I had the immense pleasure of meeting Jay Hartlove at Con-Volution when we sat next to each other on the Worldbuilding And Religion Panel. I was thrilled when Lillian Csernica re-introduced me so I can interview him – because this is a man that pushes himself. Let’s meet Jay!
Geek Job Guru
Learn The Job Search Game
So after spending a lot of time discussing the Dark Side Of Do What You Love, I’m going to focus on one more depressing subject right now: the recruiting mess.
Now let me preface this by noting that I’m going to defend recruiters. In my experience most recruiters are great people in a very challenging situation. As I often note if you think your job is awful, imagine having to interview twenty or thirty people like you in a week and you get the idea. For extra spice, imagine what kind of other bad decisions they have to put up with.
So I’m not going to diss them.
But let us be honest, the process of finding a job sucks. It’s not fun. It’s challenging, and unless you get into it (as some of us do), it’s painful. It’s why I keep writing and speaking on it.
And here’s something you need to do.
You need to learn the game.
All Hail Inconvenience
There’s a peculiar thing to we humans when it comes to inconvenience. We will seek to avoid inconvenience, crave convenience like a drug, and will gladly take it too easy. Yet, strangely, people often crave challenge, the unknown – and dare I say inconvenience? We will give up easy on challenges if presented with an easy option, then go out of our way to seek adversity.
Now I could examine this from many perspectives, some of them actually insightful and rational, but I’d like to focus on geeks and careers. That’s what I do- that’s my challenge (or perhaps my comfort zone, we can discuss that elsewhere).