Advice

Quick Things To Help your Unemployed Fellow Fan

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So you've got some fellow fans, geeks, and otaku who are having a tough-time job wise.  Maybe they just lost their job, maybe you've found your online or local community is plagued by unemployment.  What can you do, fast, to help people out?

  • Set up a message board topic or similar area on your gang/convention/group's website for job assistance and encourage people to help out.
  • Make unemployment – and employment – a subject at your next gaming session, group get-together, etc.  For that matter make a spinoff group until people's economic lives are less unpleasantly unemployment-focused.
  • Do a whip-round in your mailing list or preferred social media to gather people's lists of recruiters, temp agonies, etc. and pass them out to those seeking employment.
  • Make sure everyone in your fan group links to each other on LinkedIn and helps each other network.
  • Collect people's resumes and distribute them to the group in case they hear of any openings – that can take just an evening.
  • Hold an immediate online commiseration session.  It'll feel good.
  • Have everyone in your fan group go see if there are relevant openings at their companies.  Set a deadline to report it.

Any other suggestions?

– Steven Savage

Careers and Transitory Works: How to Step Up

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I was watching Sym-Bionic Titan, Genndy Tartakovsky latest work, and it felt as if he was using it to experiment and stretch himself.  Of course this is the man whose done work for such beloved animation work as Dexter's Laboratory, the Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack.  He's a man of considerable talent, but this latest series felt as if he was creating something new, something to go a bit farther – to transition himself to an even more advanced set of skills and work.

"A transitional work" is what I christened it.  It inspired me to talk about the fact that many of us need do have works that let us change who we are and what we do in our careers.  It also gives me an excuse to go from giant robots to discussing your career – something I love to do.

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Are You Responding Or Carrying Out?

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It's hard to get organized.  Trust me, as a busy person I realize this.  Many people end up busy but somehow never getting actually toward their goals.  They KNOW they're active, they can list all the things they've done, but they're not getting anywhere.

(You're probably nodding your head.  I've been here myself.)

I finally came to realize that one of the biggest causes of this is that sometimes we're not following our grand plan (if you don't have a grand plan you have an entirely different problem).  Instead of following that plan we're just responding.

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