Jason Alba on Twitter

Jason Alba, creator of JibberJobber, also the writer for the JibberJobber blog, has a good post on using Twitter effectively. I agree: people are busy, they don't like technology, and there isn't a great deal of evidence yet that all of the effort put into job seeking on Twitter can actually lead to a job.

For librarians, using Twitter for information sharing makes sense. If you just happen to get a job out of it, double bonus points.

Who's reading your email?

According to this article in the Wall Street Journal, it's getting a bit tougher--before the courts anyway--to monitor an employee's email. What I found fascinating is that 38% of companies have someone on staff whose job it is to read outgoing emails.

And that means your personal accounts, too. At least if you access them from the office:

In another case this year, Bonnie Van Alstyne, a former vice president of sales and marketing at Electronic Scriptorium Ltd., a data-management company, was in the thick of a testy legal battle in Virginia state court with the company over employment issues when it came to light that her former boss had been accessing and reading her personal AOL email account. The monitoring went on for more than a year, continuing after Ms. Van Alstyne left the company. Ms. Van Alstyne sometimes used her personal email account for business purposes, and her supervisor said he was concerned that she was sharing trade secrets.

The supervisor, Edward Leonard, had accessed her account "from home and Internet cafes, and from locales as diverse as London, Paris, and Hong Kong," according to legal filings in the case.

Ms. Van Alstyne sued Mr. Leonard and the company for accessing her email without authorization. A jury sided with her, and the case eventually settled.

Um, she left the company. Continuing to access her personal account after she is gone sounds like stalking to me. I wonder if Mr. Leonard is still with the company?

Best and Worst Metro Areas

SimplyHired has released their data on the best and worst metro areas for job postings for September 2009. The results compare the number of non-duplicate posts to number of unemployed in that area.

Use TweetDeck to update Twitter Job Searches

I'm still skeptical about using Twitter to find work, mainly because I have not met anyone personally who has found work via Twitter. But I did configure a search on TweetDeck (which I think makes plain Twitter functional) that may be helpful for those determined to prove me wrong.

Basically, TweetDeck is an app for Twitter that helps you manage your tweets. You can also run searches on Twitter, via TweetDeck and get pop-up updates if your search terms appear in Twitter. (These pop-ups are slightly annoying, but if you are Twitter-obsessed, perhaps you love their cheerful appearance.) Anyway, once you are signed in to TweetDeck or have downloaded it onto your desktop or iPhone, you can stay updated on your Twitter feed and get refreshed searches.

You can just type in your keywords/search terms, you don't need the hashtags because the search will send you posts where the search terms appeared, whether they have hashtags or. Since supplying a hashtag is voluntary on the part of the tweeters, this means you will get posts both with and without hashtags. (This, of course, can be good and bad, but if you are determined to use Twitter, you are determined to try anything.)

I would recommend running a Boolean AND, of the keyword for the profession you are looking for AND jobs, so you don't get the librarian saved my life tweets, or something about weird fantasies from people hanging out in the reference section (amazing what glasses and some smarts do to some people's libidos).

You can run several different searches, four displays nicely, but just remember that you will need to scroll sideways to view them all.

Now let's see if running searches on Twitter can actually lead to a real person, who will post a real comment that they found a real job--not just a posting or an interview, the full meal deal--through Twitter. I would prefer to hear from librarians and their successes, but I'll take anyone who can prove that Twitter got them employed.

Employers sidestep recruiters...from the Globe and Mail

WK4US has been having a discussion about how to use LinkedIn properly for finding work, and one of the members of the list posted this article from the Globe and Mail, Employers sidestep recruiters to tap social media.

The employers are using social media, but they are also exploiting the power of weak ties--finding a job through an acquaintance. They are using the "refer a friend" feature found on many online networking sites. This means that if in your circle of friends, they come across a posting that would be of interest to you and they pass it on, just as the workers in this article are posting job opportunities on their Facebook walls for their friends to read.

Chances are many of your friends have a similar background and skill set (you can read Mouw's articles about social capital for more on this topic), and employers are tapping into this via social networking. It isn't new, though the medium is making it more visible--not everyone would see the posting for employees on the church bulletin board.

The interviewed employers in the article appear to mainly come from the retail sector.

How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter , MySpace and Other Social Networks

How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Other Social Networks by Brad and Debra Schepp is a nice basic book on how to use online networking tools to look for work.

More than one half of the book is devoted to LinkedIn, with the other networking tools receiving one chapter each. The book is filled with testimonials from users who have used that service to find work online, and it also includes advice from users on how to navigate the site and on online networking etiquette, mainly focused on LinkedIn practices.

This book may have nothing new in it for experienced users, but for people who have not joined an online networking service, or have joined but have done nothing more than update their status, this book would offer some direction on how to proceed.

If you haven't used LinkedIn to look for work, you should know that:

• There are librarians on LinkedIn, some looking for work and some that are responsible for hiring
• There are librarian groups on LinkedIn, some offering general support and information, and others that include job boards
• There is a job posting service on LinkedIn that you can use to find work. Some of the job postings will ask that you are have recommendations and can get a referral within your network to apply to a position. Even if you have less than 50 connections, you will probably have at least one third degree connection who you may be able to get put forward by, depending on how your network works.

If you aren't on LinkedIn, you might want to add it to your job search strategy. You can also consider using LinkedIn to fuel your job club if you are currently at library school or have a local networking group for job seekers.

How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Other Social Networks will give you the basics, but you can also sign up for some online education from the LinkedIn Learning Center.

Twitter mistakes

HR Guru has an article on Twitter mistakes, and I hope you aren't making any of them, but you might want to mention them in some of your how-to-job-search classes.

I would also add that you don't add any identifying hash tags, like the name of your workplace, or where you live, should limit your exposure. Tweeting under your full name will also get you outed pretty quickly, though I could argue that searching for people and finding the correct one is not as easy as some people seem to think.

Articles like these, including the ones about not doing stupid stuff on MySpace and Facebook, or any other online service, have to do with discretion. Some people are just not discreet, or they are convinced that no one will ever know--and the lack of knowledge about social media, and the Internet in general, may give them a sense of security. The people you don't want to know about your online rants aren't going to find out about them unless

• someone in-house tattles on you--which they should, in cases of threats of violence, or indiscreet revelations of company secrets or intellectual property
• you friend/follow your boss and then say stupid stuff online
• they get a clue about the Internet. 

For librarians, you can also add, revealing personal information about clients/patrons that approach us in confidence.

Maybe discretion and conduct should be added to a professional behavior course? They are topics to be addressed, if only briefly, in a course on online job searching.

discretion

Dwindling job supply

This post from ERE.net summarizes the findings of two reports on jobs and the economic recovery in the US.

