Saturday, January 26, 2008

What if a patron doesn't like a colleague?

What if a patron doesn't like a colleague and prefers to have you help him/her, every time, even when you are not on your shift?

You have two options to answer this question:
  1. This is a hypothetical question, so you can make a guess as to what you would do. You can ask about policies in effect in the library in regards to dealing with "difficult" patrons.
  2. You can treat this question as a BDI question. As a BDI question, you must use a true, past experience and explain what happened in that situation and highlight your role. It is best that the experience had a positive outcome, but if it does not, you can finish your answer, hypothetically, stating what you would do differently in the future based on what you learned from the experience.
Don't shy away from these questions since they are asking about how you would deal with sticky situations. The interviewers want to know: do you always go running for help? and do you know when to call for help? When it comes to ethics and conflict, you have to strike a balance between the two. You also have to show that you are fair-minded.

Some interview questions are multi-layered and they may have more than one step to solve. An interviewer could take this question into several different directions:
  • Collegiality and conflict: what if you don't like your colleague and find them to be abrasive and abrupt, but you know that you have to address the issue? This becomes a behavior descriptive question if the interviewer asks, have you experienced this situation in the past?
  • What if your colleague is a person of color or a person who wears a prominent religious symbol and the patron always waits until you--who appears to be of the same ethic group/religious affiliation as the patron--are free? You can also change this if the interviewee is a person of color and say that this patron always waits until you are free, ignoring your colleagues that do not appear to be of the same ethnic group of the patron. This becomes an ethical question: do you say something to your colleagues, to the patron or to your supervisor?
However, I don't think that interviewers should ask this question invoking race or religion if they have not created a policy for their own library staff when dealing with these issues. I have a peeve about these questions, especially in regards to personal conflicts: why do organizations persist in asking these questions when they have no clear internal policy? Some supervisors think they are going to get a silver bullet answer when they haven't bothered to form one themselves.

Friday, January 25, 2008

This job sucks

Not my job, but maybe your job and if it does, there are places to talk about it and not when answering the interview question: why did you leave your previous position?. Thanks to Jobacle for putting together a list of job vent sites.

I think you will notice on many of the vents that it is not the job that sucks: it is the people that we work with and the clients we serve. But it is only one wrecked day (or minute): vent and move on to the better days and minutes. You will probably make someone crazy in your turn.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Getting your blog on Facebook

There are a few applications that you can use, like Live Blog and Flog Blog, to post your blog to your Facebook profile. The simplest method, however, is to get your notes to confer with your blog. Click on the Notes application and look on the right hand side of the screen.

When you click on Edit import settings, you will then be asked to add the feed that you would like your notes to pull from.

Your blog will be updated to your Notes and anyone of your friends who is subscribed to your notes, can also get regular updates from your blog.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

What's in your folder?

Five minutes after you get the call for an interview and you have finished screaming for joy, you need to put your mission folder together. And you need to do it now, before you begin to worry about your unshined shoes and general hygiene.

Your folder is your kit for the day and you're going to be as well-stocked as Batman with a flat-file. You need:
  • Two copies of your resume, one for you and one for the employer to make copies from if they need to.
  • Two copies of your cover letter (the one you wrote 'specially for this job) for the same reason. These also help if, in your panic, you forget your name when they call it.
  • A copy of your presentation and any handouts. You should also pack a USB drive with this material and, in case you ever met a man named Murphy, send them all as attachments to your browser mail address.
  • Any additional work material that they might be interested in, or that you can use to finesse an interview question. These are short pieces, such as published book reviews or any press releases you have written. Do not bring in a print-out from your blog, showing your growth from former English-major refugee to captain of library industry. If they decline it, you can indicate that it is available with a simple Google search of your name.
If you are traveling to a different city or out of the country:
  • Itinerary, transportation tickets and ID. Passport, driver's license, in case you need them or if you have to rent a car to get to your destination. You might as well have them together since the people at security want them all in one bunch. Collated alphabetically.
  • Hotel information or where the hostel is and a Google Map that has helpful arrows on it.
  • Map of campus and map of city. If you're going to spend a few days there, hit some other libraries or possible employers and get the maximum mileage out of your travel. Consult with this if you are interviewing in the US; if you are interviewing in Canada, use the Heritage Directory or the Canadian Library Gateway.
  • Phone card for your cell phone, for emergencies. This is not a time to test your handheld internet navigating skills in the middle of an unfamiliar downtown.
This should fit in your folder. If not, you need a bigger folder. I think Batman got fatter over time, hence a bigger utility belt. Your folder should also be big enough that none of your items need to be folded or creased to fit; offering a crinkled resume that a story-time attendee could have put together better will not make a good impression. Contrary to snotty business books, it does not have to be leather, but it should be clean, opaque and close at the top so your tickets, and breath freshening strips, don't fall out.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Refer a friend: Job Tonic and H3

