Search for: Media, Kids, Education, Jobs... Mindreader!

I wish my career had a one or two-word name. I envy people who can define their professional interests and expertise with one or two words: copywriter, engineer, patent attorney, babysitter, Prince of Whales (OK, that's three). When they create a resume, it's pretty straight-forward. When they look for job openings, entering keywords into a search engine is pretty easy.

But for me, it all seems to get muddled. Who am I? What do I do? I'm a media producer, but I don't operate a camera or write code for games. I'm an educator, but I have very little teaching or classroom experience. I work with educational content, but I'm not specifically a curriculum specialist or an instructional designer. I'd be as excited about producing a cool educational casual game for kids as I'd be developing a non-profit program helping at- risk youth finding their media voice.

Do either of those even exist? If not, I could start such ventures! Except that I need to pay bills right away. Damn bills; they always get in the way!

So the keywords I want to use -- education, media, learning, content, kids -- are really too generic and broad, eliciting gazillions of results, most of them completely inappropriate for what I do.

I think my strategy is going to have to be to go granular. I'm going to have to identify and categorize my network contacts into focus area and then develop an effective approach and "elevator speech" for each. Then I'll need to contact individuals within those groups, by phone and/or by e-mail, as a first step in securing my place on their radar. Because I agree with the career coach I saw last week: the right job for me is not listed on Monster or Career Builder, or EVEN on Craigslist (which I love). Instead, it's an idea brewing in someone's mind, a problem without a current solution, an inspiring idea that needs a shepard. Those things never make it onto a job board, so I need to go find them and nudge them into existence.

How do you put THAT whole idea into a search engine?!