A Year Before You Graduate…

I think the best piece job-search related advice I received during library school was to make sure I didn’t wait until the last minute to start compiling a resume and look at job ads.  In fact, Louise Robbins, Professor at UW-Madison, said at a workshop that you should start reading job ads and tweaking your resume as much as a year in advance of completing your library degree.

I found this to be important for several reasons.  First, by examining job ads a year before you go on the market, you can tell if the courses you’ve completed thus far are in line with what employers are looking for, and what you might still need to add to your grad school experience.  For example, I really didn’t want to take a cataloging class, but after seeing a number of ads for reference and/or instruction librarians that were blended positions requiring, at the least, some knowledge of cataloging principles, or in many more cases, reference and instruction jobs that also included cataloging duties, I realized that it wasn’t a class I could or should skip.   Job ads will also give you a sense of what level of technology skills various types of employers and libraries are looking for.

With a year left in school, you don’t need to be exhaustive and read every last job ad that comes out, but checking the Chronicle of Higher Education weekly for a month or surfing ALA JobLIST a few days a week is time well spent.  You can surf JobLIST for free, and you can probably find the Chronicle in your school’s library databases.  You can also probably find a hard copy in any number of offices around your campus.

The other thing you should start doing well in advance of graduating is compiling your resume and/or C.V. (Academic Librarian and Archivist-types: you’ll need both.  I’ll talk about the differences in a later post).   When I started library school, I had come straight from another graduate program, and I hadn’t updated my resume since I was looking for undergrad student work (think MS Word 98 layouts).  My C.V. was in slightly better shape, but it still needed some work.

Workshops and feedback are among the best ways to start tweaking your resume.  During my first semester at SLIS, I attended a resume workshop which was hosted by SLIS director Louise Robbins, Wisconsin Writing Center Director Brad Hughes, and a recent graduate of the program (whose name has unfortunately escaped me).   Louise handed out a great packet – recent graduates who had successfully gotten jobs – and she included the job listing, the cover letter, and the resume of the applicant, and she had one each for academic, public, school, and special libraries.  During her portion of the workshop, she talked through several of the points in each letter and resume, and what she did and didn’t like in each one.  If I remember correctly, the academic example belonged to Andy Burkhardt, and I liked the layout of Andy’s resume so much that I used it to inspire my own redesign.

If your library school is offering resume or C.V. workshops, by all means, attend them.  Workshops offered by your school’s career center are also valuable, if less discipline-specific.  Once you have a working resume or C.V., have it critiqued by a professional in the field who regularly reads resumes and actually hires people.  If your LIS program offers this opportunity as a workshop or consultation-based service, take advantage and sign up for an appointment.  If you aren’t able to have a face-to-face consultation with someone, consider the ALA New Members Round Table Resume Review Service. (You do need to be an NMRT member to use the service, dues are quite reasonable for students).

Getting a grip on job ads and the mountain of expectations they often contain, and starting to organize your resume in a way that highlights your ability to meet those expectations is not an overnight process, and getting a head start well in advance of graduation will save you from many a stressful headache as graduation draws near and the search goes into high gear.

Dear Stomach Virus, You Know, I’m Not Really in the Mood Right Now…

Ugh.  My apologies for taking so long to approve everyone’s comments today.  I’ve been sidelined by an unwelcome stomach virus.  I would blame Halloween candy, except I didn’t have any.  Where’s the hand sanitzer?

Be Focused but Well-Rounded in Course Selection

Darcy brought up a great point in the comments yesterday about taking different kinds of classes, so I thought I would address that next.  While you’re still in library school, you want to have a plan, but also be well-rounded.  It sounds complicated, but it’s not, really.

Try to avoid selecting classes simply by taking what’s most convenient for your schedule.  Focus instead on building your resume.  I knew I wanted to be an academic librarian, so I tried to focus on classes that would be useful in that area. However, I took a broad view of what might be useful to an academic librarian.  For example, I took a class in readers advisory/adult reading interests, which was more geared towards public librarians, because I knew many academic libraries are adding leisure reading collections, and also because I knew it would be necessary to have basic skills in this area if I ended up with a public library position.

So, if you want to be a children’s librarian, focus on children and children’s literature classes, but take necessary preparations so that you can work in either a K-12 school or a public library.  If you’re interested in academic libraries, consider classes in things like adult leisure reading and government documents, which often comprise parts of the larger collection.  The point Darcy made in yesterday’s comments is also key – take a research methods or research-based course.  Even in a non-tenure track academic position, you may still be expected to publish occasionally, and even if you aren’t, understanding the way faculty and graduate students attack research questions will enable you to assist more thoroughly.  You might wish also to pursue publications anyway for a variety of reasons: career advancement, networking,  and sharing knowledge are just a few.  Learning professional-level research methodology in graduate school will go a long way in helping you achieve this goal.

