Jobacle's Sick Day Calendar

Jobacle has released their 2009 Sick Day Calendar complete with the reasons to plan your illnesses ahead. In case you aren't sure how to call in sick, the How-to Wiki explains the process. Always, double check your sick day alibi for flimsiness.

Would you wear a sandwich board to get a job?

For six months, Joshua Persky wore a sandwich board in New York and pounded the pavement looking for work. He has landed a new job, though it took 6 months of perseverance--and he took a lot of crap, including a not very flattering shout-out on Wallstrip--when someone saw his sign and the hiring representative read his blog.

What to do if you get laid off

Diane Garnick with Invesco gives some good advice about negotiating your exit package, if you are offered one, and just good advice in general about how to network when looking for work. Watch the video from Tech Ticker.

If you aren't sure about who to invite to dinner, take a look at the earlier post on weak ties. Your friends can really give you some good comfort and support, and though all of their ideas may not be great, they can think about you and make some good suggestions that you may not have considered.

Can Obama Keep Those Jobs at Home?

Staying on top of the coverage of the meltdown, Business Week offers some analysis on the job creation program of president-elect Barack Obama and asks what the government should do--make Buy American legislation more stringent for example--to keep those jobs at home.

Couple this with the article on the "intangible" job market to determine where some of the new jobs may be created.

I do have a suggestion for you to help out your local economy: if you buy presents at Christmas, select items that were made locally or purchase gift cards that can be spent at local shops and businesses. Keep capital in your own local market and helps local small business owners, who are the major employers in every center.

Tis the season

to run panic-stricken and screaming through the halls, under the weight of all of the extra programming, gearing up for the January term, finishing all of your overdue projects and, yes, for our friends in school, exams. This is also when we come to term with some of our new assignments, projects and events. Could Santa spare a few elves?

This is also the time for end of the year mixers, where local professional groups to check-in with their members. If you have time, this is your opportunity to start scoping out the local people and talking about how much you would like to work at library X and asking when the new postings will go up. Yes, seriously. Now is the time to find out about hiring plans and try to get introduced to HR people at mixers--too bad they sometimes mix at their own mixers, but you can work with what you've got. Mixers can be vital when you plan to work local, but they can also offer good leads on upcoming conferences and projects.

So, go out and have a beer with your friends and alumni, but keep some rules in mind:

• One beer is enough beer. It may look cheerful and taste like you're standing on your back porch in summer, but drink with caution.
• Don't eat so much. I'm not saying, don't eat anything, but don't eat fifteen curried pickles or five devilled eggs and find yourself chipmunk-cheeked in front of the director of the library who's hiring. Martini olives are not considered sustenance, and flicking your toothpick is as distracting as a five-year old twirling her hair.
  
• Dress with care and leave the funny hat behind. Friday casual, including jeans and a toasty sweater is fine, but the heaving cleavage of your New Years dress is not.
• Don't bring your resume. You are looking for intel, while trying to look intelligent, so it is ok to give out a business card--especially if they want your help on a project or if you would like to get in touch with them in the new year--but your resume is just going to get sprinkled with curry pickle juice. Accept their business cards, but you may just have an opportunity to make notes on a napkin--which you should not lose, so carry a notebook. Follow-up after the holidays since in-boxes get overfull in December.
  
• Make a good impression. The best you can, not as the person who drunkenly giggled and gorged on amuse bouche.

If you think, pshaw, I will never do these things, you haven't been to too many holiday mixers, since they are filled with gorgers, bingers and sweatily-palmed paperwork. And stop using pshaw.

Are you a good listener?

Are you a good listener? Some of us think that we are, but never analyze our behaviors or ask people if they think that we are paying attention. But listening is an important skill for librarians. Of course, the obvious is the reference interview, making sure that you have the best information for the client's problem--but we need our listening skills when our managers or colleagues give us directions, when we attend committee meetings--especially when we are learning about a new topics, such as student awards--and we need our listening skills in the interview.

Listening is an active process: you need to know how to select information that people say to you and repeat it, so they know that you get it. Therefore, it is not enough to just listen, but to listen and repeat or listen and respond.

For managers--or anyone who hopes to be a manager--Leila's House of Corrections has a video on how to listen.



You can also practice listening:

• When you take phone messages, are you an uh-huh-er, just grunting your responses and saying, yeah, I'll make sure she gets that? Start reading back the message you have recorded and ask if this is the correct message. Ask if they have anything to add, and make sure that you have a courteous sign-off that mirrors theirs, not just a thunk down of the phone.
  
