Make Green, Recycle Your Talents!
Friday, January 29th, 2010 
I was on Ted.com the other day, listening to Seth Godin talk about tribes and more specifically about the dynamics of starting a movement. In this talk he spoke about how it is important to find a group that needs something and connect them with an idea that will address their needs. During this economic recession I have been bombarded with requests to forward resumes and requests for job leads from readers of my blog and listeners of my radio show. As much as I would love to help every single one of my supporters, I simply did not have the resources to make an impact.
So I started thinking about creating something that would be a resource for those people, looking for that new job and after some deep thought… Latino Community Info was born. Latino Community Info is a job board that I created to address the needs of readers looking for jobs. Now so far I have heard 3 great success stories about how people connected with new employers, and more specifically those looking for bilingual candidates. It was great to hear that something we did had an impact on someone’s life but there is still many people who are either unemployed, underemployed or simply not working in a job that makes them happy. Even those who have good jobs look to work a side job that helps them either pay the bills or allow them to work in a space that is more in line with their passions and then it CLICKED…
Many people I know in the arts community have side jobs that reflects something they love to do and do well. What they normally do is find a single opportunity. I thought to myself, this is something that ANYONE can do. I was reading a great article by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D on moonlighting that suggested that the following are the reasons why people work second jobs;
| Reason for Multiple Jobs | Percent of all Multiple Job-Holders |
| Meet expenses; pay off debt | 27.8 |
| Earn extra money | 35.4 |
| Get new experience; build up a business | 4.6 |
| Enjoys work of second job | 17.4 |
| Other reasons | 12.5 |
Do you have a side job? Do you fit into any of these categories? Do you have a talent or are you interested in learning something you are passionate about? Would you like to be in a position to utilize those talents and make some extra money or work towards some new kind of career opportunities?
If you said yes to any of these questions…there is a new community that can help you connect with people that need what you have to offer. That community is called GoHuman, a marketplace for local services that is focused on quality and excellence. It is a great place to Recycle your talents and put them to work for you.
I found out about GoHuman a while back when a friend invited me to enter a video contest telling him what I loved about being Latino. To make a long story short, I actually lost the contest (after a hell of a run) but I gained something a lot more valuable…a unique opportunity to promote myself on a website that has such a great philosophy about thinking globally but acting locally. The unique value proposition is that unlike other classified services it has a social component similar to what you would see in Linked In, where people can endorse you and share your products and services with their friends on over 30 different social networks.
Many of us have talents that can be utilized to have a viable side job that does both pay the bills and allow us to test the waters in a potential career move. I work a job in corporate America but I blog and consult in social media because it is my passion to network and connect with others. I actively seek companies and organizations that will pay me to show them what I have learned in 14 years as a webmaster / blogger / social media enthusiast.
I use GoHuman so that I can find people locally that can use my services instead of a mega classifieds “list” where there is no sense of community, nobody that can effectively endorse me to their network and where I will have to fight through hundreds of spam emails just to get a single opportunity that is viable.
This is a place where musicians can become instructors, educators can become tutors, poets can become editors, counselors can become life coaches…you get the drift? The possibilities are endless.
Are you ready to use your skills today and put them to work for you?
“A journey of a million miles begins with the first step…”
George Torres is a bi-lingual social media / cultural consultant and founder of Sofrito Media Group, a multimedia company that produces and develops projects in the Latino / Hispanic arts community. Follow him today on twitter @UrbanJibaro
