career

Watch Your Language: Regional Differences And Careers

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Recently while helping a friend look for work, I had a strange experience where a recruiter vastly underestimated their skillset.  I was trying to think why this would happen – and then realized it was a regional difference as the person and the recruiter were nearly on different coasts.  In this case it was a Silicon Valley recruiter mistaking some communication experience for “just another tech writer.”

The more I thought this over, the more it intrigued me, and the more I looked into it, the more I realized that if you’re doing a job search, the ways you describe yourself and even your title can vary from region to region and even coast to coast:

  • The titles can be completely different from jobs.  Words like “publishing” and “engineer” can have widely ranging meanings.  In fact I got called on this a few times – “Programmer” is a term that isn’t considered very encompassing for most software engineers/developers and can even seem insulting.
  • Titles can vary not just in region but also “how deep” you are in a large corporate structure.  What is “editing” in one profession is “communication management” elsewhere.
  • The “core skill” of a profession can vary by what it’s called from region to region as well.  An “artist” in some technical regions is assumed to have pretty advanced digital skills.  I suppose in some regions an artist would nearly be a Programmer . . . er, Engineer . . . er, you get the idea.

If you’re on a job search where a regional change is in order, check your language to make sure you’re not sabotaging your own job search.  A few suggestions:

  • Search job boards in a region but use single words related to your job – coding, art, graphics, editing, marketing, etc.  See what jobs come up and read the descriptions to see which ones fit you – and see what titles you fine.
  • Ask someone that lives in the region on terminology or have them introduce you to someone.

So moving?  Start checking your language out to see if you’re sabotaging yourself.

– 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/

How Your Safe Career Isn’t Sustainable

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A good career is one that’s sustainable.  It can take hits and return, it continuously evolves to more stability, and of course keeps paying the bills.  It’s like a sustainable agricultural practice, or use of raw materials, or what have you.

The thing is we mix it up with “playing it safe.”  There’s a big difference between a stable career and playing it safe.

Playing it safe is about doing things the same old way you did them because innovation seems threatening.

Playing it safe is about holding on to things no matter what – even if you don’t need them.

Playing it safe is about not taking chances even when taking chances is what’s needed.

Playing it safe is about not changing your goals even when they no longer form an overall, sustainable, picture.

Playing it safe . . . is usually stagnation.  Stagnation doesn’t last, just the same way stagnant water gets rather disgusting.  You career ends up all green and sludgy and attracts mosquitos.

OK, I sort of lost the metaphor there.

Anyway, when you’re playing it safe in your career, there’s no guarantee it’s sustainable – and quite likely it’s not.  You need to think of what you have to do, what you have to learn, to make sure the good state of affairs continues and improves.  The same old same old won’t cut it.

Your Next Step?  Look at your career and ask how sustainable it is, and what you have to do to improve that state – even if it scares you.

– Steven Savage

Why We Need Imagination In Our Economies, Media, and Careers

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I’ve decried the lack of space opera – because it requires thinking big thoughts and often thinking of the future, it seems those traits aren’t in vogue.

I’ve recently read a brutal look at the plethora of startups that aren’t original. I had to agree.

I had a discussion with a friend who works in gaming that led to a series of bitter exchanges as we lamented rampant unoriginality.

We can look at economic and political discussions where the same thing is said over and over again. Most lately the dismal attempts at austerity that don’t seem to be solving things.

I would like to postulate that one of the problems in media, in economy, in economics and politics, is a lack of applied imagination.

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