If you run a job center in your library, you might want to add the Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine Data Series, as well as the Employment Trends Index, from the same source, to your list of links.

LinkedIn API

This comes via the SimplyHired blog, a video from LinkedIn about how developers can use the LinkedIn API to create job searching tools on the web.

Liar. liar

Last week, a story ran on ABC News about companies that were providing fake references for job seekers, for a fee. HRGuru has picked up the thread and tried to interview one of the companies that would provide you with fake job details and they also provided a good analysis of whether lying on your resume was legal or not. According to an article from the Association for Business Communication, quoted in the HRGuru post, lying on your resume is not illegal--unless you are using a degree from a diploma mill on your resume and if there are laws in place in the state that you work in about falsifying information on a resume.

But why would people lie on a resume?

1. They don't have the education that the position requires. Please don't lie about being a surgeon just because the salary looks enticing. I also do want to have sympathy for people who can't get into certain fields where the position is not protected or professionalized, but the excuse that I have a family, I have a house, I can't go back to school is a false one for me. I see many people who are in that situation--family, kids, dog, even single and struggling--and they make the sacrifice to go to school. Need the education: go get it.
2. They don't feel that a previous employer, if contacted, will treat them fairly. If Kreskin retires, you should have his job. You have no idea what a person will say as a reference, unless they come out and say, I won't recommend you. In that case, there are other reasonable ways around that problem: ask a colleague to act as a reference, get some personal references, ask another supervisor. All of these will work. If you were really treated unfairly, get an advocate or a lawyer and get an appropriate written letter of recommendation that you can give to potential employers. Use the legal, appropriate options available to you, first. Don't lie.
   
   These options are open provided that you didn't screw up and deserve the bad reference. In that case, you need to do some penance, look for people who will assist you, and actually work to deserve some forgiveness.
   

And if you are actually in the position where you need the education to get to where you want to be, or you have truly screwed up and need to get right, there are many community resources available to you that will help you get back together. You can plead fear, overwork or laziness, but many other people have overcome those obstacles.

If you're a librarian teaching a resume skills class and get asked about "fudging" on a resume, be clear that it is not appropriate, and provide some local community resource referrals for career and education counseling. Especially if the obstacle is only in their minds like the poor, fired bank worker in the HRGuru article.

Who's on Twitter?

Susan Strayer, the author of The Right Job, Right Now, is keeping a list of the companies that are posting jobs to Twitter. Handy.

Stalked off

Now, I know the article [Stalk your way to a new job] was tongue-in-cheek, but I don't recommend stalking individual people at an organization--you should follow news stories and items about an organization. If the people that work there happen to publish and you might end up working in their department, you should read their publicly available work. But staking out their Facebook page?

According to the article,

Within minutes, you can find out where he’s from, how to reach him, where he’s worked in the past, and – perhaps most importantly – what his favorite movie is. The more you know about him, the better your ability to sell yourself.

Not so fast. This depends on a few factors.

1. The person is online and is accessible. This mean that they keep their blog or their Facebook profile out in the public sphere on their own name. Lots of people don't.
2. Even if you think you have the right person, how do you know that you do? Plenty of celebrities have people who name-jack them (would that be Twitter jack?) but I know quite a few people who have misspelled potential colleagues names.
3. For librarians, many of us know where the privacy settings are. And we teach others where to find them.

A far more helpful post would have been how to find out information about a company and their prospects, especially for privately-owned or small firms not listed on the 500 that Fortune slavers over each year.

Use Social Media

This is a link to an article posted on Inside Higher Ed about the benefits of using social media for PhDs. A lot of what the article says can be applied to librarians. I do think that a lot of librarians are blogging, but I don't see very many of us on LinkedIn, so pay attention to what the author has to say about the benefits of LinkedIn.

I would like to add that it is relatively easy to import a badge from LinkedIn and place it on your blog, so that if someone reads your blog and wants to find out more about you, they can find your profile on LinkedIn. Which can also lead to your resume, should they decide to find out if you are a librarian-for-hire.

You can also get a LinkedIn Companion for Firefox (which has gotten mixed reviews on the source page, but I think it can be handy). When I used it and scanned job postings, I could also see if anyone on my LinkedIn network was connected to the company. I would feel more comfortable using my first degree connections if I was looking for info on a prospective company, but you can use this tool to see who you might know, weak or strong-tied to you, at the company.

Craigslist, jobs scams, and don't shoot the messenger

If you haven't used it, Craigslist is a classified service, geographic specific, that you can use to look for an apartment, appliances, and yes, a job. Though Craigslist has taking a beating lately over the erotic service ads that appear on the site, Craigslist can be a great resource for a variety of microjobs.

Craigslist has also, in my opinion, been unfairly criticized for allowing scammers to post ads, including job ads. Scams occurred in newspaper advertising, could appear on bulletin boards at grocery stores and on television (yes, you can make millions on real estate--not). And if you don't want to get naked for money, don't get naked for money.

Instead of shooting the messenger, learn about the hallmarks of a scam or a waste of time job. WebWorkerDaily has an article on 4 Online Freelancing Jobs you Should Approach with Caution; you can find out about job scams in the US on the FTC website, or you can get information from your local consumer protection agency. In Canada, the Canadian Consumer Information Gateway has information; the Competition Bureau (not the easiest site to navigate) posts information about job scams that they have investigated, and the RCMP has a short list of Frauds and Scams.

Microjobs

Microjobs are small jobs that you do for a fee. They can be "odd jobs", as in yard word, handyman type jobs, small household projects or assisting with a move and getting paid for it. They can include little side entrepreneurial jobs like dogwalking or transcription. Microjobs can also include graphic design tasks, like create a poster for an upcoming gig, or write a book review for a free book or ten dollars. Websites like Elance and Virtual Vocations, though they have contract and telework positions will also advertise microjobs.

The truth is, workers have been performing microjobs for years--centuries if you also want to count the piece work that laborers took home to complete at night, and all the washing and extra cooking that women would perform for bachelors for a fee. These jobs made it possible to save up for books, to send a child to school, or to keep food on the table and a roof over your head, especially when prospects were lean and before established social welfare programs.

But some people don't know about these microjobs, or they have just thought of them as "odd jobs", or they just didn't know that they should get paid for them since they were doing them for a friend or as a favor. Many people also don't consider them to be "real" work, but they can help provide extra income while not requiring a lot of extra exertion. And best of all, you can usually work them out in your schedule.