• Instead of reading a recipe and creating a meal, listen to a recipe on a podcast and make while listening. Obviously, you will need to listen more than once, especially when assembling the ingredients, but because this is an active exercise of input, the recipe, and output, dinner that tastes good, you are practicing active listening. 
• Many librarians love books and reread or write down favorite lines. But do you love audiobooks as much, and, if so, can you repeat back the lovely line that you just heard? Here's a test: use the bookmarking feature (or archaic rewind), say the line out loud and check to see if you are right.
• Raise your standards. Are you really hearing what people say, or are you content with the gist of it? Recently, I have noticed that I don't always hear all of the lines that are spoken on TV--age probably, but probably a result of years of headphone abuse--and I used to content myself with the gist of it. But if you watch Pushing Daisies or a frenetic episode of the West Wing, you're lost. Don't be satisfied with the gist of it anymore.

Listening is more than just pouring words in your ear, it includes some output and a cogent response. Test your listening skills to see if you really are as proficient as you believe.

You may already be a listening "expert": what tips or exercises do you have for people to improve their listening skills?

Idealist.org

If you're looking for work in a non-profit--any kind of work--you should be visiting Idealist.org. Idealist.org is a clearinghouse of information on non-profit work, local and global, with career advice (including two downloadable career guides) and information on volunteering, both in-person and virtual. They have also made really good use of YouTube for advertising their job posting board to employers, creating a commercial for their career guides and advertising their career fairs.

External opinion on the US Recession

Knowledge @ Wharton offers a summary of a speech delivered by Pedro Aspe, a former Mexican Secretary of Finance, about the causes of the recession and a brief analysis of the bailout and its fallout. I liked the perspective since it came from outside of the US and offers a slightly different--though no less critical--perspective.

Picking Plums

Every four years, in time for the arrival of a new administration, a copy of the Plum Book, "or list of the best Executive Branch jobs", becomes available. Many of the positions are filled by appointment, but some are open if you apply through USAJobs. Since civil service is one of the areas that is predicted to increase their hiring, this might be the time to explore some options in government employment.

And, yes, the Library of Congress does have positions listed on the Plum Book. But you can also search on USAJobs for current opportunities.

For more on the Plum Book, the AP has a brief article with links to related plummy write-ups.

Spark, Episode 55, Work 2.0

CBC's Spark Episode 55 is all about Work 2.0 with interviews with the CEO of Zappos and how to use 2.0 tech to be "transparent", Dan Tapscott on the Net Generation at work and who is using 2.0 in business.

Turn to your friends

Drawing inspiration from Tropic Thunder, Career Diva has a post on turning to your friends in a workplace crisis. Her thoughts are pop-y and timely, but this is a really old career idea: the strength of weak ties.

In 1973, Marc Granovetter wrote an article, The Strength of Weak Ties, where he explored how a group of people found work in Boston. Based on his research, which he later turned into a book called Getting a Job, he suggested that people can use their social ties for different results when finding a new job. First, the type of tie you use is important:

• A strong tie, like a family member or person who has a deep connection to you, can help you find work, but sometimes in a different industry (mainly because they are in a different industry, and hear about different opportunities and because they might not know what librarians, for example, do for a living) and they are highly motivated, because of their close connection to you, to help you find work. 
• Weak ties, on the other hand, are your acquaintances, people who you have a looser connection to, maybe even friends of friends, who are usually in the same industry, and who hear about more relevant job opportunities, but who have less incentive to help you because they are more distant to you personally.

So close=more love, but less relevance, and weak=less interest, but more relevance.

Now other people have explored the weak tie theory--especially when examining social networks--and they have drawn some conclusions, such as college students aren't so good at activating weak ties because they don't have a broad network of industry contacts, and they tend to turn to family and friends for assistance. Others suggest that activating a weak tie can keep you within your industry, whereas relying on a strong tie can help you transition into a new industry.

But the one thing research agrees on is that no matter how weak or strong the tie, you have be vocal. You must say: I'm looking for a job, do you know of any openings?

Here is how you can start activating your ties:

• We are not all in competition with one another. You may be surrounded by library students who are all going into the job market at the same time, but you are not all competing for the same positions. Some of you want to be children's librarians, archivists, media specialists, corporate librarians, so you are all part of the industry of knowledge work, but not all competing in the same sectors. But you need to start an exchange of postings and job information. To do that you...
• Need to speak up. This is time to talk about careers and how to find them. It is also the time to get in touch with former co-workers and supervisors and go to coffee. The holidays can offer great opportunities to mix and mingle, but you have to talk.
• It's time to bring in the experts with exposure to industry, and a variety of sectors. If there was ever a time to form a job club in your library school, get in guest speakers who can talk about resume writing, interview skills and finding internships, it's now. Panelists, speakers and librarians invited to parties should represent all types of library work, and should also include a generous helping of self-employed librarians. These guests should include new and established librarians, since new librarians can talk about how they recently found their jobs and established librarians can open the channels of communication to their library contacts.

 If this sounds suspiciously like networking, you're right. But what do you do if you aren't good at networking?

Retail holiday jobs

Though libraries are not retail establishments, some librarians and library students supplement their living expenses by working in retail. NPR's Business Podcast of the Day explores the downturn in available retail jobs.

Many libraries are located in malls, which also means library traffic visits could be down--unless people are using the library to look for work.