you're forced to stretch your limits to achieve the results needed. Often times all of these thoughts are happening simultaneously and being put to work instantaneously. It's the ultimate feedback loop of fast paced cognitive thought.
4. Teamwork: It's not a competition up there on stage. It's about finding harmonies, knowing what frequencies to occupy, and where to let other people shine. It's about serving the song, not your ego.
5. Intelligence: "Music majors are the most likely group of college grads to be admitted to medical school. Physician and biologist Lewis Thomas studied the undergraduate majors of medical school applicants. He found that 66 percent of music majors who applied to med school were admitted, the highest percentage of any group. For comparison, (44 percent) of biochemistry majors were admitted. Also, a study of 7,500 university students revealed that music majors scored the highest reading scores among all majors including English, Biology, Chemistry and Math. – “The Case for Music in the Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, 1994 – “The Comparative Academic Abilities of Students in Education and in Other Areas of a Multi-focus University,” Peter H. Wood, ERIC Document No. ED327480.I've anecdotally seen this play out with a childhood friend of mine that majored in music at a community college and now has a PhD in Biology.
6. Creativity: This one is self explanatory. I don't need to write about it much. It's just there.
7. Communication: Spoken word is a small part of how we transmit feelings and emotions to each other. As far back as the ancient Greeks, we've assigned musical modes to situations and feelings. The names of the modes of the major scale are even named after regions in Greece (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian). Musicians understand the power of being able to emote beyond the spoken word, and that we truly are beings of frequency. It goes back to the concept I touched on in the introduction. When you boil music down to brass tacks, it's using an instrument to disrupt air particles with sound waves to make you feel something deep down. People will forget what you wore, or what you said, but they'll never forget the way you made them feel. A serious musician understands and lives by this concept.

The above list could go on as infinitely as music itself. But every song needs an ending eventually, even a Grateful Dead one. Now that you're armed with this knowledge and you happen to find yourself as a hiring manager where two candidates are neck and neck skills wise, and one happens to be 2nd flute in their local philharmonic orchestra, you just might be able to come to a decision faster.