Have you ever been pigeonholed? I have. It’s very annoying too.
I always (definitely since 1987, anyway) wanted to be a librarian. I also needed to work, so having failed my first degree twice and lost out on a place at library school (yes, we had library schools in those days) I got a job at Leeds Polytechnic, where I was also making my third attempt at my first degree.
The temporary role got extended by a further year, then a few more months, then they decided to make me permanent.
And so, I thought I’d better pick up a project to justify my position on the payroll. I alighted on something called CWIS, which kept getting bumped off the management agenda for time, plus no-one really knew what to do with it.
To me it sounded like information management, and who better to manage information than a wannabe librarian?
Two colleagues suggested trying out this newfangled “world-wide web” thing… and that’s how I became The Web Guy.
“Gary Website”
This, of course, was very annoying, especially when there was a merger and library and computing staff were merged. I’d been a library assistant, a trainee librarian and a computing advisor, so I was a shoo-in, right?
Nope. I was The Web Guy.
And so, after a long and tortuous restructuring which ended with me being one of the Gang of Four leftovers and eventually having a new role (and office) created for me, I started looking elsewhere.
Through a series of misadventures too long to recount I ended up at West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive. Still managing websites, but in the Public Relations team, which meant I could move sideways.
After seven years of riding two horses I had to make a choice, and plumped for the world of PR… and that’s how I became The Press Guy (although I still had the nickname “Gary Website”).
The bigger picture
To be clear: I don’t like doing media relations. Yes, it’s something in my arsenal but I much prefer working on projects. This might include some media relations but it’s not the focus of the day.
But people see the words “public relations” and assume that media relations is all I do, and all I can do. Which also means that every time now I apply for a job that isn’t media relations I have to rewrite my CV to highlight the bits they’re after because the siloed world some organisations work in means they can’t look at the big picture.
To avoid being pigeonholed then, I need to be a bit of a CV chameleon.
I recently applied for a role via an agency who had my generic CV, and got the feedback that I was “too press”. It was a temporary role, shovelling content onto a web site.
Sometimes, you just can’t win…