I have had several microjobs: I write blog posts, reviews and articles; I tutor and proofread; I dogwalk; I read Tarot cards at parties; I make little crafty items for sale (like scarves and soaps). And I will, occasionally, do labor jobs if I know that I won't ache for three days, no scaffolding, and that I am not working with a power tool cowboy. The benefit: I do them when I have time and get paid as soon as it is completed. Most of the work is for personal satisfaction, not the money.

Microjobs can help you out of a jam with cash. They are a better financial option than selling off your textbooks, or scrambling to pick up an extra shift at your regular job. The next few posts will explore some sources for microjobs if you want to find some work for yourself or if you have clients coming into the library who need money immediately. Suggesting a microjob is a socially responsible referral, unlike giving a client the address of a payday loan office, IMHO.

Once you know where to find microjobs you will never have to worry about the employer who rarely, if ever, pays on time, pick up shifts at a job that you dislike but can tolerate, or multitask by watching Supernatural or listening to a novel. Try to do that at work.

You can find out more about microjobs in this post from 800 CEO Read that features Chris Guillebeau's Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself.

Paul Forster, Indeed's CEO, talks about Indeed

Total Picture Radio interviewed Paul Forster, the CEO of Indeed, about how Indeed works. Indeed, if you haven't used it, is a vertical search engine which "scrapes" jobs from major boards and allows you to search those boards from their interface. If you find something you like, you select the job and Indeed takes you to where the original placement of the job--like on Monster--and you follow the posting steps from their to apply.

The interview gives a good overview of Indeed and some of its features, like the Job Trends, setting up alerts, how the search engine lets you search by salary even if not every job posting includes salary information. I also learned about how sponsored jobs works--sounds a bit like Facebook's ads within the social network. They also talked a bit about job scams and phishers on the site and the steps that Indeed is taking to lessen the posts from scammers.

Which is how I found out about the interview, through a post on the Diggings blog which is powered by JobDig. The writer does make a good point that if Indeed didn't deal with places that harbor scammers, like major job boards that do no checks on job authenticity, scamming would be lessened, but that's like saying Google shouldn't return results that would include misleading information.

As a researcher, you should be aware that there are some vertical search engines that aggregate employer job feeds only, like Eluta and vertical search engines that scrape, like Indeed, SimplyHired and WowJobs. Taking employer feeds directly can indicate that these are real jobs--though you also get fewer results. (Researchers know less is more, desperate job seekers just get frustrated.) A submitted feed may also be inauthentic, since it is hard to tell if the search engine has someone who is investigating the authenticity of the the job feeds beyond the initial email of please add our feed to your results.

I think that including tools like map mashups or letting you discover how many times an employer has posted the job and for how long are other tools that will help you discover the authenticity of a job. If there is no mapped location, or the location seems suspect, it's probably not real--as in, using a post office box and not a company address to submit your resume, a tactic that was used by old school scammers that used print classifieds. If a job is frequently posted or runs forever, these are also tip offs that something is wrong, though it could just mean that the job has a high turnover rate, such as car washers.

The interview, however, is good and offers some insights to searchers using Indeed.

Federal Jobs (US)

There is a website for federal service jobs in the US, Making the Difference, which includes advice on writing a resume, the infamous KSAs, as well as a housing guide for the DC area.

There's more about finding a federal job on the NACE Bulletin for August 4th, 2009pt. 2.

I want to be a librarian

And now, don't you want to be one, too?

Library Day in the Life Project

The Library Day in the Life Project is a great way to find out what certain types of librarians do all day in their libraries, to research career options and to prep for interviews, so you can ask more sophisticated questions about duties and expectations.

A plea for subject lines

This post on BNET about how to annoy your colleagues with email put me in mind of some email problems that I have experienced lately. Well, not my problem really: other people's problems.

• Sending email with no subject header or a re: subject header. It screams: I'm a virus, I'm a virus. I have set my email to kick these suckers out of the queue, straight to delete. If you send your job applications like that you have just sent them to the electrical shredder. Ditto, if you did this to follow up on a request from someone you met at a networking event, or to ask your former bosses to give you a reference. It doesn't matter if they recognize the email address. Prudence says, turf it. If you think your bosses will remember your name and email from when you worked there, that was your corporate email. They aren't going to know gobbledygook at google.com
  
• Vague subject lines are just as bad, since those have been hijacked by spammers. About our conversation last week is terrible, and I might delete it since I think that one has been used by people trying to sell me Viagra. About our conversation at CLA is a bit better, until bots start using acronyms and abbreviations, hoping for a bite. Use a specific subject line, such as a short paraphrase of the topic discussed, and then use We discussed this at CLA, in the body of the message so I remember who you are. 
• If you are applying on a job posting with a reference number and job title, use both. Some jobs titles have multiple competitions with different numbers, so use both to help with filtering.
  

What if I sent the email message out with no subject line by mistake and it is due right away: do I resend? Oh, no, multiple copies of items with attachments from the same address doesn't look like spam at all. If they're going to open it, sending it once to the appropriate person (assuming you got that right) will take care of the problem.

Fill out subject lines first, job title and number, and then cut, paste and attach your messages and documents into the email. Don't leave a subject line blank, but if you got everything else right, don't punish yourself for that small mistake, but make it easier on the HR person to sort you out.

Recovery jobless and pay-less?

Translation: if you drop wages, who's going to buy your stuff?

If you're still doubtful about "downward mobility", you can find more information Bill Moyer's Now, Downward Mobility (The Family Budget Calculator that the article cites has moved, and the data hasn't been revised for this year). Think they're a little excitable, according to the Economic Policy Institute, "The most recent data show there are now nearly 6 workers for every single job opening in the country."

Salary negotiations where you think you are going to get paid what you are worth will be a thing of the past. And most workers will be worth-less.

The He-cession

A colleague of mine sent me an article about how women, especially older women, are doing surprisingly well, despite the recession. What's interesting is that, according to the article, women are finding work in battered industries: finance, real estate and insurance. They are also becoming self-employed--not always an indicator of improvement for standard of living, since some entrepreneurs don't make more than what they did as salary workers, and they usually have to pay their own benefits and pension.

But it is good to know that there are glimmers in some areas.

From Canada's He-Cession from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In the U.S., they’ve begun calling the recession there a “he-cession,” because 80% of American workers whose jobs have been wiped out are men.

In Canada, we’re experiencing a he-cession of our own: 71% of Canada’s unemployment victims in the recession thus far are men. Canada’s official unemployment rate for men in June was 9.2%, compared to 6.8% for women.

Career Experts Complaints

I came across this post from one of the people in my LinkedIn network and I felt that it was important enough to post a link to it, just because the scam site looks so credible.

