Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

Launch or Be Lunch, Day 22 - Fonts, Part 1: Comic Sans MUST DIE

Okay, for today's little lesson, I'm going to be sending you to another site.  Yeah, really.  I want you to go here, look it over, and then come back.  No worries, we'll be right here when you return. 

Okay, for those of you who are convinced, you can just skip the next sentence.  For those of you who still think Comic Sans is a whimsical, cute font, read this, then meet me after the jump.

Launch or Be Lunch, Day 29 - Building a Better Yin-Feng, Part 1

Building a character is always a proud endeavor of any creator.  You breathe life into the creation, give it wings, give them a place in the greater universe of your works.  Sometimes it makes for happy campers.  Sometimes it makes for thrilling engagement with your fans.  Sometimes...well, let's not get into those ones, those are creepy enough. ^_^;;;

But there's one thing that you can often count on: you'll have to, sooner or later, modify your character.  Such as it is with two of our characters.  Today, I'll detail the headaches we've had working the fun for Yim-Fong Yim-Feng Yin-Feng.

In A World of Warp Speed Job Searches, Part One

Well, folks, today’s bit was going to be a post-NaNoWriMo advice column on how to do lots of nerdy things impressively fast.  However, teh Steve was teh inspiring once more with this article about the high-speed job search.  As someone who had yet to enter the workforce when technology made possible - and ultimately necessitated - the warp speed job hunt, I am familiar only with such an approach.  I’ve seen it make life easier as well as harder (although, mostly harder) to utilize technology to navigate the sea of WTF.  Fortunately, there are alternatives to mass resume emailings and online job boards, and both employers and prospective employees can benefit.

1. Research
2. Niches
3. Using “job radar”

Today, we’ll talk about research.  So...



1. Do your freaking research.

The Internet is not just for quickly sending infinite copies of your resume to every company in existence.  In fact, never use it for this purpose.  Ever.  All that did for me was send me, in my post-OMG-my-entire-department-just-got-outsourced panic, into endless despair because “There’s no jobs” and “I literally tried everywhere.”

No... no, that’s not trying everywhere.  Trying to find a job by sending your information everywhere is like trying to find the prettiest colour by mixing all your paints into an unidentifiable brown sludge.  The key is to specialize.  And how do you do that?  You figure out what it is that companies want.  Oh, Internet, I knew we’d stay friends.

Get online, research the companies you want to work for, and read their “about us” sections first.  That gives you a much clearer image of what they are looking for, and might even offer up some delicious buzzwords that a disenchanted secretary is skimming for in your cover letter.

If you don’t know what companies you want to work for, check for the names of the companies in the credits of your favourite movies/shows/games.  Then go back to the trusty Internet and find out their parent, affiliate, and subsidiary companies.  Corporate integration is ubiquitous.  You’ll get a nice long list.

Oh, and if/when they call you for a job interview, go back to their website and memorize a point or two about the company’s “mission statement” and history.  It couldn’t hurt to drive the point home that you know what you’re talking about, especially in an era when most people no longer bother.  Let the other candidates’ primary goals be speed and having lots of other applications out there.  Let yours be expertise. 

Next week: Niches!

-Tamara Hecht

What IS a Fannish Project?

I often talk about the fact that fandom is great because it lets people do projects and learn from them.  However, I want to take a bit of time to define just what a project IS - and its counterpart, the Continuing Effort.

The reason I want to do that is simple - if you can understand what a project is, you can't easily analyze your fannish activities to determine which one's you've done.  Without doing that it's harder to assess or build your skills and experiences.

Top Ten Hardest Jobs to Fill?

Monster.com takes a look at jobs that seem to have a lot of openings according to Manpower - includes analysis of Manpower's findings and additional commentary, some dissenting.  Mildly useful for a quick overview of what some people are saying about America's employment situation.

- Steven

Trek, Who, Ambitions, Careers

Io9 , an SF-oriented website that covers a variety of ground, did an unscientific poll of Doctor Who and Star Trek fans, focusing on their ambitions, their careers, as well as other data.  You can find their results here.

Though not scientific by any means, it's still interesting reading to speculate on the psychological, economic, and career issues involved - as well as chicken-or-egg issues of what interests come when.  I myself, who started as a young SF fan, can't remember if his interest in science-fiction or his interest in science came first - but I think it was my interest in science.

- Steven Savage