There are two things I can speak on with a certain amount of moderate professional authority: library stuff and making t-shirts.
Besides a budding LIS-worker, I am the owner and operator of Winged Beast Outfitters. What is Winged Beast Outfitters? It’s a graphic-fashion-design side project I started back when I was teaching. I sort of love it. Besides being a creative outlet, it’s sort of like playing Civilisation (except the game’s hooked up to my wallet).
The 2011 season starts this weekend (in Montreal for those who are interested in coming by). It’s set to be a great show in a new venue for me. I’ll have some new products, and the return of old favourites is inevitable.
It’s not all bliss. Reconciling my lovely small business and my library career can be a challenge. I’m not just talking about time management and work-day focus (there’s lots of stock, reasonable tips on that). It can be hard, but I have a good handle on that.
I’m talking job search.
In interviews, I’ve often left my business out because it complicates the message I want to give potential employers. Or when it does come up, I get so excited it can railroad my answers.
Not to mention that Winged Beast Outfitters, or any small business, does not always fit easily onto a resume. In my case, it’s not LIS work. Because it now overlaps a lot of my previous professional experience, the time-line looks funky on the page. It seems to muddle the flow of my resume and draw away from my LIS experience.
I really do believe there is tons of crossover relevance. All the project management, financial planning, event organizing, customer service and research skills are there and in full force, not to mention social media, marketing and web-design! And there’s record analysis(sales reports and trends) user needs analysis (seriously, you have to know your audience to an almost intuitive degree). And frankly, you have got to be self-motivated and creative to even stay half-way afloat.
Still, it feels like a hard sell. I know I’m not alone in worrying how being passionate about a side project can appear to a potential employer.
I’m not ready to quit my day job. I’d actually be sad to fully abandon the world of libraries for the cut-throat t-shirt market. I try to keep WBO scalable, so that if my day job is more demanding, I can reel my side-commitments in. It also means, that if I ever (heaven forbid) slide back into underemployment, my business is there for me to play around with.
I definitely need to get over my nervousness about bringing it up. I’ve put in a lot of hard work, and I am proud of what I’ve accomplished (and stoked about the next steps). Wedging it in seems to make good sense.
I’m going to be working on new drafts of my resume soon, and I’m making a vow to work this part of professional life into my how I pitch myself to employers.
No comments