You can also search scams on the Scam Slammer site, a valuable service for any of your clients/patrons or for your own use.

LinkedIn webinar for Career Services

LinkedIn has prepared a webinar for Career Services professionals about using LinkedIn and how to use it to help students, teach about networking and use it for research. I've been a long time member on LinkedIn and I found the tour to be very useful and easy to follow (so you don't have to take LinkedIn 101 first). Lindsey Pollak, the author of Getting from College to Career, was the presenter and she did her homework: she had spoken with career services professionals and had looked at how they had used LinkedIn (sometimes, presenters just do a surface presentation and don't understand how career service business rules work, but she was well-versed).

LinkedIn has also opened a Career Services Professionals group and you have to attend the webinar to gain admittance to the group. Librarians that are offering career services or career information in a job centre, or if you work in the academic library with all of the career and business reference material, should consider attending one of these sessions.

Cross-posted at co-agitating

An excessive need to be me

HBSP has an interesting blog post from Marshall Goldsmith about the excessive need to be yourself. After reading it, I would also argue that there are some people who don't know themselves, but are just behaving a certain way because they thought it was the right way.

But it is true that the excessive need to be you (with little self awareness) can be undermining. You see it when people do interview prep. They balk at the question, Tell me about the last time you had a conflict at work and how you dealt with it, and in response they assume namaste and blink their saint's eyes at you, and say I don't have conflicts with people. Well, you're about to have a conflict with me because I think you're full of baloney. Tell me about how you're going to deal with that. (And for god sakes, read a peace studies or peace education book, since they acknowledge that conflict has a role in creating peace. You're just being evasive, there's a difference.)

There are lots of stereotypes that we buy into because we think they make us better professionals--and they can vary from profession to profession. The manager in the post didn't want to give recognition because it just wasn't part of his personal makeup--or what he believed hard driving managers did, according to his stereotype.

So what are your personal stereotypes, the one's you hold about your identity?

Letterman and Spacey talk Twitter

It's a Boomer confab over Twitter, but Letterman does have a point: how many people think Twitter is a waste of time?

Student fails to find job using Twitter and Ebay

Student fails to find job using Twitter and EBay, but the Chronicle reports on it like it's an early sighting of the Second Coming.

Innovative ideas, including posting to celebrity Twitter feeds--though one may call that spam, not so innovative-- but demonstrates my argument that employers have to be looking where you are posting. Works other way for employers in "talent wars".

Little Gordon

Warning: if you are on a public or work computer get ready for the little blond boy with the potty mouth.

If you have seen Hell's Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares, you will get the joke in these videos from a job board in the UK, Caterer.com. The videos have been a huge boost for the job board.



Little Nancy Pearl, maybe?

Spied on ERE.net.

Dice launches Dice Learning

Dice is a job board for techy oriented positions--usually (but not always) programming--and they have now launched a learning portal called Dice Learning that will connect users with course offerings in technical skills--networking, security, PHP, for example. The courses are prepared by third-party providers, and it doesn't appear that you can register directly from the site; you need to ask for more information. (see the comment below: apparently you can register directly from Dice Learing)

They have webinars, seminars, and e-books. You can also find courses for certification, like CISCO or Microsoft. You can select from instructor-led courses or choose by state to find a course in your area. There was a dearth of free courses (I'm a librarian, I can use dearth in a sentence); even the skills assessment costs $2, but I was able to find a free course which will be offered on August 11 called Enhance your skills, which attendees can use to see what IT employers are looking for.

Dice Learning and Dice are mashing up the job postings on Dice with the courses on Dice Learning, so you can take courses in an area that matches the desired skills set. You can also rate courses that you have taken or make comments. You do have to have a profile with Dice to interact on the site. I think this type of mashup is very innovative and can help people who are trying to upgrade their skills or get into the labor market.

Spied on ERE.net

Identity theft and job searching

Careersthatdontsuck.com has a post today about job seekers that have had their identities stolen. I didn't realize that the numbers were so high:

The Federal Trade Commission’s February 2009 report revealed that 46,950 were the victims of employment-related identity fraud.

The bottom of the post has 5 tips on how to avoid identity theft when responding to job posting that look good but aren't true.

Women stay in school longer, get married sooner

Statistics Canada has released a research paper based on responses from the Youth in Transition Survey (conducted every 2 years) that looks at the differences between the genders as they enter adulthood.

The following passages in italics are from the Daily announcing the release:

However, a higher proportion of men left school and started working on a full-time basis earlier than women. In contrast, a higher proportion of women left the parental home, formed a relationship and had children earlier than men. Throughout the eight years, a higher proportion of men worked full time and still lived with their parents.
-and-

Participation in all types of postsecondary education was higher for women than men. Even though participation rates for both sexes increased over the years, the gap between men and women persisted.

By the time they were aged 26 to 28 in 2008, participation rates were 8 percentage points higher for women than men in university, and 7 points higher in college.

There was also a statement about how men get into the labor market earlier, and another article I read about the research paper stated it was because men choose "marketable" programs (like business and engineering) whereas women choose social sciences and fine arts.

Research Paper:

• Education and Labour Market Transitions in Young Adulthood

Data Sources:

• Youth In Transition Survey

Carnage is not a great word to describe the economy

Expect cuts to public services.

50 useful Firefox extensions for job seekers

JobProfiles has provided a list of 50 useful Firefox extensions for job seekers. Not all of them are specifically for job seeking, like BugMeNot, but some of these tools could be pretty handy for speeding up searching and purposeful surfing.

Spotted on CareerHub Blog

Professional membership numbers down, due to recession

The ALA has reported that memberships in the professional association are down due to the recession. Membership (both new and renewing) is down 2.8% for the ALA as a whole, but the article reports much larger drops for PLA and RUSA.

Now, I am quite pro for professional memberships--if the dues are reasonable. Sometimes they are not--and you find out that the association is operating in the red and has been for several years. I also don't tend to join professional associations that have a discriminating salary scale. I think a due is a due and you should spread it out evenly amongst the membership since we are all, supposedly, getting the same benefits.

The drop shouldn't be a surprise: I think that if individuals are paying for their own memberships (as students obviously are) that they tend to renew them--and be pretty picky about where their money is being spent. If your employer was paying your membership fees and they have cut back their budgets, professional development gets cut, or people share the benefits of their professional membership as best they can, like sharing copies of magazines or forwarding emails from a listserv that is normally closed to members. (I also haven't gotten my American Libraries in a while: what gives?)

