While strolling through various blogs online I came across this post from Jason Falls, a very successful and popular Marketing/Creative person. (Note: his post is from a year ago, so maybe he has changed his mind, didin’t find a follow up post to it though.)
That said, I found his article interesting and while his readers obviously agree with him, I just can’t help but feel odd about my own situation. I mean, I’m not a famous Marketing person. I’m not the worlds best Graphic Designer. I don’t have an art degree and I’m definitely not a Chris Brogan when it comes to Social Media. Yet, I manage to make what I do have work for me, and sometimes I get very, very lucky.
For some reason I’ve always been able to make things work that shouldn’t. For example, in September of 2009 I was working as a Marketing & Design Manager for Colliers International. The people were great, but after 8 years I felt like I wanted to really focus on my writing more, as well as delve deeper into Social Media and be more on the forefront of emerging technologies. For most people this would mean starting to network with people in these fields more or at the very least coming up with some type of three-step plan to success they outlined from a self-help book.
What did I do? I quit my job.
Three weeks notice, as I didn’t want to burn any bridges. I took about two weeks off to lounge around, and then I started sending out resumes, in Word format, with a generic cover letter and references attached. I hit up job postings on Craigslist and Backpage, while also updating my profiles on Monster, CareerBuilder and Dice. I’d get up in the morning around 9 am and until noon I would send out between 10 and 25 emails a day. I also posted some ads using VFlyer on various job boards promoting my Marketing and Design work.
I ended up with at least two interviews a week, and within a month I had a part-time marketing and social media consultant job, and another month later, a full time position with the city of San Jose as an Online Content producer – which is pretty much my dream job as it combines writing and Social Media. Don’t get me wrong though, I have done many things in my life where many circumstances and my own choices have caused me to fail miserably, and I even found myself in a bankruptcy, but failure and success both exist.
So what’s my point?
I don’t know if I have one really, at least I wouldn’t ever recommend to someone to take a chance like I did, but I guess part of me does want to let people out there know that you can follow your dreams and succeed. If nothing else, I do think that Social Media may help you get a job, if you’re currently laid off or looking to change career, I think you can take some time to work on your online networking skills and leverage that into a position.
So maybe you can take a chance, sometimes it won’t work out, and other times it will. I don’t believe in fate and I don’t believe in miracles, but I do believe in myself, and I think that’s a good start for everyone out there right now. Believe in yourself and make it happen, find the job you want to do and do it, and if it doesn’t exist, create the job yourself.
Jason Falls
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