Job Search – Page 64 – Steven Savage

Fandom: The Project Edge

July 5, 2009 by Steven Savage

You're a geek, a fangirl, fanboy, otaku, otariiman, sports nut, etc. You're in a job search. You'd like to leverage your fannish interests for your next job, but you're busy trying to get the whole search thing working right.

Good job searches are like projects – organized, measured, evaluated, with goals in mind. Being a fan, you're probably far better at this than many people – and maybe more than you realize.

If you feel disorganized or aren't sure how to approach your job search, step back for a moment and look at the fannish projects you've done.

Did you organize a convention or part of a convention?
Do you oversee and run a role-play group?
Do you manage a community with events?
Do you sit down and reguarly and consistently make AMVs, fanfic, fanart, etc.?

Then guess what – you know how to do a project. In fact, I'd lay odds that everyone reading this right now is, on average, better at organizing and getting results than they realize. It's just that this is so often expressed in our hobbies and fannish activities that we never realize, frankly, how good we are at it.

So, if you're trying to organize your job search (and organized job searches are successful job searches), step back for a moment and look at what you organized in your hobbies. What lessons did you learn? What skills do you have? Who can you call on for help? What resources did you use?

If you want that geeky job, make your job search a project. To make that project, take a moment and look at your hobbies and the projects you've done there. You're probably far more organized than you ever realized – leverage that.

– Steven Savage

Geek Jobs In Your Backyard

June 19, 2009 by Steven Savage

We've often spoken on this blog about the need to be open to moving for your career, and that's something that's important. However, there's another side to that coin – there could be "geek career" places right in your vicinity that you don't know about yet.

Thoughts on the Wall

June 5, 2009 by Steven Savage

Thirteen years ago when my IT career first started, I had my first experience with the online job search. It was a profound experience because, at the time, I could tell the the job search and the career world were changing. Looking back, I think I may have been on to something.

Those many years ago, I began noticing how the job search was changing. Being in IT, I had to deal with a lot of chaos and job changes – and thus learn about job searches, even if only to be safe. I watched my industry move online quickly, saw companies come and go, saw people adapt – and saw people fall behind.