From the very beginning of our lives, we are told to specialize. We ask children, “What is your favorite color?” “What is your favorite class?” and of course, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” As we get older, it seems choices are increasingly narrow. You might choose to major in public policy and then specialize in nonprofit management. During the course of your career, you develop a “niche”—you narrow your focus to, say, program management for troubled housing rehabilitation groups.

Society steers us toward specializing, and specialist skills are certainly in demand. But success is also highly dependent on our generalist skills.

A study released in January 2012 reinforces this point. It shows that college graduates who scored relatively high on a test that measures general skills, such as critical thinking and problem solving, were three times less likely to be unemployed than graduates who had relatively low scores.

The test in question is the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), which presents students with realistic problems. To solve them, students must analyze complex materials and evaluate whether they are relevant and credible. According to the test’s developer, the Council for Aid to Education, student’s responses reveal “their abilities to think critically, reason analytically, solve problems and communicate clearly and cogently.”

The study–—published by the Social Science Research Council under the title “Documenting Uncertain Times”—followed up with recent college graduates who had taken the CLA as seniors. Among those whose CLA scores were in the highest one-fifth of the group, a little over 3 percent were unemployed, compared to 9.6 percent of those whose scores were in the bottom one-fifth.

Richard Arum, the study’s lead author, was quoted in a USA Today article as saying, “Students would do well to appreciate the extent to which their development of general skills, not just majors and institution attended, is related to successful adult transitions.”

The study doesn’t dispute the value of being a specialist. But it suggests that in today’s highly competitive job market, developing strong skills in generalism can give you an edge.