Does “Geek Stuff” Belong On Your Resume?

Fandom, Journalism

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Five years ago, I had a shiny new master’s degree—and a minimum wage retail job.

It was the height of the recession, but I never thought that would affect me, the summa cum laude graduate with all the awards and scholarships. The real world hit me like a brick.

Don’t worry, this snobby academic got exactly what was coming to her. I’ll never forget the day the register was acting up and I had to apologize to customers for taking forever to ring up their orders. One patron wrinkled his nose at me and said, “No wonder you’re a cashier.”

Every day I would go home and rewatch Welcome to the NHK, the only anime that reflected how empty my life felt, and applied to jobs like crazy. After applying to 30 jobs in 30 days, I finally got a position as a Web developer in the city, but only after making some big changes:

“I’ve decided to take my anime and video game experience off of my resume,” I blogged in October 2010. “Because I’ve had more than ten face-to-face interviews, and still no job.”

I’m reflecting on my own career’s beginning in order to suppress my knee-jerk reaction whenever somebody asks me if they should keep the “geeky stuff” on their resume. You know, experience volunteering at cons, articles about nerdy topics, columns on geek oriented sites. Today, as a fandom blogger for Forbes with nerdy bylines on CNN and Anime News Network, it’s easy for me to sit on top of my established career and say, “Of course you should!”

But as usual, the answer is far more complicated, and hinges on one question: what are you looking for in your career?

If you’re looking for something just to pay the bills, geek experience doesn’t matter. In 2010 I was desperate for skilled work. Removing geek stuff from my resume helped me to widen my possible options. With a general resume, I appeared to be a ready applicant to a larger group of jobs. I was less of an individual and more of a website-building tool.

If you’re looking for lasting happiness, put geek stuff on your resume. Geek stuff will weird some employers out, but they’re not the ones you want to be working for if you want a lasting career where you can be happy. I hated my developer job, because it had nothing to do with my interests. I eventually left it to cover fandom and subculture for the Daily Dot. I took a paycut to do that but it was a small price to pay for work I believed in. Then again, it’s a lot easier to be choosy about your career when you can finally afford to move out of your parent’s place.

Everything’s gone full circle, however, with my new Web portfolio. I decided to revive Lorsini.com with a showcase of my design work 1) because my government clients don’t care or need to know about my life beyond my competency level and 2) frankly, because design work pays well. And when I get paid well, I can create more stuff for Otaku Journalist.

Do you see what’s going on here? I once again have a non-geek resume, because in this particular situation, I only care about paying the bills. My work as a writer fulfills me as a geek, so I don’t care whether I relate to the subject matter of the websites I build.

You will have different goals at different points in your career, and I believe that means you should always be reassessing. If your resume is too general for your goals, change it. Or, since I’m a huge proponent of having multiple jobs for increased stability, you can have two resumes. Nothing’s permanent, including your interests, and your work life can reflect that.

How did you get your current job? Did your hobbies or interests play into it at all?

Photo by Zhao on Flickr

Otaku Links: Just a snack

Otaku Links

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  • Have you picked your fall anime shows yet? I’m definitely continuing to watch (and review) Ushio & Tora. I’ll also be watching Haikyu! season 2 because yay sports anime and of course Iron Blooded Orphans, the new Gundam series. For a list of everything and where it’s airing legally, check Scott‘s handy Google Doc.
  • I discovered Natalie Whipple when I interviewed her about her YA novel about bronies. That’s not the only subculture she’s covered. I just read Relax, I’m a Ninja, her YA book about D&D, anime, and Japanese martial arts. I don’t usually read YA, but I couldn’t put this one down.

A note about Otaku Links, since it’s a little sparse today: did you know you can recommend links to me to include here? You can, and you should! Otaku Journalist gets about 20,000 unique visits a month and it’s a great place to share your latest geeky project or post. These links are never sponsored in any way—they come from me spending too much time online—so help me be more productive by sending me links in advance!

Photo by Sanmai on Flickr

What if your best IS good enough?

Journalism

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Let’s give a big round of applause to my friend Bill Boulden. Bill is creating an electronic album that’s unique to every customer. At the conclusion of his successful Kickstarter, Bill has announced some familiar names who will be working on the album with him.

Chris Sabat, who voiced Vegeta and Piccolo in Dragon Ball Z. Brina Palencia, the voice of Black Butler’s Ciel Phantomhive. Laura Bailey, whom you might know as Tohru Honda in Fruits Basket.

These aren’t small names in the voice acting field, and they’re some of the biggest names in the English anime scene. Bill’s had plenty of people asking, “How did you do that?”

Bill laid the foundation for this kind of risk taking in 2011, when he started a parody rap group about Magic: The Gathering called Tha Gatherin’ alongside M:TG hall of famer Patrick Chapin.

“I asked him to join me in making a magic rap album just by sending him a Facebook message asking if he wanted to,” Bill told me. “It was my first taste of realizing famous people were people like me who wanted to do neat things.”

You’ve never heard of Bill before, and neither had any of these people he reached out to. But that didn’t stop him from asking the question, “Would you like to be part of this project?”

