Hi! This is Jorge Lazaro Diaz, the Career Jockey founder. The name is the one Mom and Dad gave me, but my friends call me George.

I like to refer myself as the “Original Career Jockey,” but you might just see me as Career Jockey’s first writer and the current managing editor.

I started Career Jockey in early 2009 as a personal mission. That was to publish the information I had collected as part of my career support work with nonprofit Back on Track Network (BOT). (You can learn more about them at www.backontracknet.org.)

I had collected a ton of great info since my first career crisis in 2004. (You can read more about this under the “My Story” heading below.) As part of my “paying forward effort,” I wanted to get this stuff out of my head and laptop posted somewhere public where it could benefit others.

So what’s Career Jockey’s mission?

To publish job hunt, career discernment and personal/professional development resources for job seekers, working professionals, career launchers and college students.

In a nutshell, I want to help job seekers, working professionals, career launchers and college students grab the reins of their careers and take it where they want it to go.

“Ride your career hard so it doesn’t drive you.”

Where Can I Find What I Need?

Since 2009, Career Jockey has come a long way with:

• several dozen job hunt career book reviews,
• a bunch of personal and professional development book reviews,
• a lot of job hunt and career change advice, and
• insight from the personal research I’ve done into management and motivation that you can find under the personal and professional development topic.

I put a lot of myself into this thing and that means you’ll find a lot of information showing my commitment to marriage. Those articles can be found under the marriage topic. (The wife and I will celebrate our 25 wedding anniversary in December 2009.) You’ll see my dedication to helping people take care of themselves under my mental health and motivational topics. My favorite topic, the one that’s fueled by my spiritual walk and Catholic, Christian background, can be found under the spirituality topic.

Explore the “Available Topics” sidebar section on all Career Jockey pages to learn more about the information I cover.

With the help of some very talented job seekers, I launched the Currently Lookin’ column in the fall 2009. In this section, job seekers share their very real and very personal stories. This has ended up being the most popular section on the site. (Visit the Desperately Seeking Bloggers article to join these writers and take this column where it needs to go.)

Finally, you’ll find content from other talented career professionals that have generously allowed me to share their material with the Career Jockey audience.

My Story

Going through a job hunt can be terrible. Let me tell you, I know. I went through a crazy job transition in 2004. It started with a call from a business contact with a job lead that sounded like the perfect next job for me. Several weeks later with a job offer in hand, I resigned and prepared for my next position. This is where it gets interesting. The offer gets rescinded. Yes! It seems they had forgotten to get all the approvals. (Minor oversight, huh?)

It was then that I ran into Felipe Gomez, one of the Back on Track Network co-founders, who invited me to a career support meeting. What a great group of folks? They helped me improve my resume, network, and work through the internal struggles that go with losing a job and getting a new one. They provided me with the practical, motivational, and spiritual support I needed.

The job I did end up getting wasn’t as perfect as the first one or so I thought. Then again it was the job that illuminated me to some skills I didn’t know I had. While working as a project manager over a team of ethical hackers and security specialists (that’s an entirely other story), I found myself mentoring, coaching, and advising not just my direct reports, but our client sponsor. I saw so clearly how this gear head engineer could use his non-engineering skills to help people in both their professional and personal lives.

Shortly thereafter, I joined Back on Track Network as a volunteer career coach. I did extensive research and took some formal training to improve my skills. Later, I accepted a position on their board of directors. I’ve been involved in one way or another ever since.

I recently felt a real calling to figure out how to reach a broader audience. I had accumulated so much information and knowledge through my research, coaching, speaking, and involvement with out of work people and it seemed like a shame to have it landlocked in laptop. That’s how CareerJockey.org was born.

As always, hope this helps.

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