Monday 16 September 2013

CV/Interview Surgery


CV/Interview Surgery

This is my final post on Library Camp East which I attended last week, and covers the other session I made notes on, which was essentially a brain-picking exercise on how to improve your chances of getting the job you’re going for.

I think (I hope!) I contributed quite a lot to the discussion; I’d just been for a job interview the week before (and been rejected) so the experience was still rather fresh in my mind. I also picked up lots of ideas for constructive things I could do, so I’ve tried to organise my scribbles into something coherent below.

Tips for CV Writing
  • It’s better to keep a master copy of a CV which you can continually update and improve, rather than dusting off the CV you tailored to the last job and re-jigging it each time. You might have played down some areas in favour of focusing on others and neglect to re-add them.
  • Always, always, always follow the instructions given by the organisation! If they want a skills-based CV it’s going to look inept and unprofessional if you send in a chronological CV instead.
  • Good spelling, grammar and literacy are absolutely crucial; possibly more so for librarians than many other professions.
  • Don’t be afraid of contacting the organisation if you have questions – it demonstrates initiative (unless you could have found the information easily yourself).
  • There were different opinions about CV length. Some people felt 2 sides of an A4 page was a good length, while others pointed out that when the application is online or read on a computer this doesn’t matter so much.

One question raised was what we should be focusing on? As librarians/library workers, we are many things and have many skills and duties. This fed somewhat into the next few points for how to structure the CV to best highlight these qualities.
  • Avoid long essays, and try to chunk the information, using bullet points or headings. Use the organisation’s terminology where possible.
  • Sometimes skills-based CVs are more appropriate than chronological CVs, particularly if you’ve had many different jobs.
  • Library workers have many transferable skills, including office/administrative skills, policy-making and strategic planning, and financial planning.

Hobbies again was an area where opinions differed. I shared the fact that I know an interviewer (in a non-library sphere) who regards the hobbies section as merely light relief and totally ignores it when deciding on candidates, while others disagreed and thought it worth including. However, most of the group expressed a preference for the word “interests” or “activities” rather than “hobbies”, which seemed juvenile.
  • Unusual interests or activites might stick out in an employer’s mind and set you apart from the crowd.
  • Some activities will be a good way of garnering transferable skills, and particularly at the beginning of a career may be a way of demonstrating that you have experience which you wouldn’t have been able to gain in a work environment yet.
  • A lot of people agreed that it wasn’t worth putting “reading” as an activity!

Another interesting point of debate was where to put the skills/qualities that the organisation listed as “essential” and those listed as “desirable”. Some people argued that their employers would assume that every application would have the “essential” qualities, and would use the “desirable” qualities as a way of filtering through the hundreds of applications received. There seemed to be no general consensus as to how to tell what criteria an employer would use when looking through applications, and various people described the criteria they knew their workplaces used, which were all different.

Questions about more specific information were also raised, and some good advice was shared.
  • Reasons for leaving your current/past posts – this should sound positive, even if you hate your job and you’re desperate to leave! Suggestions included “looking for a new challenge/greater responsibility”, “I have exhausted all the development opportunities available” and one person even stated that they’d got the job when their response had been “to earn more money”!!
  • Expected salary – you don’t want to price yourself out the market, nor do you want to devalue yourself. However, CILIP was suggested as a good place to get advice on this.

Interview tips and suggestions
  • Nerves a problem? Do you clam up or waffle uncontrollably? There’s plenty of advice on public speaking which is relevant to you. Deep breathing, speaking slowly, and not immediately launching into an answer will all help.
  • Practice interviews – get friends/partners/colleagues to practice interviewing you, and ask them to critique your performance.The more times you immerse yourself in this sort of situation, the more prepared you’ll be for when it happens for real.
  • Don’t forget you’re being judged from the moment you set foot on the premises. This can include the library tour, which will probably be conducted by either a potential colleague or junior – they will probably have input in the final decision!
  • There’s often no consistency in either size of interview panel or level of expertise. You may be interviewed by people who don’t use the library, let alone work in it. Don’t be thrown by this!
  • Blind them with expertise! You can always explain further if they ask, but feel free to throw in all those wonderful library buzzwords, like RDA, digitisation and bibliometrics – assuming you know what you’re talking about!
  • Don’t assume they’ve read your application – but don’t be surprised if they have and want to ask about something in it. (NB It helps if you haven’t stretched the truth too far in your CV…)

