Carlos R. Hernandez: The Man Who Helps "The Uncomfortable" Become Comfortable with Social Media

In the past few years, Carlos R. Hernandez who studied Civil Engineering at Stanford, has reinvented himself as a consultant specializing in “social media for the uncomfortable.” Over the last two years he gave 100 speeches. Now he works with individual clients as well as companies. This new direction came about soon after he left his old job and started volunteering at GraceWorks, a San Francisco career-networking organization. Hernandez was lucky: His buyout package included three months of training and counseling with an outplacement firm. “A lot of the folks I counseled at GraceWorks didn’t have the benefit of professional help — they were just kicked out, gone,” he says. He figured that he could help them the most by teaching them what he had learned in his own outplacement sessions. “I learned along the way that all I needed to do was be one day smarter than someone else my age.” Many of the people I talk to have discovered some form of teaching to be a powerful way of networking, learning, and growing. “It’s less important to figure out your ultimate path,” Hernandez adds, “than how to get through the process of figuring out your path.” When I ask him if he finds this uncertainty terrifying, he says: “That’s the cool part. I have no idea where anything’s going to lead — I find that very appealing.” He mentions that he just wrote two chapters of a book after having been asked to contribute by someone he met on Twitter. Never would the old Hernandez have thought he could help write a book. Back then, nobody would have invited him to.