What do you value most in a team mate?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is one professional goal you want to accomplish this year?

This question wants to know if you have a plan--and if that plan matches with their job. Suggesting that you want to do research in teaching methods and effective instruction when the position you are interviewing for is collection development and licence negotiation means that you haven't read the job posting. Or that there will be a constant push-pull between the duties of the position and your real desire.

I'm not going to say something like, why are you interviewing for a job that is not part of your professional plans? It's a good question, but if you're an entry-level candidate, you may not know what you would like to do as a librarian--and, well, you need to eat. So, obviously, look at the job posting and see where it is going professionally and hopefully you want to walk a little way with it.

If you were applying to this position currently available at the University of Manitoba libraries, what could be one professional goal that you could latch on to? Well, taking an additional course in cataloging may not be a bad idea. You can also discuss, generally, a conference that you would like to attend that has relevant information. If your capping exercise is related to the position, discuss how you would like to turn it into an e-book and make it available to other librarians, or how you would like to develop it into a course. But look for something that is professionally related to the position that looks like it would be worth their time and investment.

Work from home, make $$$

Everyone has seen those emails--and the classified ads in local newspapers, if you are old enough to remember reading a newspaper--which included advertisements to work from home. Some of it was telemarketing, some of it was shilling pills or other products and some of it was send away for our information package--And the only people who made money on the last were the people selling the information package. Now, you can find work from home or telecommuting positions listed on job boards, as well as "freelance" work specific job boards, such as eLance.

I'm pretty skeptical, but the WSJ decided to see if any of these sites were legit and if people actually made money. On the whole, their article is appropriately critical and gives you the lowdown on the sites, with one exception: these legit sites may ask you to pay a subscription fee to bid on or apply for the jobs. Therefore, you must score a job that at least has the potential to pay your subscription fee--and you must actively bid on work, a time-consuming process. 

Here are some good reasons to use these sites:

1. You have an in-demand skill. Programming, editing and writing, especially if you are a subject specialist, appear to be in demand. But you will have to work hard and stay on top of contracts.
2. You live in a depressed labor market (or just depressed for librarians) but you can't leave. Your squeeze may have a great job, a family member may be seriously ill and depends on you, but there are few prospects for in this area. Instead of keeping house or house keeping in another city, consider the freelance route--if you can meet the first criteria.
   
3. You have freelanced before and can make it work. If you have not freelanced before, you may not be prepared for just how uncertain the pay check is and how freelancing moves in cycles, from hyper to hand-to-mouth. If you are considering freelancing but have not done it before, don't do it unless you have another income to pay the bills. 
4. You have explored F2F freelance work and you want to expand. If you are already an established freelancer but have not sought contracts online, you may want to expand into new markets. 
   

I'm pretty sure that you are smart enough to not believe the promises of instant wealth, but online freelancing could be a way to supplement your income while looking for a library job, or if you are currently under-employed in the field.

If I remember one thing about you, what should it be?

Before you answer this question, take a good hard look at the job posting for the position that you are interviewing for. Now, here are your two choices for preparing your answer:

• Desired skill that they want that you have. Take a moment to reiterate that you possess this skills, whether it is teaching, program development or reference experience, stress how you can fulfill this need.
• Desired soft skill that they want. Do they want team players? Collegial? Committed to learning? Do you have any of those traits? How can you show them and why do you think you could demonstrate them here. Do not underestimate the power of a soft skill: if this is an entry-level position, all of the candidates should possess the requisite hard skills for the position. Therefore, the question is one of "fit": whose personality do we like best?

This is not a plea for a job time. This is stressing how you fit, either personality-wise or skills-wise.

And though some interview books may suggest that you talk about how this job fits with your career path, I would advise against that response. You want them to remember you not for what you will get out of the job, but for what they will get out of you.

Your attitude sucks

Inspired by 21 Keys to Magnetic Likability by Marc and Angel Hack Life

Now, we can't always be Pollyanna, but there are some people who definitely act like someone urinated in their cornflakes every morning. And they're just no fun to work with. They are also a difficult hire because they look combative or stubborn.

