Promoting Professional Geekery #3: Help Out Recruiters

So you want to promote professional geekery, the idea of doing what you like as a hobby, the idea that what YOU love can be a profession.  There's other people who are glad to promote people's careers too, the recruiters.

Know what?  They need help.  They need your help.

If you're a professional geek, and you know recruiter through whatever means (probably a job search), here's something you can do right now to help them and promote progeekery:

Be there for them.

Offer to help them out because their jobs are hellish, complex, and bizarre.  They want to hire passionate people, they want progeeks, profanes, and protaku.  But they need someone like yourself to:

  • Help them understand cultural issues.  Man is the time I've had discussions about age groups, interest demographics, and more.  You can be the Bridge To Geekdom.
  • Help them FIND people who are as professionally geeky, as fannish, as you are.  They want these people because they know they can do the job.
  • Help them coach others on the job search – recruiters have to groom people for interviews, and it's not an easy thing to do.  You can offer suggestions and advice.
  • Discuss geekonomics with them.  They want to know about the things you know.
  • Be there for them.  I've talked to recruiters who just needed to rant.

Doing this helps promote professional geekery by promoting people looking for work, helping recruiters understand them and the issues surrounding them, and by promoting yourself – showing the value of professional fan-to-pro.

So help those recruiters out – you can do good in any number of ways.

Steven Savage