You're looking for a job and you see some stuff for you but you also see stuff that might be good for your best friend, your squeeze's sister, that annoying person in your book club who never finishes the book before the meeting and you kindly decide to cut and paste, or forward the job to a friend, just out of the goodness of your heart. But there are services out there where you can get paid for your...goodness. (I was about to say "virtue" but, last I checked, you can only get paid for that on Ebay.)

There are new sites that are trying to tap into your ability to connect jobs with friends and give you some cash back, encouraging you to be a more active node in the network. H3 is a popular service with recruiters and Job Tonic is spreading the work-love in the UK. In these services, hard to find positions can be filled through the principle of "weak ties": you know someone slightly and you know they need work; you pass on your intel and they may pass something back to you. Usually called networking. To reward your goodness for tightening the tie, the site will give you some cash back if your connection applies and gets the job.

This might also be one way to see just how effective a network can be, so think about passing on a job posting to a deserving other.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Bellerophon's Reference Letter


If you know the myth, or read the Wikipedia entry, you know that Bellerophon got to ride Pegasus and killed some nasty creatures for fame, glory and chicks. But when he offended one rich queen, she supposedly cried foul to her husband. Since Bellerophon probably filled out his armor quite nicely, the husband sent Bellerophon off to the queen's father with a sealed letter that said, Soprano-style, "take good care of this guy". Bellerophon did not know what was in the sealed letter but the father-in-law didn't want to kill a guest, so he sent Bellerophon off to slay the Chimera. Instead of becoming a light snack, Bellerophon went on to even greater glory.

People who keep no Bulfinches' have been known to confuse Perseus and Bellerophon, and they rarely remember the letter that almost sent him to his death. A sneaky letter, where you unknowingly carry information to another about yourself that will lead to hostility, maybe death, is a "bellerophonic letter".

We are seriously out of Chimeras, but something similar can happen in the workplace. Your references aren't saying what you think they say: first, they can be mediocre; second, the reference is telling the employer that they would not hire you again, the kiss of death. You can have literally everything go right until that point, but if your reference says we wouldn't take you back and we know you, you're Chimera-chow.

What can you do about your references? First of all, don't rely on just three. People go on holidays, they get sick, move away, leave the field or they forget who the heck you were. Have at least five that you can count on.

Don't think that a reference letter is enough, or can replace a person. First, the prospective employer will still want to talk to your references. If you have lost touch with them, they aren't a reference anymore and your promises to maintain professional connections sound like empty talk. Second, does the reference letter say that "you showed up, answered questions and kept your desk in order"? If it does, where are the programs you started or maintained? Have you managed to secure any funds or grants for the library and/or the programs that you began? Did you manage any staff and did they like you? Did you write any policy? Do they still use anything you gave them? If not, it's not a reference letter, it's an attendance form, and it may not help you win a new job. Re-read your references: are you stellar or second-rate? You really just need one thing that you are good at or did well. Keeping a seat warm doesn't count.

What if your references are as cowardly as the king or as unreasonable as the queen, and they have not told you the truth about what is in the sealed letter? If you already know that your boss is a backstabber, don't include him/her as a reference. You can also ask that the prospective employer contact four references, or one extra to counteract your boss, to give a full picture of your work habits. You're probably cringing inside: won't they think I am a bad employee if my current boss has nothing nice to say about me? Possibly, but you're leaving your job for a reason, possibly a couple, and, let's not kid ourselves, the boss' office does not come with halo and a harp. And your bad boss is going to try to grind you into processed meat anyway; at least ask the prospective employer to get a detailed picture of your work habits and ability. This is why we ask for three references in the first place.

Remember the ending of our monster-slayer's story? Hubris got him later. The Greeks knew that we are our own worst enemy.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Please, thank me

Thank you notes are still used when looking for work, as well as for other professional assistance, such as an information interview, someone connecting you with a contact or getting a reference letter that lands you a job. You can turn to Liz Handlin's free e-book, Ultimate Book of Thank You Notes, to get a little succinct guidance and samples on the subject.

Thanks to Career Hub for the link to Ms. Handlin's book.