Things Are Still Happening

I promised you all details of my impending new change in my last substantial post, so I won't disappoint.

I mentioned that New York City will be the site of my new ventures. Long story short, starting June 27th, I will be an SEO intern at Flying Point Media in New York City. What's SEO? Search engine optimization. Or, in layman's terms, digital marketing and marketing strategizing in the search engine realm, i.e. getting your site exposure on Google, Bing, and the like.

But wait, Mark, you never expressed an interest in this field before, why the sudden change? Well, if you've been following my blog for awhile, you'd know that I have been in a sort of rut for quite some time, some of that attributed to the field I have been working in. My current job and field has been fairly stagnant, and growth in the public sector/transit/geography industry is not going anywhere, very unfortunately. My two weeks have already been put in, but that's a topic for a future post. No, I think I'm ready to pursue a new path.

And yes, I realize that this is merely an internship position. But this company is hell bent on making sure their interns are hired right away after the internship period, so it's practically a temp-to-hire position. Unfortunately, bottom-rung intern pay sucks (especially in New York City!), but hey, I gotta start somewhere.

So how did someone like me, a person with no discernable background in marketing or SEO happen to land a competitive position in a lucrative and growing field thousands of miles away in New York City of all places? Networking. I don't mean to sound trite, but it really is who you know. Using the power of LinkedIn, I found a friend who was in this particular field, I expressed interest in and asked how she got started, and she mentioned an opening at her company. Sent my resume, got her recommendation, aced the interview, and before I could blink, I was offered a start date.

So that's the story. I haven't officially announced this anywhere else, so you lucky readers (yes, all 5 of you!) are the first to know! Don't you feel special.

Still so much to say, all to come soon enough.

"Sometimes I feel like Iím dumbing myself down to make things easier, so I have a safety net to fall back on and blame when I fail. But that's dumb, because in community college, there is no safety net. This is it."
-SS