Recession-proofed industries?

The Career Hub Blog has posted a list of 72 recession proofed industries based on BLS data. The percentage refers to how much growth occurred/is anticipated in those industries. For librarians, the news is good since there appears to be modest growth at all levels of education; however the news should also be tempered with:

• Institutions may be advertising these positions but they may not be filling vacancies with professional librarians.
  
• Additionally, positions can be advertised but not filled if there are budget shortfalls or money is moved (we'd rather have a full-time math teacher than a half-time librarian).
• Where are the librarians in this tossed salad? Are they professors/instructors or are they support staff? Were librarian positions even considered in these numbers or are librarians part of the "information" or "cultural" sectors?

I want you to look at the numbers in another way, not as educational support staff, but as information professionals in other industries. If librarians are part of the "information" sector, the news is good: summarized in another post in the Career Hub Blog, the BLS predicts a 5.8% growth in the information industry. Though it is below the average growth rate, there are positions available. I like my industries to be steady and not in decline. I want you to think about working in environmental consulting, health care and social assistance and in professional associations, special, rather than academic or school librarianship.

Now, I am not knocking either of those specialties and if you want to be an educator, that is one of the highest callings (IMHO). However, I don't want you to focus on only the educational market for librarians. There is a huge market for information and knowledge workers outside of education and the numbers seem to assert that growth is steady in those areas, leading to greater career stability over the long term. This means you need to think outside of the library job boards for your positions and look at professional associations in different sectors (the environment, engineering, law, health services, etc.) and swim in a different pond.

Begin by looking at your undergraduate degree: if you have an undergraduate degree in biology, why aren't you looking at consulting, health care and financial services that need knowledge workers with scientific literacy? Why aren't you tapping some of your undergraduate alumni who have worked in the industry for a few years and who can give you some information on where to look, if the industry is viable? If you worked in the industry, why don't you return to some of your older job board haunts and harvest some information jobs that you are now qualified to pursue? Heck, search on a vertical search engine, by industry or a company that you recognize, and see if they hire librarians. And yes, obviously, SLA can be of service in this type of search.

Update: I spoke too soon about the stability of knowledge workers: Tech Crunch has reported that Yahoo! is letting go of some of the employees in Yahoo! Answers. I never said the search engine industry was stable.

Resume Hell

There is nothing like seeing the stupid stuff other people do to make you feel that you aren't do so bad. Visit Resume Hell for a sample of some of the silly stuff people submit to a recruiter. You'll stop rolling your eyes when someone reminds you to check your spelling, thinking, everybody checks their spelling. No, no, they do not. Walking, chewing bubble gum and breathing through your nose all at the same time could be beyond these applicants, but you, at least, can do all that and use a spell checker.

My hero.

London Calling

If you're looking for a job in the UK, you should be checking the listings from Jinfo. Jinfo is associated with FreePint and ResourceShelf and if you are not subscribing to them to do your job better in general (or get ahead in a reference class) you should fix this problem and visit their sites regularly or subscribe to one of their newsletters. If your target is a (UK) job, subscribe to the Jinfo newsletter.

Tell me about yourself

Tell me about yourself. Almost the first question asked in every interview and the question that nervous people always fumble. "What do they need to know about me?" the fumbler thinks, "Isn't it in my resume?"

Well, yes it is, but starting out your interview with If you had only read my cover letter is not a great opening strategy. Here is what the interviewer wants from this question:

• Can you describe your career history quickly and succinctly?
• Does your past career or education history have anything to do with the position that they are interviewing you for? If you can't make the connection, even a brief one, you failed to score a point for the home team.
  
• Can you speak briefly and relevantly on a topic that you should know thoroughly: yourself?

I like Ron Fry's strategy in 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions: come up with a 250 word, approximately 2 minute long, blurb about yourself and how it relates to the job you are interviewing for. You don't have to vary it too much--some librarian jobs will require similar skills, and you can make a good tie-in--but it does help you to reflect about the job and the type of work offered by this gig. If you can make a match in your mind, you should be able to connect the dots for your interviewers.