Can you claim your professional dues on your income tax? I can, so I tend to remember to renew since I put my tax stuff together at about the same time I renew with the ALA--think about that, professional associations that only let me renew December 1st, or some equally stupid month, where I also have to pay school fees or buy presents. Giving some more flexibility in payment times might encourage membership.

So, I am not surprised that membership numbers are down, but there may be other ways to counteract the small loss, like giving people who were members in good standing for more than 5 or 10 years, a free year, cuz you love and value them, and extending the period that you can be called a new librarian--since, according to the article, students are still signing up.

When will the job market recover?

JobBait has provided an analysis, historical and two forecasts, about when the job recovery will occur.

If you are interested in their data and how they reached the conclusions in their analysis, they will be holding a webinar on July 21, 2009, about the analysis. If you work with patrons who are wondering about the job market, or are interested in labor market analysis yourself, you may want to sign up for the webinar.

Add a media literacy course?

According to this article on Inside Higher Ed, plans are underway to create a body of freely available online course material, aimed at the high school or community college level. The clearinghouse would be hosted by the US government.

Media literacy and research courses, anyone?

Good economy for con artists

We get this question: are those make money at home offers good? Should I give them my banking information? Yikes! when we hear the last one.

There are some job boards for telework, like Virtual Vocations, that offer legitimate work--possibly the same rate for scams as a newspaper classifieds--but there are many, many scams. Six companies in Van Nuys (CA) were just charged for consumer fraud (story in LATimes), and yes, the scams they were running included job scams.

If you are running any training in Internet job searching or get asked questions about work at home jobs or even questions about repairing credit, you may want to stay up to date on Operation Short Change.

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Applicant Explorer

Thanks to Jobacle, I found out about a partnership between Bing, Microsoft's new search tool, and CareerBuilder, an online resume and job posting service, to offer Applicant Explorer.

Applicant Explorer will allow a resume database subscriber, an employer, to look at an applicant's digital footprint while examining their resume. It is meant as a tool to help decide if the applicant will fit into the corporate culture. According to the video that describes the service, Applicant Explorer will call up information from publicly available sites, including social networking, blogs, forums and other services that will give a "clear picture" of a candidate.



Alright, there are some problems with this, though a few can be overcome with a clear policy on how to run background checks. First, you can't run a background check on your favorite applicants--and just those applicants. Your background check may end up showing information that could be protected--like sexual orientation, race or a disability. The last two may be clearly visible in a profile picture, so if a candidate thinks that you have decided not to hire him or her based on the picture that you found. You have to check everybody--just like you would if you were conducting a real background check that had a policy behind it.

And just how do you know whose digital tracks you are following? Are we assuming, 1) that I gave up all my handles with my resume for the privilege of posting on CareerBuilder? (Ummm, go find Bozeman, MT and read what happened there.) And 2) if I don't give up my handles, and you just use my name, are you sure that is the real me you're reading about online?

Sometimes, I really wonder if people think this stuff through. What does sailing tell you about my "fit", if being nauti is not a bona fide job requirement?

Cross-posted on co-agitating.

Try not to think about work on the weekends

Andrew G.R. who writes for Jobacle has a post on US News and World Report about how our weekends are not for work.

Now the tendency when you are fresh in your job is to always identify yourself with your job title--sort of as if it had become your new last name. We like to show that we have realized our educational dream--heck, that we have a job is awesome. We are also proud of our work--usually--and rightly so. Librarians do lots of cool stuff and I won't write the epic of our awesomeness, especially when preaching to the choir. But Andrew is right about one thing:

Take some time off from your job.

Some of us are breaking our student habits where weekends meant work. We did our paid labor on weekends, and we weren't used to time off. We were used to finding a minute to not work at our two (or more) jobs, as students and workers. Very few students have days off and you hear them guiltily confessing, I took the night off. Good news, you aren't a student anymore. Unless you were smart enough to start scheduling your breaks, it takes time to break the habit of always running to the next assignment or to arrive on time for a shift at [paid] work.

A "weekend" is a luxury for many of us--we don't get two days off in a row. New librarians are usually given the weekend shift and know that they have arrived when they get their first Saturday off without begging for it. But we can find a period of time, longer than one day, to forget about our work, not develop ourselves and just watch TV, go to the gym or dancing, and not use our profession as our last name. This can give us some perspective and a mental break.

Heck, I'm blogging about libraries and work: I'm a work junkie. But I take days off from it when I can't find anything to write about, or when I need a rest period.

But being a librarian does creep into my leisure activities. I read a controversial book, which I picked up because of the buzz, not a true attraction to the book, and think, hmmm, someone will challenge this book for exactly this passage. I might even take notes, as opposed to just enjoying the book. It's homework, not pleasure. I think the author might agree that they wrote it to inform and please, not for me to feel it was my duty to read their book. (Unless it was William Bennett.) This means excluding books that include in their prefaces or dedications, the phrase for your edification.

Or I take my work home with me over the weekend to catch up--although I know my weekend is already packed with family stuff, or leisure activities. I bring the stuff along to read or write about while I'm waiting for my friends to show up at Starbucks--or feel guilty that I didn't read it on the train there and back. Carrying it with me doesn't mean I dealt with it, it just means that I packed it along.

How much work are you packing and not dealing with?

You should think about what it means that you can't get your work done during work hours: a) you need more time to get your work done, so you need to talk with your supervisor, b) you need to cut back on all of the extra projects that you have taken on in addition to your work, or c) get off Twitter, Mr. Mayer.

So, take a break. You need one.

Looking for a job, into a job

ERE.net includes a post today about Daniel Seddiqui's project to work 50 jobs in 50 states, 50 job in 50 states in 50 weeks is his tagline on his Living the Map website. (You can see video and read more about the project in the ERE post.)

Now, of course, nothing would stop a librarian from taking a tour of library opportunities, or other jobs, to gather information and maybe spin it into a job. But it also means that at libraries, we will have an influx of career guides and manuals where people either do an immersive journalism piece, like Scratch Beginnings, or Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, or more reflective, personal writing, like Diary of a Job Search, which was on the WSJ site before it was made into a book.

Lone bloggers, some funny, some mundane, may get picked up by major papers or websites, though it is more likely that a media outlet will get a recommendation for a writer with a track record as a regular blogger, and spin their blog into a feature. The trick is to post with only a mild amount of bitter--which might get harder and harder, the longer you look.

The Huffington Post currently has a call for people in the New York area who are on UI but are looking for work. It might not lead to a gig, but might let you get on a national soap box.

More Yahoo! Pipes

I've made some more Yahoo! Pipes which include instructions on how to modify them to meet your needs. Enjoy!

And if you make more, please comment and add the address to your clones or revamps.