Last week, I offered free consultations to newsletter subscribers. Ten people took me up on it, and I’ve talked to seven already. What I’ve learned so far is that a lot of people struggle with what comes naturally to Bill. You’re talented writers and passionate fans, but many of you struggle with self confidence when it comes to putting your work out there on a blog, or in front of the editor of a blog or media outlet, or to reach out to a personal hero for an interview.

We all worry that our best isn’t good enough. But maybe you should just go for it.

“I need to have a big blog in order to interview big names.” Wrong. In 2011, I reached out to a studio for a blog post about voice actors and got an interview with Yu Gi Oh’s Dan Green. It was sort of an accident, but still! I had 5,000 monthly readers and they still. said. yes.

“I need to at least have experience to get an interview with somebody important.” Also wrong. My first major byline in my journalistic career was my Kotaku interview with Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu. (By the way, I got the Kotaku internship because I told them I had talked to Uematsu at an anime convention and would write it up if they picked me.)

“I need professional portfolio pieces to apply for professional a job.” Writing is not one of those “entry-level” jobs that incomprehensibly requires years of experience first. I got my first byline in Forbes (and won a contest) by sending in clips from Otaku Journalist.

What Bill does is a little different than journalism. For one thing, he’s paying voice actors for their time, while reporters do not pay for interviews (though people are usually still happy to give them because of the free publicity). But the method is the same.

Just ask.

Deal with your feelings of self doubt after you hit send.

This post originally ran as my weekly newsletter. If you subscribed to my newsletter, you would have been able to read this post fifteen hours ago. Your call.

Art by Beth Zyglowicz.

5 Tips To Kickstart Your Niche Writing Career + A Free Worksheet For You

Uncategorized

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Writing is a career for lifelong students. As you research and investigate facts for new articles, nonfiction, and even fiction projects, you’re constantly learning new things.

With that in mind, I’ve decided that my next Big Offering for readers won’t be another book. It’ll be a course with multiple lessons and workbooks for students to complete at their own pace.

Called Launch Your Niche Writing Career, this course will be for people who are looking to make money writing about their chosen niche topic. It’s information that’s general enough to work for people interested in pursuing any niche, from tech journalism to fashion blogging, but the majority of examples and case studies come from my own geeky writing experience.

In order to figure out Otaku Journalist readers’ specific strugglers with taking their writing to the next level, I gave away ten free 30-minute consultation sessions on the newsletter. (See, this is what happens when you join the newsletter!) I’ve conducted five so far, and each person has left with a recording of our talk and a personal PDF outline of goals and solutions.

Truth be told, I’ve never done consulting or coaching before, and I was nervous I wouldn’t have anything helpful to say once it came down to one-on-one. Thankfully, I was wrong! Here are some of the testimonials consultants had about my advice:

“I love how Lauren pointed out my actual challenges in writing and gave useful, practical suggestions in no time.”

“I realized my two biggest issues to getting steadier and higher paying work as a niche writer—and talking about them with her, also realized the steps I can take to help resolve them!”

“What was really useful though, was just having the conversation with her. It has given me a bigger push to keep looking for work than any of the books or blogs I’ve read.”

I want to give you your own version of the solution-finding PDF. You can download it for free by clicking the link, but you’ll want to read the rest of the article after that.

Get it here!

I don’t know your personal struggles with launching a niche writing career, but after talking to some of my readers, I can make a guess. Here are some pieces of advice I gave to readers during one-on-one consultants that just might help you out.

To go from free to paid, grab a testimonial

If you’re already writing for free to build up your portfolio (if you’re not, you can find some leads here) I’m certain the blog owner you’re volunteering for would be happy to write up a great testimonial about your writing skill and work ethic. You can use this on your portfolio site or in pitch letters while reaching out to new, paying writing opportunities.

Let editors decide if your work is good

If you’re nervous about the quality of your writing, don’t give your self esteem a chance to sabotage your work. It’s not your job to decide if work is good, it’s the editor’s, and the editor won’t lie to you to protect your feelings—that would mean they’d have to put crappy writing on their site. Keep writing wherever you are accepted, but don’t do your editor’s job for her.

Repurpose your free work as a paid offering

When you cover a specific niche that readers are hungry for because it’s not often covered, you don’t need to find other people to pay you on bigger sites. You can write about it on your own blog and make a side income that way. Take your most valuable and popular posts, expand them and freshen them up, and turn them into digital products.

Find work and readers on the blogs you read

What are the big blogs in your niche? Guest post for them—they often pay! Plus, if you’re a regular reader, chances are you’ll know what kind of things they want to publish, and what coverage they may be missing. You can also get ideas from them about what’s popular in your niche, and turn that into helpful posts for your own blog’s readers.

Connect with other writers

Some of the best opportunities I’ve gotten are things I’ve heard about through other writers. Take advantage of the communities you are already a part of in order to find new work. Consider building a mastermind group where you and other writers with similar goals encourage and support one another.

These are all pieces of advice you could put in the “Solutions” section on your free PDF. Download it now to get started.

Get it here!

Watch this space to learn more about Launch Your Niche Writing Career as it comes up.

Otaku Links: Link museum

Otaku Links

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If these links look a little old, you’re right. I keep all my Otaku Links in one big Evernote list, and today I started from the oldest first to see what I missed over the months. I hope you like them anyway.

Photo taken at the MET