Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

The Post Mortem

If you are part of a regular publication, or a product that has regular release dates, I recommend doing a “post mortem” analysis after each new edition.  Pick out a few things that worked well.  Pinpoint the things that didn’t work out so well, and brainstorm ways to improve. 

The New York Times' Shifting Careers: The Blog May Have Ended, But The Archives Live On

Earlier this week, The New York Times discontinued its career-based blog entitled Shifting Careers. Fortunately, the archives of the blog are still up and accessible, because it offers some excellent and thought-provoking reading.

The blog was written by Marci Alboher, a former corporate lawyer who has written about workplace issues and careers for The New York Times since 2001. She is also the author of “One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success.”

The topic of her book, which she covered extensively on her blog, was "slash careers," meaning one person wearing a variety of hats in life who manages to integrate all the parts into a seamless whole. For instance, one of the profiles she did is of Susan Sparks, a former lawyer turned Baptist minister who's also a standup comedian. The posts under the "slash" tag on Shifting Careers are especially relevant to fan-to-pro types, who are seeing to integrate hobbies and careers

Alboher's other posts cover a lot of areas commonly found on job blogs – career changing, social networking, acing interviews, etc. – and a few that are unique, like branding. One of her posts on this topic, by guest columnist Catherine Kaputa, makes for particularly enlightening reading. Kaputa, a branding expert, recommends that job seekers make a particular attribute their own, the way that Volvo "owned" the concept of safety, and promote their "heritage" – their education and job background.

Kaputa is just one of many experts who did guest columns and interviews for Alboher's blog – others include former Apple "evangelist" Guy Kawasaki; Olympic Gold Medalist Eric Heiden, who went from being a speed skater to an orthopedic surgeon; and former CNN anchor Daryn Kagen, who left the news giant to form her own media network. All offer solid advice, especially for those who find themselves at a career crossroads.

It's a shame that the Times chose not to continue this blog (and Alboher did a post about "being fired from my non-job" and how she found herself dealing with many of the issues she writes about), but at least it had a good run, which is still available to all seekers of career guidance.

– Bonnie

Ask a Manager: Advice From the Inside

The best kind of job advice is always advice from the inside. If you want to find out how to get hired, what better place to learn from than people who actually do the hiring for companies? The Ask a Manager blog does just that.

Ask A Manager is done by Alison Green, a manager at a medium-sized, professional organization. She said that her aim is to help people get into the heads of their bosses – "If you're not sure what the hell your manager is thinking, or how to ask for a raise, or whether you might be in danger of getting fired, or how to act in a second interview ... ask away." Her advice also appears on U.S. News and World Report's blog, so you know she's all-pro.

Readers of the blog can submit questions to askamanager@gmail.com (Green notes that the queue of questions waiting to be answered is a bit long at the moment). Not surprisingly, a large chunk of the questions that have been answered fall under the "advice about your boss" category, and they run the gamut from "Can a boss require employees to attend an after-hours event?" (Green notes if they do, they should pay people) to "Should I tell on a coworker who may have lied about her qualifications?" (She says to do nothing, you can't know for sure that the person is lying).

The second most popular category on the blog is "Interviewing," which covers topics such as how to answer tricky questions (like "Have you ever been fired?"), signs that your interview went well, the concept of "illegal interview questions" and "How to Tell if Your Prospective Manager Sucks or Not."

Other topics covered include resume writing, performance evaluations, salaries, work habits and dealing with co-workers – with a separate category called "Jerks" for a very particular sort of co-worker. (Most of the entries under that category are about rude bosses, actually).

Green, it may be noted, doesn't mince words – she gives the advice to you straightforward, and in colloquial terms. She also isn't afraid to shy away from controversy when it comes to subjects directly or indirectly related to careers – in a column about Sarah Palin, she calls the vice presidential candidate's winking and flirting "in the equivalent of a job interview for a position of life-and-death importance," and the whole idea that a female candidate should be treated differently than a male one, to be "humiliating to professional women, especially those of us who thought we could move beyond gender in the workplace."

Ask a Manager is an entertaining and insightful blog to read, and while your boss may not think quite like Green, at least it'll give you a general idea of where he or she is coming from!

– Bonnie