Dana Swanson's Story

Dana Swanson's Story

Where’s the Advice?

Many of the best in the business world would tell you that they had some sort of guidance along the way; a mentor or some sage advice that arrived just at the right time.  Since being downsized from my job was a new experience for me, I went searching for advice on how to switch gears and take my skills in another direction.  And ya know what I found?  No one really had anything for me.  No one had seen an unemployment rate quite this high, and were probably also a bit worried about the state of their own job, as well.  Suddenly the market was flooded with qualified people looking for work and things got weird.

No one has done this before.  Sure the economy has faltered in the past, but now add social networks with the population of entire continents, sound bites have been reduced even further to the 140 characters of Twitter, and there’s an entire generation of kids out there who will never know life without the Jetson’s like invention called Skype.  It’s indeed a brave new world out there.  We’ve totally changed the way information moves in our society and that effects everything, from business to personal and all that falls in between.

Social Media Prism

The Social Media Prism

We’re all looking at each other, barely figuring things out as fast as they’re moving and although people in this industry weren’t able to offer me much advice, there was no lack of support.  I’m so grateful to a huge list of people who took the time to answer ALL my questions, offer up their own stories and tell me to hang in there.  There’s a saying out there that goes something like, ‘hard times show you what people are really made of’, and the people in this industry have shown me nothin’ but love.  What better motivation could there be to keep up the quest to work along side these fine folks?

Tried and true advice may be hard to come by, but I feel like support is just as good.  The fact that no one has been here before leaves a lot of room for possibility. If we take the time to teach and learn from each other, then maybe we can straighten out some of our financial problems and answer other important questions such as how to read the Social Media Prism or finally determine the official past tense of “To Twitter”.  Happy 2010 everyone, may your family be healthy and all your texting jolly.

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One Response to “Where’s the Advice?”

  1. Kamala says:
    January 6, 2010 at 7:11 pm

    Exactly! Excellent positive commentary!

Dana Swanson RSS

I worked in FM radio in some capacity (largely in promotions) for seven years. Toward the end of that time I began to realize that the first career I’d chosen may not be there for me in twenty, or even ten years. This is a sad realization when you love you job as much as I did, but thinking about what I was as passionate about as music, it wasn’t long before I posted my resume on Malakye. I’ve been surfing almost half my life, snowboarding for years, and music has always been closely intertwined with action sports, so I started getting up early before work to check job postings and write cover letters. After doing that for close to a year, I was downsized from my job; along with my immediate boss and fifty others in January 2009. Two internships and almost exactly a year later, I had successfully changed my career path and was hired on at H2O Audio. Now I ride my cruiser bike to my ocean view desk everyday. Livin' the dream.

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