Poster child

The First Librarian blog was a project that I started when I was invited to speak at a class about job search skills for librarians. The blog has held on to that focus, and I still write posts about librarians looking for work, but, just like the larger economic picture always affects the individual, the economy and the labor market has crept into this blog.

I also find myself writing sometimes about business and career books, which isn't a surprise because that is the type of library that I work in. I also find it difficult to some times find review sources for career books--and this means that there is a lot of crap on the ground. Or telling the same tired story over and over again to clients: oh, the best career book is What Color is your Parachute? Have you ever read, What Color is Your Parachute? And that is not to say that What Color is Your Parachute? is a bad book, just that it has become a cliche for people who don't know about other resources to always suggest that book. It's like picking a mystery novel for someone and saying, after Agatha Christie don't bother. You might even believe that, but it just reveals an ignorance of individual reading tastes. When it comes to career books, there are individual needs that are greater than a standard sized career book.

And then there is absolutely useless tripe like Don't Use a Resume, Send a Qualifications Brief which we keep in the library for comparison purposes and actually have a sticker on that says, don't follow the advice in this book, come to the desk and see a grown up for guidance. We can't leave it without the sticker because we don't want people who need to pay the rent to remain unemployed--but we also like to use it as a tool to show what not to do.

There are also career books that have an overtly Christian viewpoint, such as Suddenly Unemployed, which even gives guidance about workplace behavior or behavior when your laid off that includes scriptural references. That book really won't cut it for your clients who don't share that view of heaven. But there aren't that many books out there that deal with unemployment--yet, though there are more coming out all the time.

What this post is indicating is not that the blog will vanish, but just that I want to take a wider view of the world of careers and libraries. So I will still post about library career information and work search tools, but I am also going to post about the economy, especially when it affects the labor market, and include some career book reviews.

Don't include a cover letter?

This post from BNET refers to the advice from David Silverman, a business writing teacher, to not include a letter when you are applying for work. Here is the one reason you would not include a cover letter:

• The employer told you not to

Here are the reasons why applicants don't include a cover letter:

• They put together their application at 11:58 when the posting closes at 12 midnight
• They think their name or their mother's brother's uncle will get them an interview
• They can't write

Those all look pretty bad--when they converge, it is a cold call from the applicant abyss.

There aren't many library jobs (ok, there are no library jobs) where you would never have to write. You have to verbalize everything in libraries and articulate directions. The cover letter is how you show them you can do that, so you get into the interview and demonstrate your speaking and persuasive abilities.

Ignore people who tell you not to worry about the cover letter--unless the employer has directly told you to leave it off for some reason.

New rules of job search

NPR's Business Story of the Day on June 17, 2009 was a story about the changing nature of job search. The tone isn't pro-technology so much as learn how to use web technology--especially online networking--better.

Seeks success stories

The ALA Emerging Leaders Group G is looking for success stories from librarians who have used ALA Human Resource services to find work:

If you found the perfect job thorough the ALA Placement Center, located the perfect candidate at a conference or successfully revamped your resume with the resume review service in the Placement Center, the group wants to hear about it. No story is too small, no story too large. (Original call with details on how to submit)

You can submit via email or on YouTube.

People, not corporations

I came across the book Life Inc. while browsing on the 800 CEO Read Blog (which is a great blog for business books if you are a business librarian or thinking about specializing in business reference) and based on the movie, I think that this book might be the break-out book for business for this summer.

The movie is only 9 minutes and it is also available on the book's website for download.

Life Inc. The Movie from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.

Life Inc. may be the next step after The Corporation (you can watch the whole thing on YouTube) which if you haven't seen it, you should take the time to watch it.

Update: a colleague of mine pointed out that Life Inc also makes similar points to the Story of Stuff, her favorite YouTube Video:

Twitter skillz

So, I might not be convinced that you can twitter for work--depending on your industry--but it appears that if you have some Twitter skillz, you can find a job. SimplyHired just announced a twitter job trend graph that shows the increase in postings that add Twitter to the description--as a Twitter programmer for example, or as a social media expert with experience using Twitter.

Career counseling

Georgina Laidlaw, writing on Web Worker Daily, posts about her experience with a career counselor and how it helped her become more focused.

I can actually understand why a marketer may want to become a groundskeeper, if only for a day. (If you have similar I would like to try this job feelings, may I suggest Vocation Vacations.

Job Interview Bootcamp: Answering Interview Questions

Good, basic advice. He tells you in two minutes what to do, and then you spend the next two hours prepping.



By the way, I'm not kidding about the two hours of prep time. That should be your minimum amount put into preparing for interviews in general. Then do a refresher with a partner the night before, maybe thirty minutes, to make sure you worked out all of your kinks.

Tell me about your experience in libraries...Ms. I've-not-worked-in-a-library-yet

Gah! Imagine getting this one when you haven't worked in a library yet. Yes, not everyone in library school has worked in a library--not all of us know the glory of the shelving, the shelf-reading and the weeding.

Anyway, you should prepare for something like this, or others like it, like tell us how your previous experience relates to this position, by reading through the job description and deciding what you have done in the past that matches with the current job. It also helps if the job description in front of you also has percentages of work, like spend 50% teaching, so you know what your answer should focus on.

Obviously, anything that you have done, either paid or volunteer, that matches with the job description should come out in your answer. You can use more than one previous job experience to describe what you can bring to this current position and how you would apply your skills.

You can also, very carefully, use any of the relevant class projects that you have worked on that relates to the job at hand. I say to do this carefully because they are probably interviewing some of your other classmates and it might start to seem like you are interchangeable if you are all describing the same experiences and assignments. Use the stuff on your resume that is relevant but unique to you as a candidate.


Brought to you from David Grant's list of 50 Most Common Interview Questions

Tell me about the most fun you have had on a job

What a freebie! Take this one and run with it. Use a project that you had which you did well on--maybe it's featured on a website so they can look at it if they are interested--which you delivered on time and which you have received praise for.

By happy coincidence, this is usually when you have the most fun at work: doing something that you liked that people are impressed with. It also helps if you can prep one of your references to talk about the same project when they get called.

And it does happen, but don't talk about how you and your co-workers took the afternoon off and had a really great bonding experience that included alcohol or errant frisbees. I would forgive you for the alcohol, no freebie on the frisbees, but you have just talked about how much fun it was to not do work together.


Brought to you from David Grant's list of 50 Most Common Interview Questions

What irritates you about co-workers?

That I have any.

That would be a very wrong answer, so don't obey that instinct. Don't be flippant if they ask what irritates you about patrons, since that one, or some variation may also be coming up in your interview.

