Elevator pitches!

[randomling]

This is the last of today's spam. I swear.

I'm trying to write an elevator pitch for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, to help me to reach my network on social media and maybe find work that way. (I'm really, really desperate for a job at this point.)

The thing about an elevator pitch, though, is the first thing they say is that it should be built around what makes you unique. And I have... literally no idea what makes me unique, especially in an admin-job sense. I don't feel like I'm unique at all! There are hundreds or thousands of people in London who can do what I do. So it's hard to figure out how to write an elevator pitch that isn't super-generic.

I did end up writing a list of things about me, but I'm not sure how much that helped.

Guys, if you have a moment, I'd love to hear one thing that you think is cool, or unusual, or even unique about me. (If you don't know, or you don't have a moment, don't worry!) Maybe that will help me figure out what to put in this elevator pitch thing.

Comments

[staranise]

*looks up and down your journal* The fact that you're a writer/extremely good with language, good at managing many creative projects across different technological and traditional media, and good at creating flexible, intuitive organizational systems for a wide variety of tasks with very different deadlines and priorities?

[randomling]

Wow. That was knock-my-socks-off lovely to read. And so useful! Thank you.

[staranise]

*g* IME, personality traits are hard to pin down and define. On the other hand, if you look around at the things you do naturally that other people just don't, skills pop right out. It's why I don't like what the university experience does to people--everyone does the same job with the same tools in the same class, so they think that their skills are easy, ubiquitous, and non-unique. Meanwhile, outside of that class, most people in the work force have never heard of X skill or procedure before. So education teaches us, falsely, that we aren't valuable or unique.

When I was working as an admin assistant and I had to handle a hundred files that all needed the same process, I automatically took out post-it notes, wrote a step of the process on each, and designated stacks for the files to go through to physically designate where in the process they were. My co-worker was trying to just remember all 100 of them. Skill: Naturally creates efficient office procedures that streamline the process and easily communicates information.

[kaberett]

Excellent administrator, with strong technical skills & extensive experience of communicating clearly & precisely with technical staff.

I seriously think your ability to translate from code (and similar shorthand) to non-specialist terminology is an incredibly selling point.

[randomling]

♥

Thank you for this, it is useful and was really, really nice to read.

[redsnake05]

On a personal skills level, you have perseverance. In my experience, this is far less common than one would think. I agree with your other commenters too - the ability to translate technical language for others is extremely marketable.

[randomling]

Thank you for this, this was really useful to read!

[purplecat]

I've been thinking about this overnight. I don't know you all that well and I don't employ admin people, so take the following with a pinch of salt, but

a) You are proactive. Evidence: raising your own fund to get to YAPC, starting awesomeers. If you identify a problem you set about finding a solution, rather than waiting for other people to do so for you.

b) You are technically literate and, in particular, able and willing to learn/teach yourself new skills and tools rather than waiting for someone to give you training. This ties into being proactive, but the people I know who do employ people to do admin seem to spend a lot of time complaining that their staff will only use tools after they've received "training".

c) You would, I think, be good in a front-facing position. I'm basing this on the fact we got on OK in Texas (and I'm not much of a people-person), I also recall that you struck up conversations with people on the airplane and so on (when I just hide in my seat and hope no one will talk to me). You strike me as non-judgmental and eager and willing to help people.

I'm not sure how you translate all the above into job-speak, and while you may feel that these are skills that loads of people have, listening to folk complain about admin staff suggests to me that they are not that common, and certainly not in combination.

[randomling]

Thank you so much for this thoughtful response. ♥ It was really nice to read and will be massively useful. I really appreciate it.

[momijizukamori]

Echoing 'proactive' from people above me - you dive right in to problems head-on rather than sitting and hand-wringing. You're always willing to learn new skills to accomplish something.