If you are at all familiar with me, you will have seen that title before. I am the Wannabe HR Guru on LinkedIn, and on Quora, and I believe I'm listed that way in my Twitter bio as well. I recently got a message on Quora telling me to change it. (I had originally written that someone "suggested" I change it, but that was really too mild a word for the way this message was phrased.) According to the sender, labeling myself as a "wannabe" showed weakness and a lack of confidence, and I should find something else to call myself, or I would never make it far with that attitude.
I have to say, that message came as a bit of a shock. For one, I had no idea who the sender was, never heard of the guy, and had certainly never communicated directly with him in any way. For another, the wording of the message was quite aggressive, and I didn't much care for it. I had also never considered that I might look weak!
I thought about it for a while, and in the end, I decided to keep my "wannabe" right where it is. I wrote back to the gentleman in question, telling him that I felt it was appropriate, rather than being another "ninja" or "rockstar" on the basis that, while I have some education and a web presence in HR, I have little practical experience in the field outside of my present employer and the particular issues I have dealt with there. I feel it would be pretentious and misleading of me to claim "guru" status without the "wannabe" modifier; I know a lot about HR, but I certainly don't know everything. Furthermore, I certainly don't lack confidence; I know I'm good at what I do, and so do the people I work for, or I wouldn't be here in the first place. But there are a lot of situations I haven't yet experienced, and I have the wisdom to realize just how much I don't know. Give me five, ten, fifteen years, and by then I might be able to call myself an HR guru. But by then, I probably won't have to. You'll all know it. Right?
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