promoting professional geekery

Promoting Professional Geekery #46 – Find Your Coaching Specialty

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(For more Promoting Professional Geekery, see this Roundup of past columns.)

So you want to help people out in their careers – from a progeeky point of view – you can always coach them.  After all, people are glad to have someone provide their expertise to help them out in their careers – and even more so when it’s a fellow geek.

Of course, what good can you do as a coach?  I mean where do you start?

It’s simple, you figure out two things.

1) What you should coach on.

Are you an expert at the job search (like I mentioned earlier)?  Good with resumes?  Excellent at finding career paths for people?  There’s clearly something you’re good at – and like to coach on.

So find it.

Look you probably can’t coach on everything, and even if you could, you’d be better at some things than others.  So find your specialty.

Also, you don’t always want to coach on some things.  Maybe you’re awesome at cover letters but hate discussing them.  Fine, find something else so your attempts to help people don’t drive you nuts.

You can always branch out later if you’re underestimating yourself.

2) How you communicate best with people you’re coaching

So you know what you’re coaching on – but how do you communicate it best?  What are your personal, technical, and methodological preferences?

Perhaps you’re good at one-on-one.  Maybe you like to help in groups.  Maybe you work best by email.  You may have physical, locational, or financial limits or advantages to use.

So find how you can communicate with people best, and find a way to use your coaching skills via that method – or methods.

Really, that’s it.  Just find what you’re good at, how you communicate it, and go for it.  We’ve got enough progeeks and potential progeeks out there that need career help, and what you do will make a difference.

Hey you may even want to do it via blogging, which sounds kind of familiar . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/

Promoting Professional Geekery #45: Write About Progeeks And Progeekery

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(For more Promoting Professional Geekery, see this Roundup of past columns.)

So you want to promote professional geekiness, to inspire, to help.  You’d like to write about it.  The only thing is you don’t have anything to write about.

You’re not a resume expert, you’re not a coach, you’re not really good at the whole advice thing.  Not everyone can do it, of course, but you know for sure that you really, are really BAD at this, or at least don’t know where to start.

Or perhaps you just don’t have enough experience to be the expert.  You’re a new progeek, an up-and-comer, or something similar.  So what can you do?

You can write about us.

Not advise, not guide, write about us.  You don’t advise or help progeeks (since you’re not sure you’re capable of it).  What you do is help show what we do and who we are.

You can:

  1. Interview people who are progeeks (Hey, i suggested that you be interviewed, so turn the tables).
  2. Analyze and write about trends in jobs and progeekery.
  3. Profile who industries or career subgroups (it might even be a book).

You get the idea.  With a bit of effort, it’s easy to help people be progeeks and improve their progeekery by giving them information and making them more visible.  If you’re not a coach, you can be a reporter and analyst.

Best of all?  In time, you’ll start getting the knowledge and skills and experience that may let you go deeper and start coaching and advising . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/

Promoting Professional Geekery #44 – Make Your Personal Page Progeeky

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(For more Promoting Professional Geekery, see this Roundup of past columns.)

If you’ve followed my writings for any time you know that having a good personal page is something I advocate very strongly (along with networking, etc.)  So, yes i’m going to emphasize it again, but for a different reason.

Kind of.

A great way to promote professional geekery is to let people see it in practice.  That’s you, the current or future progeek, by the way.  If you have a personal website, then that’s a chance to emphasizes your progeekiness in your writings, posts, identity, and more.

So why do this?

  • It shows the possibility of professional geekery – something not everyone gets.  Seeing your hobbies tied into your careers, seeing you going beyond “pro” to “progeek” shoes the possibility.  It’s something they may embrace, or understand.
  • It shows people pride in professional geekery.  They see that people can be proud of the lifestyle, and can find that pride in themselves.  They may also understand others with such pride.
  • It humanizes geeks and progeeks by showing it as part of you, a regular (more or less) human being.
  • It of course has professional and personal advantages since you’re being honest.

You’re the progeek.  Let the world see it on your web page.

Try a few things like this:

  • Emphasize this in your personal statements and content (which is pretty much what I do at https://www.stevensavage.com/).
  • Include links to your geek projects – which not only emptyasizes it but also helps people see your lifestyle and the broadness of what you do.
  • Include any specific writings and references that fit your progeekery if possible – it also means your site is a good place to put things you’re not sure where to put.
  • Don’t forget to link to interesting external resources relevant to your interests.
  • If you’re like me and like to emphasize progeekery, you can add separate sections.

You’ve got the page (or should).  Use it!

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/