Skill of 2010: Computer Skills

Every year around January 1st, I resolve to learn a new skill over the next 365 days. I often don't have a skill in mind, instead they usually present themselves. One year I learned how to play Texas Hold 'Em poker. Another year I learned how to rock climb. Several years I tried to learn Spanish (okay, that was a real resolution).

This year, 2010, I wasn't sure what skill I was going to acquire or work on. But after having an awesome whiz-bang techie afternoon at my job, I realized the skill this year has been computer savviness.

This might better be called, "thank god I learned Excel." It was painful and I still don't know much beyond the basics, but figuring out how to work those lil boxes has been my number one biggest techie achievement to date. Excel has made life sooooo much easier. Yesterday's golden moment involved making microsoft Word correctly talking to Excel to do a "mail merge". For you non-geeks, essentially I had Word use a spreadsheet I had constructed over a month. Word drew data from that spreadsheet to correctly personalize a bunch of form letters and then email said form letters to over 80 people. I didn't have to do a single cut-n-paste, not a single retype. By spending 30 minutes figuring out mail merge, I saved myself 1000s of clicks and over an hour's worth of work. Plus, I now can say I know how to do mail merge.

Ditto for the time spent figuring out how to set equations in Excel. Grades were finally a snap this year--I just had to figure out the formulas and bang! it was done.

Second awesome tech accomplishment to date: learning basic web programming. Again, I'm talking basic. But, for example, now I know how to make italics and bold at will, and without having to use the buttons in Blogger (though that's what I prefer to do...). I learned how to write web code from working on this blog. [I knew this blog would be good for something.]

RSSs have been another techie tool I never understood. Now I can't imagine life without RSSs feeds.

Last month I learned how to shrink long urls [psst: go here or here].

Now, I admit. I don't understand Twitter, but that's my next challenge. I'm on it as @leadfoothunting. You can "follow" me, but at the moment, I don't do anything. I mean, I don't tweet.

Okay, so why am I bragging about my e-prowess? Basically because I realize that these are skills that I'm going to need in any workplace--especially when I go alt-academic. I also think that employers want to know if we can do the electronic game. Did anyone hear this recent NPR story about a guy who landed his dream job? He got it by buying google ads and personalizing them. $6 for the ads=>phatty position with biggest, baddest advertising company around. That's some basic savviness put to good work.

Contributors to wrk4us (btw, hope you all got the memo about its new home) also admit to googling potential employees. Many jobseekers have been asked about something that was not part of their application materials, but googleable (as if I didn't need to tell you--Facebook privacy, yo!)

You know that "please hire me" email I sent last week? I mentioned that I included my website in my signature line. What I didn't mention in that post is that I spent almost as much time cleaning up my websites (yes, plural), as I did on that email.

My university nicely gives us server space to host our own professional websites. My website includes the following pages: "contact" "biography" (short blurb people can cut and paste), "publications" (with links as possible), "Research Resume/CV" (abbreviated version online, up to date, downloadable, pdf version at bottom of page), "Research Background" (long narrative about my work) and a "Publishing and Editing Experience" page. The Publishing and Editing Experience page gives a brief summary of my work in publishing, includes an up to date publishing resume, and a link to my editing website. The editing website is pretty extensive.

The "professional" website I outlined above is linked to my department profile page. Which also includes a lot of the information of the "professional" website, but in short form.

Oh, and my editing website and this blog show up in my facebook account. Keeping academic separate from personal, I don't have my university website on facebook. Besides, that's totally lame.

Bottom line, I want employers to find me. I want to make it as easy as possible for them to get to know me virtually. I don't include personal life stuff (well, except some here and a lot on facebook), but I do include my picture and more information than you ever want to know about Leadfoot, ABD (yes, I'm treating ABD is a lettered achievement, just like MA and BA).

We are kidding ourselves if we don't think people aren't going to e-stalk us. They will--they pay me at my hourly job to e-stalk people.

Okay, enough with the rambling self-congratulations. This is peanuts, compared to what most professionals know. But still, alls I'm saying is that loving my computer programs has been one awesome experience so far this year. And, dare I dream? I think being computer savvy may just give me the edge I need over 1000s of other job candidates who want the same jobs as I do.