Take at least one technology course.  Technology use is growing every day in libraries, and libraries are looking for employees who understand and can use emerging technologies.  Look for classes on XML, database management, or web design.

You’ll also need to be proficient with Microsoft Office applications and e-mail to a level where you can assist patrons with tasks such as writing a paper or resume, submitting a job application, and other such tasks.  Even in an academic setting where most of the students come from upper-middle class backgrounds and have used computers their whole lives, I spend a fair amount of each reference shift trouble-shooting computer problems and tutoring people on aspects of programs that they haven’t used before (such as how to add sound to a PowerPoint slide).  While you won’t get graduate credit for learning such skills, your school may offer discounted or free computer training for students, so take advantage of these programs while you’re in school!

Finally, I would recommend taking at least one class in each of the following areas: reference, instruction, and cataloging.  Very few librarians are in a situation where they work in only one of these areas and never encounter the others.  Even if you never do any cataloging in your position, having a basic understanding of what the cataloger does will help you with your own tasks immensely.

Library Work Experience

If you’re currently in library school, you’ve probably already discovered one of the profession’s dirty little secrets.  That promise that there would be plenty of jobs available soon?  That there are all of these aging librarians out there who are going to retire at any minute and leave plenty of jobs open for recent graduates?  Yeah, it’s all a myth.  The truth is there are far more librarians looking for work than there are jobs available.

At any given moment, there are roughly 200 positions listed on ALA’s JobLIST website.  There are 62 accredited library schools in the country, each graduating anywhere from 15-60 students per year.  You do the math.  Of course, half of the positions listed aren’t entry-level anyway, so that leaves even fewer positions for folks looking for a first job.  Certainly, JobLIST isn’t the only place you should be looking for listings, but you get the idea.

I don’t want to get too heavily into the debate of whether or not LIS programs are simply admitting too many students for now.  From their point of view, they have to admit students–students who pay tuition–in order to satisfy the demands of their parent institution.  Fewer paying students lessens the program’s worth in the eyes of bottom-line-focused administrators.  The problem is, fewer students would also mean a better job market for those that do make it through.  So don’t be too hard on your LIS program – they’re caught between a rock and hard place.

Instead, I’m going to focus on what you can do to improve your chances of landing a job by sharing some of the things that made me successful.

I’m going to start with the single most important item – library work experience.  By the time you graduate, you MUST have some library work experience on your resume.  The degree alone isn’t going to cut it – not with so many job seekers out there.  At minimum, you’ll have completed a practicum/field project/internship, etc. as part of your library degree, but you shouldn’t stop there.  Look for as many opportunities as possible to get involved in library work.

This may mean taking a low-paying/minimum-wage part-time position as a shelver or circulation worker to get your foot in the door.  If you already have a full-time job you can’t sacrifice while you are going to school, think about volunteering.  Plenty of libraries, both public and academic, rely on a steady stream of volunteers, particularly in these lean times, to keep things running smoothly.  If you’re wondering, I did both circ/shelving and volunteer work.  The point is, you need to set foot in a library and do some work there before you graduate.

Most of the applicants on the market will have at least some work experience in a library before they graduate.  If you don’t, you’ll be way behind from the start.

Keep in mind, particularly if you’re on a large university campus, that you likely won’t get a library job simply by firing resumes at the online student work website.  There are  too many students applying, and you’ll just get lost in the shuffle.  I tried this route during my first semester in library school and got nowhere.  During second semester, I walked up to the desk, asked who hired circulation workers, and asked to be introduced to that person.  Forty-five minutes later, after presenting my resume and having a brief interview, I had a job.  If you are persistent without being pushy, good things generally happen.

Welcome

I’ve been wanting to have a blog for a long time, but I wasn’t sure what I would talk about.  Now that I’m gainfully employed and not worried about keeping up with homework, it seemed like a good time to try it out.

I’ll be talking about books and various topics in librarianship for the most part, though I’ll likely diverge from those topics from time to time.  Since I am one of the “lucky ones” who got an LIS-related job only four months after graduating, my first series of posts is going to focus on the job market.  I’ll try and provide some helpful advice to those of you still in library school or those that have recently graduated and are looking for work.

I hope you’ll enjoy it.