Career

Geek Job Guru: Use Your Hobby As A Backup Career

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You may be quite happy in your career.  It pays the bills and plays to your interests.  You have your hobbies and passions, yes, but they’re fine where they are or are going in the direction you want.  Nothing to worry about.

However radical changes can come quickly as we all know.  You get laid off.  A company moves and you’re not ready to change locations.  Your profession starts to contract or alter radically – more radically than you’re ready to face or adjust to.  Trust me, I’ve been there – I’ve had many a sudden career change over the years.

So you may be left one day not only without a job, but without many prospects of doing what you’ve been doing.  You can’t even rely on relocation because the market has changed so radically that you’re not sure you can count on your old career to work the same way.

You may want to consider hobby-as-career not just as a laudable goal to tap your interests or a “someday” plan, but as a backup career in its entirety.  Perhaps for a time – perhaps as a transition that’s more permanent.

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Geek Job Guru: Skill Spread

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What lets you do your job and carry out your career? Well you could say your position, connections, etc. But I’m talking actual productivity, and what lets you actually do things is skills.

When it comes to skills, that’s a huge part of our career. We measure them with tests. We get certifications to show we have them. We get rated on the job or by clients. We seek them out or develop them. In short, a big part of your career is the ability to do something.

So more skills is good for you because it’s good for your career. Ehancing skills is good for you because skills are good.  And so on.

Now we geeks in many ways are people with multiple careers. Sure we have what pays the bills, we also have our hobbies, and many of us have something in between. Your average highly active geek-type is probably doing two or three jobs at any time, and in many cases only one of them actually pays the bills.  Sadly for some that’s “barely” pays the bills, so enhancing what we can do is even more important.

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Geek Job Guru: The Memorable Candidate.

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We want to be the candidate that gets the job, or the contract, or the client.  We’re always wondering “what kind of person will get this.”  Is it the one with this talent or that, the one that is the most forward, the one that is the most reserved, or just the weirdest one?  Whatever it is we want to be that person, or at least think we do.

In my long experience working, coaching, and researching I’ve found there is one kind of candidate you want to be – and you, my fellow geek/otaku/fan can be it, and may have some advantages in that area.

That candidate?  That’s the memorable candidate.  Well, the well-remembered candidate, really – since you can be memorable for breaking into panicked screaming and running out of the interview.  You want to be memorable in a good way, but for the sake of theory, I’ll just refer to you as being “the memorable” candidate.

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