Discomfort level

Tell me about a time when you worked with a colleague that you were not comfortable with.

This is a variation on  tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker. This question can be useful to an interviewer in a diverse workplace since "discomforts" may end up revealing a candidate's biases and prejudices.

 

Dealing with conflict amongst co-workers can happen in any workplace, and since this is a BDI question, you need to think about one of your co-workers who was oil to your water, but not matches to your gasoline. Explain, without naming names, how this colleague made you uncomfortable, and the steps you took, beyond suffering silence, to deal constructively with the issue. Make sure the fault was on their side, so a colleague who always arrived late to relieve you from your shift so you could get to class, is a better example, than how you always arrived late to work so you could avoid shift overlaps with this person.



What if you have never had a conflict with a co-worker? Well, you have to tell the truth, I have never had conflict with a co-worker. But I suspect that this is not true, and it has more to do with our perception of the word conflict, which tends to make people thinking of putting up their dukes. Conflict does not have to do with fisticuffs, it has to do with a coworker frustrating us professionally, and how we deal with those frustrations as a professional.

Avoiding this question may also have to do with your truthfulness: you did have a conflict with a co-worker in the past, but you now feel like you acted like a dork and have repented your bad behavior. If this is the case, and you don't look like an immature jerk or a prejudiced idiot, lay out the particulars of the conflict, the outcome of the situation, and how the situation changed your professional--or personal--behavior for the better.

Getting LinkedIn Recommendations

Jason Alba has a post on his JibberJobber Blog providing some basic rules and giving an example of how to write a LinkedIn recommendation. If you don't use LinkedIn, LinkedIn is business networking that you can use to share information, look for work and get career advice (there are tons of tools that you can check out, and an Answers area that reference librarians will swoon over).

LinkedIn Recommendations are little blurbs or adverts, that you can write for people that you have a business relationship with. You can accept or reject a recommendation; once you accept a recommendation, you can show or hide the recommendation, if you wish (which can be helpful if a former colleague has recommended you, but your boss doesn't really like that person, for example.) Recommendations can help your profile on LinkedIn since people will scan your page and see that you have been endorsed by others for your work. This is great if the person recognizes the person who endorses you and if the person is not a serial endorser (a condition that sometimes affects predatory linkers).

Check out LinkedIn, if only to use the job board feature, if you are looking for work or if you want to while away a few hours on the Answers board.

Membership and eligibility

This blog was created to support the news and information posted on the First Librarian Job Club, a group created on Facebook. This group is a closed group and you must apply for membership.

1. You need to sign on to Facebook and create a profile if you don't have one.
2. Are you currently a student at a library school, studying to become a professional librarian? If yes, please contact the group leader on Facebook and tell her where you are studying. If not...
   
3. Have you recently graduated (last 3 years) and are currently looking for a job in a library or one of the so-called library alternative careers? If yes, send a message to the group leader on Facebook and ask if you can join. Tell her where you graduated from and what type of job you are looking for. If not...
4. Have you just landed your first (or second) library job (or contract) and are you willing to advise and assist others, networking in the best business sense of the word? If yes, contact the group leader and tell her where you are working. Blissful job experiences are not required, but it would be nice if you were moderately happy at work. If not...
5. Do you work in library HR or management and are you willing to give clear but kindly advice to job seekers? If yes, send a message to the group leader on Facebook.

If you are not a librarian or are just thinking about becoming one, please wait until you have become eligible for professional librarian jobs before asking the group leader if you can join on Facebook; while waiting you can subscribe to the blog and monitor posts and news. You can also monitor the blog and its posts if you don't want to join Facebook or a Facebook group. If you want to make it with a librarian, there is another group for you.

The purposes of this group are to support job seekers and to share HR advice, as well as to test Facebook and its group features as a method of hosting a job club.