Interview questions
  • If you’ve been asked a tricky or in-depth question, ask the panel for time to think about your answer. There’s no need to rush!
  • One librarian said she always took a notebook in with her to interviews, where she’d readily have the information that would be difficult to recall, e.g. exact dates/salaries of old jobs.
  • It’s worth having prepared answers for typical questions. These often involve “state a situation where this happened; how did you respond?” – like time management, teamwork, difficult situations or conflict resolution or demonstrating initiative.
  • One person recommended using the structure STAR to answer this type of question: Situation, Task, Action, Result.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask if you’ve answered their question satisfactorily. This is a good tip particularly for people with a tendency to waffle or get sidetracked.

Other general interview issues
  • Be prepared to face your competitors. Some people said they’d been interviewed as a group with the other candidates, while one person said she’d received a tongue-lashing from an unemployed candidate when she was going for a job whilst currently employed.
  • It can be hard to walk the line between being professional and friendly. I found this with my recent interview, relaxing a bit too far and making a joke which went down like a lead balloon. On the other hand, if they do not feel at ease with you, then maybe it’s not the right place for you?
  • Ultimately, the interview is a two-way process. They want to see if you’ll be a good fit for them, but you also need to see if you’re going to be happy and productive there. Ask questions!
  • Always ask for feedback! It might be that they were looking for someone different, or that there are things you can work on to improve your chances next time.
  • Don’t berate yourself if it went wrong. Chances are it wasn’t as bad as you think, and the competition is often very fierce in this profession. Draw as much as you can from the experience and make sure you do better next time!

Finally there was a bit of discussion regarding LinkedIn and its relevance to the profession. Again there was a lot of difference in opinion; those who used it found it generally useful for some things, while those who didn’t use it didn’t feel like they were missing out on anything.
  • It could show dedication to your career, and a professional interest in the potential job.
  • It is a good way of looking up information about the interview panel. If nothing else, it’s nice to know what they look like in advance!
  • If you use LinkedIn, make sure your profile looks good, because chances are potential employers will be looking at it.
  • Privacy settings – it’s worth thinking about this in every aspect of social media. If you search your name online, what will come up first? Your LinkedIn profile, your CV, your professional career, or those pictures on Facebook of you dancing on the table and upchucking behind the plastic palm tree in that club in Ibiza?

As I said, lots of advice! I particularly liked the use of the notebook – after all, I don’t remember everything about my career parrot fashion, and you can look really stupid if you’re just falling over the fact that you don’t remember if it was March or April in 2002 that you started work!

Here endeth my final blogpost on Library Camp East. Phew! Does anyone else have advice about CVs and interviews they'd like to share?

Thursday 12 September 2013

Solo Librarianship: You are not alone!


I recently had the privilege of attending Library Camp East (see here for main post). I made notes on two of the discussions which were particularly useful to me, and hopefully by condensing my thoughts and forming them into some coherent whole, they might prove useful to others. So here’s my take on the first of those talks, which was about solo librarianship.

As I mentioned in my more general post, the solo librarians came from all areas – public libraries, academic libraries, specialist and special collections libraries. Some came from areas where although they weren’t lone workers per se, they were the only librarian within their organisation. And one person wasn’t even a librarian at all, but a very considerate IT-based line manager who wanted some understanding of what his potential employee was going to have to cope with. (Seriously, kudos to that man!)

After the mandatory introductions around the circle, we discussed the issues that we face as solo librarians, which I’ve grouped under four headings.

1. No Other Librarians Around
2. The Demands of the Job
3. The Lone-Working Environment
4. Justifying Libraries and Librarians

No Other Librarians Around
  • Lack of peer support – when you work in an organisation where no one else is a librarian, they simply don’t understand what you do. It can be hard for them to relate to the issues you have to deal with.
  • No informed sounding board – a second opinion is often helpful to ensure that you don’t overlook obvious pitfalls when making changes or introducing new initiatives to the service.
  • Communications and the broader picture – being away from other librarians can make you feel as though you’re missing out, and it can be much harder to keep aware of recent developments.

