professional geekery

Promoting Professional Geekery #33 – Help Out In HR

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

So you’re trying to promote professional geekery.  If you work at a company chances are you have an HR department that . . . isn’t.

HR is a tough profession, as is the entire hiring and hiring-related world of careers (which is why I recommend helping out recruiters).  It’s tougher when people don’t exactly get, understand, or otherwise know how to work with some people, like creative, technical, or scientific types.  Like, in short, geeks.

If you’ve ever been at an employer who didn’t “get” you, or worked with someone in a similar situation, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  I’m pretty sure you’ve had one of these experiences, if not both (I’ve had both).

This means less geeks on the right jobs, less happy geeks at the jobs they do have, and an HR department trying to figure out what wen’t wrong.  Yeah, I know, sounds familiar.

So this is where, you, the professional geek come in.  It’s time for you to offer your services to HR so they know how to deal with people like, well . . . you.

  • You can help them understand technical and career issues for potential interviewees – or for that matter help conduct interviews on subjects you understand.
  • You can get them up to date on cultural issues to help them understand if they’re misunderstanding people – or ignoring them.
  • You can set them straight on social media and other geeky things so they don’t make stupid policies.
  • You can advise them on training policies and skills people need to develop.
  • You can act as a bridge to less assertive progeeks to hook them up with HR to solve problems.

You can help your HR department understand and work with people like you.  It means more good hires, more happy fellow geeks, and less bad decisions.  It means more professional geeks doing what they do well.

A few suggestions:

  • Insert yourself into the hiring process to scope out how it’s going and help out.
  • Offer to research and discuss training needs, then present a report most anyone can understand.
  • Run lunch meetups with HR now and then to get to know people (if it’s a big company), and focus on areas they really don’t know.
  • Form a relationship with the people you get along with in HR and see how you can help out.
  • If HR has a wiki for terminology and standards, help out with it.  If not . . . it might be a good idea to start one.
  • Offer to read over policy documents and make suggestions.
  • Offer to read over or even compose job search ads (so you can give realistic feedback).

You may even find that HR could be part of your career, or you might be good enough to help with or even do hires one day.  Sure, you’re helping others, but it might help you out as well!

– Steven Savage

Promoting Professional Geekery #31 – Revive And Repurpose

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When doing research for my books, I’ve found the internet is a kind of necropolis of dead and inactive sites.  Sure they’re out there, they’re visible, but nothing is happening, updates haven’t been made in years, no one is paying attention.  They’re frozen, mummified, and mounted on the sides of servers for us to see as we pass by.

You’re probably nodding – many people have “dead sites” that are visible, just with no signs of life.

There’s also plenty of other dead things in our geeky and professional lives; the con that faded away, the column that’s no longer updated, the career book that has no sequel.  In the age of print-on-demand, instant-blogging, and ez-post technology it’s surprising how much is just dead.

You’d think that great career blog would be easy to restart, or you could suggest to that author that maybe that sequel to that job guide come out . . .

Yes, I’m challenging you to look at dead sites, books, columns, cons, etc. that were really great for progeeks.  Ressurect them.  Be a geek necromancer*

(Or if, say it’s a con, resurrect it WITH some more professional tracks.)

If your mind isn’t already reeling back to that awesome blog that you realized hadn’t been updated in 4 years, or that con you miss, you’re not trying hard enough.  Go have some coffee and get back to me.

So, why resurrect a geeky career site or publication or event?  Think of it this way:

  • Name recognition.  If you get it back and running, you get all the old name recognition, which instantly helps promote your efforts.
  • Attention.  When a band gets back together or a game gets re-released it’s free publicity.  You could get this on a smaller scale – or with a little smart PR work, make it as big as anything.
  • Past work.  That dead site you’re resurrecting, that book whose author you’re bugging, all have plenty of material already there.  You get to build on that (which calls attention to it and saves effort).
  • Learning.  You’ll learn a lot digging into the past of a website or publication.  Some of it may be depressing, but it’s still educational.
  • Staff and allies.  Bringing an old con or book series back to life for progeeks is also going to give you allies new and old.  You might be surprised what you can do – and who will help.
  • Re-focus.  Maybe a con or publication had some good career stuff – the “revived” version can do even more.

Sure I’m all for new stuff.  But if you’re looking to give your fellow professional geeks a hand career-wise, maybe the old stuff is where you look first.  There’s plenty of advantages to be had.

– Steven Savage

 

* That would also be a good name for a band.

Promoting Professional Geekery #29 – Be Accessible

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If you want to promote the professional geek ideal, there’s one thing you have to do.

I’m not talking running cons, doing events, writing books, and so forth.  Those are all fine and you should do them (if not all of them).  One thing you need to do if, like the motley crew here, you want to help people be professional geeks, is to be accessible.

Being accessible is indespensibe if you want to help people in their geeky career endeavors.  It’s not something we think of very often because it’s a “being” as opposed to an “action.”  It’s being someone people can reach and find out about is very important because . . .

  • People need to reach you to call upon your expert knowledge, sublime wisdom, and other things you are, of course, too modest to claim.
  • There are cons, events, chat groups, and  more that you should attend – you need to be accessible to be invited.
  • You need feedback on the things you are doing, both positive and critical.  If people can’t reach you, how can they do it?
  • Those who may want to call upon you may not always know what you do.  You need a way to tell them and show them.

So, you, my fellow progeek, need to be someone people can reach.  Perhaps not overly so, you may value your privacy, but people need to be able to know about you and contact you.  Take control of it – and make it work the way you want.

  • First, as I harp on endlessly, get a web page for yourself.  Find the right domain, get up a page simply (Rapidweaver, WordPress, what have you).  This lets you show who you are, get found in search engines, and funnel people towards a media you control entirely.
  • Make sure you have contact information on your page – or better yet an email form that people can fill out so you can avoid spam.  Those are pretty easy, and many simple apps and web packages come with them (or you can go to http://www.wufoo.com/).
  • Have the right social media profiles that fit your needs – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  Again, find what fits your personal tastes and need for privacy – though as usual I’ll emphasize LinkedIn is wonderful, useful, restores hair growth, and makes kittens smile.
  • Be sure your web page has links to these social media profiles – it helps tie everything together so people can reach you the way they want.  By choosing what to show and how to connect, you, of course, still keep control.
  • In the web page/social media that “advertises your progeekery” be sure to have a section that covers what you do in that vein.  Perhaps you list panels you do, books you’ve written, etc.  Let people know what you do (it also helps filter out people that really don’t need to talk to you).
  • Review your “accessibility plan” regularly to make sure it works for you.

If you want to change the world (you know in a positive way), in a way to help people find their interests and live their hobbies (you know, in a geeky way), make sure people can reach you.

Just make sure it’s in the way that is something that fits your needs.

– Steven Savage