What did you do last time?

If you are looking for work, sit down and think, right now, what you did that successfully got you your last job.

Why aren't you doing it this time?

Now you may be doing what you did last time, but I am guessing that you aren't, for the following reasons:

1. Someone prescribed a fad to you. And it might have been me, since I put up the post on Twitter. And it's fine to experiment, especially when the fad intersects with your desired job. But if the library you want to work for isn't using Twitter, you could be waiting a long time for them to catch up with you.
   Fads can work if, as I said, the fad is hot in your field, or if you are transitioning into a new field, not the one you trained for, like you're a librarian now but you want to be a marketer/a museum educator/an administrator, and you found out about your career option via the fad.
   Fads can't work if your prospective employer doesn't adhere to the fad. In this case, you're wasting your time when you should be using the traditional methods that have landed you a job in the past. Use your spare time to learn about the fad, but don't become obsessed, and therefore deluded, about its efficacy.
2. You're graduating and you now can look for work in the field that you trained for. First, I'm going to (virtually) dope slap for waiting until you graduated. And then I am going to remind you that any of the volunteer work and the internships that you had counted as real work, even if you didn't get paid. I hope you gave them chocolates before you left, because you are going to back and do information interviews with your supervisors. One of the questions you are going to ask is how did you find out about your job? You might not want to work for them, but they may give you encouragement about your current methods, a job lead or a referral, traditional networking stuff that does work. 
3. As a new grad, use the traditional method of using the career center to find a job. Don't roll your eyes. This is actually my last method for finding work: my last three jobs came from my post-secondary career center. So there. My summer job that led to a part-time gig during second year came from the bulletin board in the library school's administration office. Listen, use the career office: the employers have tracked you back to your lair.
   

My point is this: traditional methods, at least your tradition, can work to find work. You've been able to practice. You can try the unconventional, just don't become consumed by the latest fad, so much so that it sucks up all of your time.

Use the application checklist to jog your memory, and keep track of what you're doing this time.

From the world of good news, one of my co-workers was just yelling from her office that "in April, employment gains occurred in information, culture and recreation (+17,000)" (yes, in my office we holler about labor force statistics). Now, we're still sitting at 8% unemployment, and some of these jobs may be temporary for the summer, coinciding with the museum/rec centre/library upswing in summer programming, but it is still good news.

As an aside, Fortune has put together some of their reporting about getting and keeping a job in this economy. It has some ideas about how to job search--most come out in favor of networking--and the resources would be an asset if you are building a portal/pathfinder on job seeking.

Monster's revenue is down

In an earlier post, I suggested that sounding the death knell for Monster.com was a bit premature and that comparing Monster to newspapers did not describe the full scope of Monster's services to employers, which are broader than traditional newspaper classifieds, and greater than the services offered by Craigslist.

Well, Monster reported their Q-1 results last month and though sales are down in relation to a weak market (fewer jobs to post, purchase less advertising--or at least, limit advertising to your own site), and their revenues are down. But it's not like they're bleeding to death:

Total revenue declined 31% to $254 million (26% excluding currency effects and acquisitions) (Source: Toronto Star).

A tiny sliver of this loss may also be accounted for in people using LinkedIn or Twitter to post available jobs. I wouldn't attribute it to competition from vertical search engines.

Library Career Fair in SL

The Library Career Fair in SL is tomorrow, and SLA has just announced that the military and government library divisions will have a booth at the fair. Since public service is one dependable area for employment (right now, at least) dropping by their booth may not be a bad idea.

And you don't even have to dress up for it.

Did you just drop out of marketing?

If you changed your class schedules around, or thought that marketing class would be a snooze, read what Meredith Farkas had to say about the importance of the sales pitch to academic librarians. Maybe it's because we don't like the word marketing, we don't like selling stuff, we don't like thinking of ourselves or knowledge as a product.

But that's the problem: the people who are buying from us do think of our services and knowledge as a product. And they understand that terminology when you begin to use it. You don't have to reinvent new words to sell something or persuade a person to understand that point. Someone has already spun that wheel.

And here is the real kicker: if it doesn't look like librarians can handle their own sales, they will hire a marketer to do it.

Careers in Fundraising

What librarian doesn't have experience looking for more money, whether eking it out of our own budgets, looking for more funds through grant applications, or networking with prospective donors. If you don't have these experiences, you might want to think about getting them.

How would you get these jobs?

You do not need to have an undergraduate degree in business, though that could help. The Certified Public Library Administrator program does offer a course on Fundraising/Granstmanship that might offer a good introduction to the topic. There are also a few books from the ALA on the topic, such as Fundraising and Friend-raising on the Web (I hope they are planning a new edition), or Becoming a Fundraiser. The CFRE also provides a list of fundraising compentencies; see how many you currently have.

If you're currently a librarian, you should be looking for opportunities to do research in fund raising and networking with prospects who could give money to the library. There might be some training opportunities with your local Chamber of Commerce, (you can use the World Chambers of Commerce directory to find your local), as well as networking events that will put you in touch with local business people. Obviously, working with your community and its patrons in general can also be an asset.

If you current job will not allow you to get experience in any of those areas, consider some of the opportunities available to volunteers locally, or use Idealist to find ones that you may be able to volunteer for remotely. You don't necessarily have to agree to go out canvassing for your local charity, since someone has already done the research in those cases.

If you're a student:

Obviously, the management principles course would be helpful. Write a paper on fundraising. You can probably get some experience in the field, as a student, if your development office has student positions available during the school year. You can, of course, volunteer to do fundraising, and taking on some of the entry-level positions, such as calling alumni for donations, is a good introduction to see if you can hack it in this field.