The Demands of the Job
  • Job too big? – certainly in my case, I’m a solo librarian because two of my colleagues retired and were never replaced, while the workload itself has not diminished.
  • Time management – it can be very hard to prioritise the workload when everything is “essential”. Keeping on top of things – and deciding what to ignore – can be overwhelming.
  • Handovers/continuity of service – how can the service run if you’re not there? What will happen when you leave? Will anyone there know how to do your job? Will anyone know what to look for when they interview for your replacement? Often, to cut costs, organisations have to wait before advertising for a currently vacant post, meaning there’s no chance for a handover either.

The Lone-Working Environment
  • Violence/incidents – dealing with an aggressive patron can be much harder when you’re alone. And how do you cope when two incidents are happening at the same time?
  • Safety – you might be in a situation where you won’t actually see people for long periods of time. If you have an accident at work, how long will it be before someone realises?
  • Isolation – it can be pretty darn lonely. That’s alright for some people, but certainly not everyone, and can make for a miserable existence.

Justifying Libraries and Librarians
  • Divide between specialists and librarians – some librarians perceived a lack of respect within their organisations for what they do and the service they provide.
  • Classroom management – a couple of librarians had to cope with “you’re not a teacher, I don’t need to do what you say” from their classes. Teachers would have training in classroom management that might not be offered to school librarians.
  • Justification of resources – particularly an issue with older or ephemeral resources. It can be difficult to explain to a non-information professional why certain things need to be kept.
  • Advocacy within the organisation – it is exhausting and not a little soul-destroying to constantly have to justify the existence of libraries and information professionals generally, and to have to do it within the organisation is doubly so.

Depressing reading? We also took the time to discuss solutions to some of these issues, and to highlight the positive aspects of being solo librarians:

No Other Librarians Around
In this magnificently technological age, this is a problem where there are considerably more solutions open to us. As a distance learner, I’ve built up a fantastic support network of friend librarians on Facebook. As part of the local university and its hundreds of libraries, I’m on so many email lists I can’t even to begin to shake a stick at even a small fraction of them. Twitter seems to be incredibly popular with librarians. There are forums, like the ones for LISNPN.

The library world has never felt smaller and so accessible. So I can say “thinking of introducing x at my library” on my status, and someone, somewhere, will have tried it, or dismissed it before, and will race to comment. Building up these contacts in the first place is where the time and effort is taken, but I found attending conferences (and unconferences!) that there were people there who’d immediately follow you, even though you might have written a grand total of two tweets since you’d signed up four years ago…

The other point to make here is that just because your co-workers may not be librarians, doesn’t make them ignorant or worthless! They may not have the librarian’s understanding, but that can often turn out to be a big plus and you can gain new insight into how non-librarians perceive you and your work, or you can find out new solutions to problems you’ve both had to face.

The Demands of the Job
I think it’s probably a fair assumption to make that in most cases, the workload is not going to diminish for most library staff, and in some areas, as more cuts are made, it’s only going to increase. It’s important to accept that you can’t do everything. Here, it can be an advantage to be a solo librarian, as most people in the group indicated that they have a high degree of autonomy and control over their work. With great responsibility comes the need to prioritise much more effectively.

Several of the group emphasised the need to document everything you do at work, and there were several levels of this. The first is producing cribsheets for smaller processes, so that if someone else is taking over for the day, they know what to do. The next is the full-on “here is how to do my whole job” manual for longer-term (or permanent!) handovers. Finally, there’s the CPD/appraisal level – what you’ve achieved or implemented over the year, how you’re coping with the situation and what you need to be a happy and productive worker over the coming year. To my shame, these are all things I haven’t done at all with my current job, although when I left my previous junior library assistant post I produced 17 pages of instructions for my successor!

