100 Job Strategies
100 Job Strategies · 99 of 100
The Standards Committee
Standards bodies accept volunteers and put you in a room with the most senior people in your field.
In short
Industry standards bodies, technical working groups and regulatory committees need participants and struggle to find them. Joining puts you in sustained working contact with the most senior technical people in your field — and gives you early knowledge of changes everyone will have to implement.
The situation
A technical working group meets to revise an industry standard. Around the table are principal engineers from four major manufacturers, a regulator, two academics and a consultant who wrote the previous version.
There is an empty seat. The group has been trying to fill it for a year, because participation is unpaid and time-consuming and most employers will not release people for it.
Anyone with relevant competence and the willingness to do the work can usually take it.
Everything that group decides will be implemented by thousands of companies over the following three years. The people in the room know it first.
Why this works
Standards bodies have an acute participation problem and an extraordinarily senior membership, which is a rare combination.
Participation is unpaid, requires real technical work between meetings, and most employers will not fund it. The people who do participate are therefore either senior enough to justify the time themselves, employed by companies with a strategic interest, or genuinely committed to the field. That produces small rooms of highly influential people.
Working alongside them over months changes the relationship entirely. You contribute to documents together, argue technical points and build a reputation based on the quality of your thinking. That is a fundamentally different footing from meeting someone at a conference.
The information advantage is substantial and legitimate. Standards under development become requirements that thousands of organisations must implement, frequently at significant cost. Understanding a change before it is published makes you valuable to any company affected by it, and that knowledge arrives one to three years early.
It is also a durable credential. Contributing to a published standard is verifiable, prestigious in technical fields and rarely held by candidates at any level.
The barrier is real commitment. These groups do genuine work, and someone who attends without contributing is quickly identified and produces nothing for themselves either.
How to run it
- 1
Identify the bodies that govern your field
National standards organisations, international bodies, industry consortia and regulatory technical committees. Most fields have several.
- 2
Find working groups seeking participants
Many publish calls for members or list groups with vacancies. Contacting the secretariat directly is normal and often sufficient.
- 3
Check the membership requirements
Some require employer nomination or organisational membership; others accept individual experts. Requirements vary considerably by body.
- 4
Ask your employer to support it
Many will, since a seat at a standards table benefits them directly. Frame it as commercial intelligence rather than professional development.
- 5
Contribute substantively from the start
Do the reading, submit comments, take on drafting. Your standing is built entirely on the quality of your contributions.
- 6
Use the knowledge, not the connections, first
Understanding forthcoming requirements makes you valuable to employers. The relationships develop on their own over time.
What to say
When it does not work
- Substantial unpaid time. Meetings, reading, drafting and review are real work spread over years. Underestimating it leads to poor participation.
- Slow processes. Standards development moves over years, and the pace frustrates people expecting visible progress.
- Some require organisational membership. Not all bodies accept individual experts, and fees for organisational membership can be significant.
- Political dynamics. Standards work involves competing commercial interests, and technical arguments sometimes mask positioning.
- Attendance without contribution. Turning up passively is noticed, produces nothing and wastes the opportunity.
There are rooms containing the most senior people in your field, with empty seats, because the work is unpaid and nobody volunteers.
Questions
Can anyone join a standards working group?
Requirements vary considerably. Some bodies accept individual experts on the basis of relevant competence, while others require nomination through an employer or an organisational membership that carries a fee. Many working groups are genuinely short of participants and will consider anyone credible who commits to the work. Contacting the secretariat directly to ask about vacancies and requirements is entirely normal and frequently the fastest route to an answer.
What is the actual time commitment?
Substantial and spread over years. Beyond the meetings themselves there is reading, commenting on drafts, and often taking on drafting work between sessions. Standards development is deliberately slow, so the commitment extends across multiple years rather than months. This is the main reason participation is hard to fill, and underestimating it leads to poor contribution, which is visible to everyone in a small room.
What is the information advantage worth?
Considerable, and it is entirely legitimate. Standards under development become requirements that thousands of organisations must implement, frequently at significant cost and effort. Understanding a forthcoming change one to three years before publication makes you valuable to any company affected by it, and positions you as someone who can lead their response. That knowledge is often the most immediately monetisable part of participation, ahead of the relationships.
Will my employer support my participation?
Many will if it is framed correctly. A seat at a standards table gives an employer early sight of regulatory and technical changes affecting them, and occasionally influence over the outcome, which is genuine commercial value rather than professional development for you. Presenting it in those terms is considerably more persuasive than requesting time for personal growth, and some employers actively seek representation on relevant bodies.
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