Your answer could end up revealing personal flaws. You reveal that you are uptight about some minor character flaw or laziness which makes you seem like a nit picker. You could also try to dodge with, oh, I love everybody, hearts and flowers, want to exchange bracelets? But you're going to get that little tsk, which means, we're on to you. And you did reveal a flaw: you avoid conflict and just swallow your frustrations instead of resolving them.

You could say something like this:

I've been very lucky to have worked with supportive and helpful professionals, but there are always minor irritants. For example, a former co-worker would often change deadlines, moving up the dates for projects, sometimes without apparent reason. These decisions made it difficult to deliver on time and to provide my best work. However, I usually found that if I discussed it with her that I would usually find out a legitimate reason for the hastened delivery and that we could work out some time around another project.

And look at that: you identified a problem, dealt with it like an adult and sounded reasonable.

If you tend to brush off annoyances, or don't keep a grudge book, you could read Maureen Roger's post, Throwing at the Batter, to find a brief list of aggravations that colleagues can throw at us. Don't just pick one and make up some creative speech. More than likely you have encountered these behaviors, even from normally rational people. Explain it, name no names, describe how you dealt with it and ask for the next pitch from the interviewer.

Brought to you from David Grant's list of 50 Most Common Interview Questions

Finding work as a an extra

NPR's Business Story of the Day on June 3, In Hollywood, Too Many Extras, talked about how the movie industry was flooded with new extras who want to supplement their income or break into movie acting by playing an extra.

"9 out of 10 new extras don't make it a year." Could that be because they can't depend on the income, or because they don't make it into an A-list film?

Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream by Adam Shepard

Adam Shepard read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America and had a Gen-Y hissy fit that hard work and gumption could no longer realize the American dream. After college he decided to embark on a year long experience to see if he could make it with just $25 and his own willingness to work. He was determined to find a place to live and have substantial savings, $2500, at the end of his year long experiment. Scratch Beginnings describes his efforts: living in a homeless shelter, his struggles to find work that wasn't exploitative--his experiences with day labor companies are interesting reading--and to find work that he could do.

I have to admit, I didn't want to like Shepard's book. I find the solution, don't give up, work real, real hard and The Man will make you employee of the month, a bit simplistic. I also found out about this book through John Stossel's The Middle Class is Doing Just Fine, Thank You, which included a very mean-spirited interview with Barbara Ehrenreich stuttering and Stossel pontificating. Yes, the middle class is fine--on credit. And look how that panned out.

What I liked about Shepard's style was his self-deprecation, his willingness to describe his conflicts with his co-workers, which seemed to undermine his efforts to just get along and work hard, and the description of his roommate who exploits Shepard's need to keep his car running. What I found a bit grating was his tendency to hero worship, though he seems to become aware that it is occasionally misplaced. Though I disagree with his conclusion, that hard work alone could get a person out of poverty, but a living wage and some dignity won't. He didn't seem to realize that his parents' illnesses would have derailed his dream--perhaps temporarily, since he seems to be admirably resilient--and that similar repeated setbacks can knock the fight out of anyone.

But the message of his book is to be resilient, to show grit and spirit, and he argues, from his lived experience, that squandering the minimum makes people unworthy of an extra helping. He does make a compelling case that if you stay put, are patient, learn from others, put their wisdom into practice, save money and stay in reasonably good health, then you can begin to realize the "American Dream".

If you can hold on to it isn't included in this book.

TweetMyJobs

TweetMyJobs is a Twitter-based job posting and resume uploading service. Employers can post jobs to the appropriate channel--geographic or industry-based--and job seekers can twitterize their resumes, making them accessible to service using employers. You can refer to their why choose us page to decide if they have enough postings in the industry you are trying to find work or workers in.

There is a fee for employers to post, very small, like .99 for a one-day posting, but does this mean the job is no longer searchable in Twitter stream after the day has passed, or that they tweet 3 days in a row?

TweetMyJobs might be something to try if they have postings in your target sector, they have postings in your area, and you are willing to get tweets on your cell phone.

Long term unemployed numbers grow (from NPR)

The Business Story of the Day from NPR was the long term unemployed numbers grow outlines some of the issues about long term unemployment and its consequences:

• more college grads are affected; it isn't blue collar workers alone
• employers are skeptical about hiring people who have had a significant gap in their resumes. I wish this one wasn't true.
• are the long term unemployed, who just stop looking, still counted as "unemployed". According to Surviving a Layoff by Lita Epstein, "Some estimate the jobless rate in this country to be closer to 10 percent if one considers the under-employed and those who have given up looking" (p.x).
  

I urge job seekers to fearlessly account for the gap, either on their resume or during their interview, and for HR managers to have some compassion and really listen to them when they explain. You could be next HR person: get some good karma.

Where are all the green jobs?

If you have patrons coming into the library wondering about "green jobs"--when they are coming and where to find them--BNET has a post recommending three different websites that post green jobs.

Maybe Europe?

Careers That Don't Suck has an interesting post on The European Job Market. I am sure there are several libraries in Europe ;->>

Despite the bleak numbers, it may be an option for some--if you're on a study abroad, or have secured an internship. Put it on the possibilities pile.

Resume writing scam

Jason Alba of JibberJobber has prepared an excellent post about the Ladders resume writing scam, which also grabs some of the critiques of the Ladders resume writing service into one post. At the bottom of his post are links to reputable services that will help people find professional resume writers.

The comments to his post as also really worth a read. You will recognize a few resume book writers, like Susam Britton Whitcomb, commenting on the post.

It is good to be aware of these scams, not only for yourself, but any other patrons who come to the reference desk looking for someone to write their resume.

Will buying an ad on Facebook lead to a job?

ERE interviews an MBA grad who has bought an ad on Facebook to try to get a job with Microsoft.

It's an interesting way to exploit the Facebook platform and their ads services: he can keep his costs down and he is generating interest--but not a job--while demonstrating his marketing capabilities.

Again, beware the fad, but I am sure he is still shopping his resume around.

How to be a good boss in bad times

Bob Sutton, the author of the No Asshole Rule, as well as the co-author (with Jeffrey Pfeffer) of Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense, a book that librarians who love evidence-based practices should eat up with a spoon, has written an article for Harvard Business Review, How to be Good Boss in Bad Times. Because of how HBR works, you will have to pay for his article. To decide if you want to, watch the interview that he participated in on the McKinsey Quarterly.



I was really interested in his explanation of the "toxic tandem" and when he talks about the fall out of layoffs: the first thing that happens is the best people start leaving.

If you are interested in Sutton's work, he does have a blog, Bob Sutton, Work Matters.