The Lone-Working Environment
Firstly, it’s important to be aware of the legislation and guidelines around lone working (I’ll be honest; it hadn’t even occurred to me to check this until the group leader mentioned it!). Workplaces can carry out risk assessments and changes can be made to ensure that you will be safe. In every job I’ve had, on my induction I was shown the panic button which would alert security. I’m pleased to say I’ve never had to use it, but it is vital to know that there is that lifeline.

The next thing is to attend as much relevant training as you are able: negotiation skills, classroom management, learning how to deal with difficult patrons – being able to defuse the situation before it escalates into something much more serious. BIALL offers one-to-one training sessions over the phone if you can’t get away from work to attend things, which I didn’t know, and sounds absolutely brilliant. Also, many workplaces offer counselling, or at the very least a professional friendly ear.

One interesting point raised by several people was that self-defence classes were not so useful, and in some cases self-defeating. They suggested that people who’d attended these sorts of classes could unintentionally heighten the tension in a difficult situation, or go to these skills immediately, rather than draw on the people skills and attempt to talk things down first.

Finally, and possibly most practically, know where your resources are. When something happens, know who you can call to come in and help. Know who or what you can rely on in an emergency. In one situation, the group leader said she relied on the assistance of an ex-staff member and one of her regular readers. At one of my previous jobs, the receptionist kept a list of emergency contacts; when security said they couldn’t come out until four hours later, I went through the list – the first was in Basingstoke, the next was on a conference, the next on holiday and unreachable by phone, but eventually I found someone to come in and help!

Justifying Libraries and Librarians
Embedded librarians came to the fore at this point. One commented that due to having chartership, she felt she was much more respected by other professions where she worked. One thing several of the group agreed on was that we should consider ourselves as professionals, and therefore equally worthy of respect in the organisation as say, the teachers, or the lawyers. After all, we probably have as many university degrees!

The other advantage was the fact that by not huddling with a group of library staff, and having to forge relationships with non-library colleagues, some librarians felt they were able to develop much better personal relationships with their users, and again benefited from the non-librarian perspective on their work.

Ultimately, I think the majority of us found this a helpful group discussion. It was a positive experience just to air and share, and realise that you’re not alone, and there was lots of helpful advice for the variety of situational challenges. There may even be a regional solo librarians group in the offing!

I realise this was a long post – kudos and internet cookies to you if you made it to the end!

Monday 9 September 2013

Library Camp


Library Camp 7th September 2013 (CILIP East of England, Harlow, Essex)

I’ll be honest, I was quite nervous about attending this. I signed up immediately when it was first advertised, thinking to myself “well, I can always duck out if it’s too far beyond my comfort zone.” Because the thing is, I’m awful at networking. I can’t just stroll up to a random person and say hi; it’s just not me. If they stroll up to me, and strike up a conversation, that’s fine, I won’t act like a rabbit in headlights and freeze, or make excuses and scurry off. I will attempt to engage in entertaining and interesting debate, I promise. But essentially, I was there to listen. And learn. Not to contribute.

So Saturday dawned, and my partner has been away for a week, leaving me alone at home, with the prospect of him being away another week still. At work, my colleague has spent the last week in Wales, and was spending another week there before coming back to work. I was therefore facing a weekend alone, having spent the best part of the last week alone, and knowing that I was going to be spending the best part of next week alone too. I realised that if I didn’t go to Library Camp, I would be spending Saturday at home, alone, talking to myself and gradually going mad. “Fair enough,” I thought, “It can’t be worse than this. Let’s go.”

Harlow College
I ran into slight issues when I realised that the postcode was so new that my satnav didn’t recognise it. However, I do have a rather swanky smartphone, which successfully navigated me the whole way from Cambridge to Harlow. I found where I was going fairly easily, and ended up being just a few minutes late. I was greeted warmly by the organisers, and deposited my chocolate flapjacks on the lunch table, which was groaning under the weight of the food people had brought. The number of people who had come surprised me; I’d only had what I’d seen on the wiki to guide me, and I was unsettled at the lack of movement on there. A few names (many of which I recognised) had announced their presence, and I assumed there were going to be a few more than that who – like me – had not felt brave enough to add themselves to the wiki conversations. But the camp was well-attended; probably more than 70 librarians (and at least one non-librarian) were listening to the introduction when I entered the hall.

