In a delightful coincidence, Valinda is working on a project with someone who recently worked at the institution I just applied to.  She just introduced us, and I’m muddling my way through an email to her, requesting an informational interview to talk about working for that school, and working for higher education in that geographic area.  I have two pages of my notebook covered in notes for things to keep in mind for any interview, and questions I want to ask, and, because this is how I deal with feeling nervous, questions I’m guessing I might be asked.

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Now that I’ve returned from my exciting journey, I can report that doing my first informational interview with a career planning professional was awesome.  Tremendously nice and agreed to meet with me on a Saturday, and was chock-full of information.

For starters, since I’m trying to break into higher ed (or possibly non-profits), it’d be good to demonstrate familiarity with web 2.0 stuff, including…wait for it…wait for it…

Twitter!

Which is how I now have a twitter account.  I’m learning more about how to use it, and it seems like a pretty cool tool.  I just need to figure out how to use it without being obnoxious/sharing only my extreme love of cupcakes.

It’s part of what she referred to as “branding” myself, which is, I think, a way of taking active control of what I do online and how it shows up to people who might be looking for information on me, and part of that is creating a sense of me online that people will get when searching for me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google, or any of the blogs I contribute to, including this one and my excellent cupcake blog.  It’s also about making me memorable, which might actually include informing real people I meet who might want to employ me about the cupcake blog.  Luckily, there are few things more innocuous than cupcakes, so I have no reticence where that’s concerned.

Anyhow, advice!  It included what should have been more obvious but I haven’t been doing because it felt awkward, which is to pointedly introduce myself to the department heads for the places I’m applying, instead of relying on human resources to realize that I am, in fact, awesome and they should hire me.  She also pointed out that it’s all well and good for a university to offer tuition remission, but me taking advantage of it is dependent on them having classes available that I might want to take, and a supportive manager.  I hadn’t thought of that, and it’s pretty important, especially because I’m interested in getting at least a Master’s (and hopefully with some coursework for it done while working for a college or university).

She also, very generously, offered to introduce me via LinkedIn to people I may want to politely chat at for the purposes of employing me.  Altogether delightful.  Many thanks to Valinda for facilitating it.  Now, off to catch up on some job postings that came up while I was off frolicking.