I don't have any friends like that

Think about who's in your network.

Look into my eyes

Jobacle had a great short post on eye contact and I thought I would expand on it slightly since eye contact can have ramifications for interviews, as well as on-the-job customer service delivery.

The Jobacle post has some nice basic rules, but there are some cultural rules to be aware of: not all cultures evaluate the quality of eye contact in the same way as North Americans. There are differences between the countries that make up North America, as well as urban/rural, or native Americans or Canadians, and male to female. I have also met some North Americans (more below) who are pretty harsh when evaluating the quality of eye contact, so if you are interviewing for a North American position, but you aren't from around these parts, you might want to get some tips.

• 1000 Ventures, a business coaching company, has a good article on eye contact in the workplace that takes in culture and psychology. (Ignore the garish colors and forgive some of the typos, it's still a good article.)
• VideoJug has a whole section on multicultural manners that includes advice from Norine Dresser, the author of Multicultural Manners. When I teach a session on interviewing and conversation to my ESL students, we usually start with the section in her book about eye contact.
• Leila's House of Corrections Eye Contact video has some great explanations for women about the appropriateness of eye contact and how the gaze can occasionally be misread.
  

If you have concerns about your eye contact and the appropriateness of your gaze, you might want to have a mock interview that is video taped and see how good your eye contact is. Talking with a person from the country where you plan to interview--and, yes, there are differences between the US and Canada (we're not just cooler)--is a good idea.

As an aside, I teach ESL as a volunteer, and I have heard some disturbing stories from my students about getting hassled by law enforcement (train security and city cops) because of their lack of eye contact. Some of the officers have told these students that they look shifty and deceitful. The cops were quite belligerent with the students, when really the student's culture has told him/her to look on people in uniform with respect--not to mention that some countries have notoriously bent cops and it's a good idea to not attract their attention. I'm surprised that this was an issue, but I had a really upset student talk to me about a situation last year that made me think that people in authority--and this includes librarians and HR professionals--should stop acting like hyperactive rottweilers.

Search all of Craigslist

Though you aren't supposed to be able to, Wired How-To Wiki has come up with a method, using Google's advanced search, to search all of Craigslist at once. You could use this method to find items for sale...or you could use it to look for freelance contracts or job postings, if place is no object in your job search. Very useful if you are looking for sideline work like editing, tutoring or small writing contracts.

This search could also work for nonprofit jobs that are posted on Craigslist, or if you are looking for library jobs that are posted on Craigslist. (I'm not aware of any libraries that use Craigslist to post job ads, but what the heck, cover all of your bases).

New widgets

I've added some widgets on the right hand side of this blog.

• The first is the badge for the Yahoo! Pipes that I built to find Canadian library jobs. It's not perfect, but it might display a post that you have overlooked.
• Below that is the Career Jet widget. Career Jet is a vertical search engine with multi-lingual and multi-national versions. A colleague of mine also played with it and you can do something completely cool: you can look for jobs in your native language (we tried Chinese) while searching results from another country (we searched for jobs in Canada). An awesome way to improve your search if you want to use your first language while looking for jobs in another country.

So remember to look right when you visit this blog.

Discount Bus Lines for Interviews

The NPR Business Story of the Day, Discounts Help Bus Travel Thrive In Some Cities, talks about some of the cheap discount buses that people are making use of when Amtrak or a plane is just beyond the traveller's budget. If you have to pay your own way to get to an interview, and the city you need to travel to is served, this may be one way to keep your costs down.

Companies mentioned in this story:

• Bolt Bus
• Vamoose
• China Town Bus
• Mega Bus
  

What do you value most in a team mate?

When we think of a team, we think of different players on the field, all with different strengths or roles to play in the service of the team. If you have ever played on a team, there are also some team members who urge us to play harder, to try again--and not to spit in our hands when we go to shake the hands of the opposing team members at the end of the game.

Think about how your co-workers or project partners have made you better: did they realize what your strengths were and try to give you projects that accommodated those strengths? Did they try to push you to try something new or help you over an obstacle? Did they give you something personal--like suggest you be kinder, more forgiving, or efficient. Think about it.

Do you have a person in mind who may have improved one of your hard skills and one softer skill? You can treat this question as a BDI question and give an example of your best team mates and what you learned from them. Try not to use names.

Now, one of the ways people falter with this question is that they confess how their team mates keep their bad habits in check. You stay stuff like, he always made sure my work was handed in on time and helped me with my punctuality problem. Uh-oh, you look like a wayward calf that he had to rope--so you're the weak link. You're someone the excellent team mate, who didn't apply, had to coddle.

Candidates also drop the ball on this question when they need something that the organization can't--or is unwilling--to provide. For example, if you talk about how your team mates mentored you as the newest librarian on staff and the interviewer does not think that mentorship is necessary, strike one. This is why a long list of team qualities is bad: you could unknowingly hit some of their pressure points.

Try not to confess to personal weaknesses as part of the team--especially if you're sometimes a poor sportsman. Don't give a litany of great qualities and no examples. Limit your response to one or two examples, explain and shut up.