Get a Job Toolkit

ALA will launch a Get a Job Toolkit during the annual conference, and they are currently soliciting stories about what to do and what to refrain from doing when you are looking for work.

It is not clear from the press release if this is meant for librarians looking for work, or who select staff, or if the Get A Job Toolkit will be a tool that librarians can offer to their clients.

The Meltdown: The Story So Far

If you haven't seen I.O.U.S.A yet, you can watch a 30 minute speed version. There don't appear to be any more public events scheduled, at least on the website, but if you have a documentary night in your library, you may want to include this movie to your roster.


Once you've tackled that, take a look at this article from the New York Review of Books, where Bill Bradley, Paul Krugman, George Soros, Nouriel Roubini, Niall Ferguson and Robin Wells comment on what happened and what is coming. Since you have watched I.O.U.S.A you will be struck with shudders when you read:

...it seems reasonable to anticipate a much more rapid explosion of federal debt to somewhere in the region of 140 or 150 percent of gross domestic product.

It's enough to make you want to go back to bed sometimes.

But in the world of better news, and because I work amongst many Krugman fans, when he says, things are improving, I am happy to make link to The Man.

More about Paul Krugman.

FBI Librarian

Federal and Armed Forced Library Round Table has a interview with a librarian with the FBI. If you became interested in the FBI after they announced their hiring blitz, you may want to read the interview.

Foreign sounding names have less chance of getting an interview

This is based on a study conducted at the UBC with researchers sending out 6000 mock resumes to 2000 online job postings. Don't just read the article: watch the video of the full interview with the principle researcher who conducted the study to see where he got his more likely/less likely statistics.

From the article and interview:

• A person with a foreign sounding name was 35% less likely to receive a call back (interview)
• "The study also found employers preferred Canadian work experience over Canadian education. For resumés with foreign names and education, call backs nearly doubled when the applicant had held one previous job in Canada." (article)
• However you cut the data, foreign born immigrants are doing distinctively worse in the labor market. (interview)

What I would also like to know is how likely the fake resume was to get a call back at all to an online job posting and where those job postings were located, as in from an employer's website or on an online job posting board, like Monster.

Cross-posted at co-agitating.

Out on the job search

InsideHigher Ed just ran an essay about coming out on the job search, Gay in the Academy, and since some librarians are both GLBTQ and planning on working in academia, I thought linking to the article might be useful.

Taking a job as a queer scholar frequently involves moving to a state or location where the majority of voters have declared that we are not eligible for equal rights or protection under the law. Forget questions about a hostile work environment, some queer scholars have to contend with a hostile living environment.

It's not comforting to me to know that stereotypes--as well as outright hatred--are out and about in society. I don't kid myself that bigotry doesn't exist, but bigotry appears to have no shame--though GayProf's comment about malice vs incompetence may be describing some of the difficulties that GLBTQ persons are discovering when looking for work.

Though I have usually made it clear to the search chair before I arrive that I am gay, and my c.v. suggests strongly that I am gay, I have nonetheless been asked if I was [heterosexually] married on every single on-campus interview that I have ever had. Every. Single. One.

They're kidding, right? Probably not. Obviously you can't be competent and productive enough on your own without someone else to tidy your closet and make your meals.

There are some additional resources--pretty slim in my opinion--that can also help GLBTQ who are on the job market.

The Lavender Road to Success is the only on that I have been able to get my hands on. I have also come across Out in the Workplace: The Pleasures and Perils of Coming Out on the Job, but I have not been able to get a copy. There are many academic studies, but trying to find books written for laymen on the topic, especially for human resource officers who are trying to create an equitable work place, pickings are slim.

If you are looking beyond academia, you could refer to Human Rights Campaign's annual Best Places to Work, DiversityInc, Pride at Work, and Out&Equal Workplace Advocates.

If you're worried about where to settle (Tennessee, anyone?), Who's Your City also has a brief list of possible best cities for gays and lesbians, though as GayProf pointed out, finding a job in academia could mean moving outside of a major city.

There is also the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table of the American Library Association but the RT's blog appears to be more active than the pages within ALA main.

Free resume writing course

Louise Fletcher, an editor and blogger with Career Hub, is offering a free online resume writing course. You do have to sign up to have access to the course materials, but if you are struggling with your resume or just want some advice at 4AM, this online course may be an option.

JibJab says Happy Graduation

Pfizer offers to support some existing prescriptions

Though the news story focuses on Viagra, people who have lost their jobs and have already received a prescription for a Pfizer drug and have been on it for at least 3 months, could receive a sort of supplement from Pfizer allowing them access to the drug for up to a year.

Since the article mentioned Viagra specifically, I was about to get all upset that it didn't cover contraceptives, but if you read farther down, some contraceptives and smoking cessation products are covered under this deal.

There's more about it on the Pfizer website. Offer good in the US only.

ACRL and CUPA HR update academic library descriptions

ACRL and CUPA-HR have updated the librarian job descriptions within an academic library. What is this good for? Well, it helps with the designation of job duties, the assessment of salaries (so it can help you with negotiation) and can give you an idea of a career path/course within academia. At your home institution, your home team HR will probably use it in job needs assessment and to consult if your position is reclassified, or if you are in a new position and they aren't sure how to describe your work.

There is some attached salary information, but without looking at the results, I can't tell you how many libraries responded with salary data (and it isn't all the ACRL members) and you would also have to adjust that data for college size and geographic location, so supplement it with some research into the collective agreement of the institution and the salary survey of the local professional library association.

Museum Careers: A Practical Guide for Students and Novices

Museum Careers: A Practical Guide for Students and Novices by N. Elizabeth Schlatter takes a look at the wide variety of careers available in the museum sector. (As an aside, when you call something a sector, it is a subdivision within an industry. Sectors are kinda like small cities in that they need a wide range of careers--in the case of museums, marketers, educators, consultants, curators, and, yes, librarians, to power them). Museum Careers provides an history and overview of the museum sector, describing the types of museums and then the types of occupations found within museums.

There are careers in museums for librarians, though librarian as a specific career only gets about two pages in this book. But there are several other careers to explore--especially for someone with a PHd who wants to escape from academia but still live a mindly life--and this book does provide summaries of many of the most visible, along with signposts to where these jobs are usually advertised.

The good news: "There's no one direct route to a museum job" (p. 10), though the bad news is, so many people want to work in museums that the competition is stiff and this can keep wages low.

The book doesn't have much (anything) on sample resumes or possible interview questions, but it is so strong on providing a background on the museum sector that I am going to recommend this one to anyone looking for a job within a museum--or possibly an archive--as requisite background reading to prep for an interview or to do some career exploration.