There’s one single piece of advice that I will never forget. In 2006, a colleague asked me if I wanted to blog like him. “It will be good for your career,” he added.
At that point, I had pursued my technical certifications sufficiently and had been given Microsoft certification training for a couple of years. “Why not share publicly?” I thought. And so I did.
Beyond the knowledge required to pass Microsoft certifications, I started publicly sharing answers given to colleagues and customers, knowledge, and experience. The TechNet forums were fun to provide short answers. Answering “How do I migrate my Active Directory from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008?”-type questions, though, required some more thought, structure, and text.
I soon found myself in polite discussions with Microsoft employees from several product groups, and realized, in fact, I had little knowledge and merely adequate experience: “An expert knows how much he doesn’t know.” Indeed, I had a lot to learn and still do.
Gaining visibility and credibility, though, led to my first Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award in 2009. That distinction opened doors I didn’t even knew existed. Opportunities came knocking.
Looking back, making the switch from merely consuming knowledge to actively sharing knowledge was the biggest boost to my career. It wasn’t a smooth ride, but it’s one heck of a ride!
Do you have what it takes to make the switch from consuming to sharing knowledge, too?