Relaxing during the introduction
Immediately, I was struck by how relaxed and informal it was. There were people standing, some sitting on chairs, and a fair few who were lounging on the floor while the organisers talked. Then the people who had pitched ideas for discussion came forward to talk a little about what they had suggested, why they had suggested it and what they were hoping to get out of it. These ideas were written on post-its and plonked into timeslots on the schedule, juggled around to make sure that no one who’d pitched more than one idea was double-booked, and then the whole thing began!

The first session I attended was one on solo librarianship. I guess I’m not so much of a solo librarian, in that I do have a part-time colleague (12 hrs/w) and also am very fortunate to have a volunteer who puts in a full day every now and then. However, I spend huge portions of my time working alone, so I figured there was going to be something I could gain from this. And there was. Even though we all came from very disparate working backgrounds, there were lots of issues and challenges common to us all. However, sharing problems meant that we could also share solutions, and I came away feeling like there was action I could take to cope with the situation, which was a surprisingly positive outcome. And if there is a solo librarians support group set up, I think it would be really useful to get involved. [Separate solo librarians article here.]
Our schedule for the day

There was a little break while we all shifted round, so I took the opportunity to help myself to a drink; it was nice that there was always something to hand, and we weren’t constricted by a “10.20-10.25: Coffee time” deadline. If you got hungry or thirsty, you could simply get up and walk out of your discussion group, help yourself, and come back. I very much appreciated this, since in my haste I’d skipped breakfast that morning. So I moved on to the next group, which was “What’s so good about libraries?”. What do we offer that’s unobtainable anywhere else? I found this had rather a public library bent, particularly towards children, given the demographic of the audience, but it was interesting finding out a bit more about what public libraries offer, and how they justify themselves to their councillors.

Lunchtime, and some delicious home-made and not-so-home-made items, and then it was time for the next session. This was a CV/interview surgery session, which was well-attended. I found myself sharing a lot of information, but there were lots of people talking about good interview they’d had, bad interviews, awkward questions, things that had gone well, things that hadn’t…again I came away with some useful ideas, but hopefully I contributed a few too. [Separate CV/interview notes here.]

My contribution to the write-in
I wasn’t sure what to go for after that, but when the person who’d pitched the idea of a creative write-in expanded it to include all things creative, I got out my handy ball of wool and my size 5 crochet hook, and just sat for a while, thinking, listening to the scritching of pens and taking the opportunity to relax and do some guilt-free rows of crochet. Afterwards people talked about what they were working on, and I was so impressed at the novel ideas coming out. Several people had had a go at NaNoWriMo and were preparing for the next one happening in a couple of months’ time. Librarians really are quite a creative bunch!

The perils of unconferencing: last-minute changes
Last session, and I went for the A-Z of libraries, which in hindsight, was a bit of a waste of time for me, inasmuch as it was nearly identical to “What’s so good about libraries?” except for the fact that it was now in alphabetical order. Voices for the Library is generally only for public libraries, so again there was a heavy public library bias in the group demographic, and in the results. It was interesting, but not terribly relevant to my work, but I was beginning to feel the effects of information overload anyway, so I was content to sit back and let the discussion flow around me.

There was no plenary, as insufficient time had been scheduled for one (as it turned out), but I didn’t mind; I felt like I’d had as much library stuff as I could take, and I’ve never really seen the point in plenaries beyond thanking the organisers anyway, so it was a matter of picking up the remains of the lunch I’d brought with me, and heading off home. I left some positive feedback, and I shall be eagerly awaiting the next library camp!

Thursday 10 January 2013

Drive-by blogging

Still working on that infernal degree, but I haven't a better forum than here to post my thoughts on the latest Libraries@Cambridge conference ("Making an Impact"). When I wrote up the notes I'd made it came to six - 6! - pages of scrawl, but I haven't yet had a chance to think about it yet.

I will say that the conference was better than last year's, but more than that will have to wait until after I've written my Rare Books Librarianship assignments (for submission in 5 days, eep).

Final Thoughts

Made it! So, in the end, what do I think? Image by Ralf Kunze from Pixabay I did this as a way of trying to stay connected with my l...