When you look for jobs online use fundraising, fund development, gifts, donor, development, as some of your keywords until you hit on the ones used most frequently for the types of jobs that appeal to you.

Sample Job Postings:

• Manager, Prospect Research, University of Alberta (they want a librarian, how cool is that?)
• Associate Director, Princeton University
• Development Associate, Individual Giving
  

Kicking someone when they're down

According to this article in the Chicago Tribune, the unemployed are currently being targeted by identity thieves, either through online job postings, or using low/no tech methods at job fairs.

But job-search identity theft can also be low tech. Some companies hold job fairs where they have job seekers provide their Social Security numbers and other basic information to recruiters. Even when the company is legitimate, that can pose a security risk for job applicants...

If you are giving job seeking training, you may also want to include a heads up on the scam artist. And no, they are not limited to Craigslist ads. According to the story, scam artists are using Monster. Monster, in response, has a tips for avoiding scams.

Job scams are old and the FTC has a Caution Job Scams portal. The Better Business Bureau in both the US and Canada can be used to keep you up to date on scams of all types.

Slaying Monsters?

Response to Will Monster.com go the way of newspapers?

I think it is too soon to suggest that Monster will go the way of the newspaper classifieds, for a few reasons:

• Vertical search engines currently aren't charging employers to post with them; most of them make their money with Google adwords
• Why not charge employers? Because they would need to have a whole host of staff to market their service, as well as an accounting department to deal with invoicing and hunt down the people who don't pay for their ads
  
• Most vertical search redirect the job posting not to the employer site but to the original posting on a job board. Monster never redirected a job seeker to a local newspaper because the classified service just dealt directly with employers and got paid for it.

Yes, it is possible that free (and not all are free to for-profit companies) will replace paid, but not for a while yet. Monster, and other job search services, also have other tools--such as resume handling, automatic response, and testing--that streamline other HR processes which no newspaper service ever did.

Whoa, knelly.

SimplyHired's Job Listing Report

SimplyHired, one of many vertical search engines for job postings, has released a Q1 report on job searching and frequently used keywords in job search, based on information from their engine.

Now they have indicated that job searches are up, and, yes that can be due to unemployment, but it can also be due to the fact that people are

• dissatisfied with their current employment and are looking for new jobs
• can see the writing on the wall with their current employer, or
• are just trying to stay ahead of the pack
  
• one of the popular keywords is part-time, so this could indicate that people are looking for extra work or returning to the workforce

Now, why might you can about this, except to use SimplyHired to find a job? Because the report mentions the appearance of prevalent keywords, which could help you creating search strings, and it also tells you the locations where job postings are up. Handy.

Recommendations for who to follow on Twitter for a job

This post comes from a roundabout curve, from a post on College Recuiter, to the post from Amanda Hoffstrom, about tweeting for a job with recommendations on who to follow on Twitter who tweets about job searching. If you want to use Twitter to look for work, this may be a place to start.

LinkedIn benefiting from the economy?

Is LinkedIn benefting from the downturn in the economy, with more employers supposedly:

• Using connections on LinkedIn to fill positions?
• Job seekers using LinkedIn to look for work?
• Mean that increased traffic could lead to a high profile buyer?

If you are thinking about adding LinkedIn to your tutorials on how to use the Internet to find work, make sure that you also investigate how active local groups and alumni associations are, not just what the LinkedIn tools include.

Cross posted at Coagitating

But what kind of work?

ERE has a hopeful post, Not Hiring? Tell That to the 4.4 Million who Found Jobs, possibly in response to the news that 300, 000 jobs were lost in March. The post does point out that some people did get jobs, but then suggests that because WalMart is hiring clerks that this is compensation for the loss of a stable, middle class salary-paying job, probably with health insurance.

Now I do think it is important to talk about the World of Good News (go to the Hour for more) but the argument that one job is just as good as another, now take your castor oil, is just silly. This doesn't take into account that some of the hires were probably part-time trade downs from full-time employment--so even if you were classified as the exact same type of worker, 22 hours a week is not the same as 40 hours a week. You can't just trade a job for a job--they aren't alike. For crying out loud, at least read Nickel and Dimed if you have never had to take a minimum wage job.

Rant over.

Anyway, I do want to draw people's attention to some of the interviews on Metro Morning about laid off workers--mature workers who are having a hard time either finding equivalent work to what they have lost. Or they have remade themselves, by exploring some of the skills they haven't used in a while. I agree that we should no longer use the term McJobs--like you're showing your age if you use dude--because it is no longer cool and is demeaning to people who need to work to eat.

You don't need to interpret tea leaves stuck in a cup

To understand that people who work sitting down get paid

more than people who work standing up.

from Will Consider Situation by Ogden Nash

Podcast: Career Tips from the Wall Street Vet

BNET Useful Commute podcasts are short interviews, usually less than 8 minutes, about business topics. Many of the interviewees are business writers--promo for their books, obviously--and this interview is no different.

This interview, Career Tips from a Wall Street Vet, has to do with self-evaluation and reflection on performance, making yourself better at work--a good idea if this is your first placement, or if your job is temporary or a contract and you want to seem career minded.

[Update] I also have to add this one from the FTPress, Three Tips for Surviving the Recession, because of No. 1: Stay focused on facts. This is the hardest to do if you spend any time watching the news. It is really easy to get a severe case of CNN poisoning.

Both podcasts will take about ten minutes from your day.