You know who you are: you answered a question about using the catalog and answered by redesigning it with tags and a mashup, or you told your interviewers that since story time numbers are down, they should do reader's advisory for manga, or you helpfully explained why undergrads are incapable of understanding RefWorks--and here's how you would fix undergrads. Your beliefs--and maybe you're right about tags, manga and undergrads--are not the tools you need to answer the question. A concrete example, with some proof please, is what they are looking for (#13 and #14).

When people are smart, they can be likable, but they often struggle with #13 and #18 because they are so damn smart--and so sure they are right. Try to adopt a more moderate style, not giving in, but making the delivery better with kindness and evidence.

Hiring is hard work (from Business Week)

Jack and Suzy Welch have a column in the back of Business Week magazine and last week they discussed some of the difficulties of hiring. They are reminding employers--and yes, job seekers--that there is more to the candidate than good paper and charm. Here are some of the other qualities they look for:

• Good references. Note to self: Did you check with your references and make sure that they are available to take calls?
• They have good paper but do they give good face? Note to self: your resume may look good, but if you didn't do some interview prep and got feedback on your attitude--too aggressive or too humble--you may not be portraying yourself in the best light.
• There are some jobs where they are desperate to hire. Note to self: what can you do that others really, really want? In libraries, licensing, dealing with e-books, developing distance programs and services. Are those skills coming through in paper and in presentation?

Of course, these check points are huge and they involve looking at your resume as well as evaluating how you answer questions. If you aren't sure how to do it, you should get some help.

Men, sizing matters

Again, a do's and don'ts of workplace fashion focused strongly on (young) women. Complete with slide show including cleavage. Ok, I agree that people could dress a little more professionally. (Not that I will, but you know about advice: love to give it, don't follow it.) But I hate how most of this advice is focused on women. Men, too, take liberties with the dress code: it just happens that their faux pas usually have to do with improper sizing while they are still within the dress code confines. How about these:

• The fuzzy-bear belly. Yes, men with muffin tops and popped buttons showing up for work. Or growing increasingly deshabille as the day goes on. These are the guys who aren't allowed to be skins on the court.
• Chafe-y underwear so they're always rearranging their clappers. Or that scissors move when they slouch down in the chair and think no one is watching. YUCK. Just buy some knickers that fit already.
• Tight clothing.You need a size thirty-six waist. You are not the same size you were in college, get over it.
• Overhanging gut that ate the belt. Steve McQueen is looking for you and he has a fire extinguisher.
• No waist man. Pants hiked up to the armpits and scary camel toe. If your nipples are that cold, put on a sweater.
• I don't want to see your ankles. Ever. Your legs have stopped growing, just measure and commit. (That Nicolas Sarkozy thing was an April Fool's Day joke.)
• Plumber's crack. Need I say more?

Clearly, if you actually listened to the adage, measure twice, cut once, we'd have some better dressed men and perfectly fitted baseboards. Beyond sizing, but purely fashion stricken

• Track pants. Jay Z wants you to get out of his closet.
• Ungroomed facial hair. Yes, you, the one that ate that soup for lunch. Or was it yesterday's lunch?
• Men wear flip-flops, too. A far greater crime: brown sandals with black socks. Or mismatched tube socks. So shut up about it.

Feel the love? Now you know why women hate fashion do's and don'ts.

Should you dress "younger"?

I like the guy who gives a nod to confidence. I would also go with common sense, but you can fake it til you make it. Notice that they are pretty hard on older women and their appearance: sometimes it is hard to dress "appropriately" when stores don't sell anything appropriate.

Do we need weekends?

Do we need weekends? I think that we do, though they can be mid-week, and you can separate them sometimes but I would prefer to have two together. Most librarians, especially new ones, don't get traditional weekends, but many libraries do try to give a break, and if they can't they are short-staffed. I think many beginning librarians could agree that they have too few hours packed with too much work--and a weekend becomes more important.

This essay also seems to forget that many people need one day that they don't have to pay for child care: Saturday and Sunday when the kids are off, terrorizing the parks. Or, really, home on the Wii, but someone has to watch them. School schedules have a huge impact on the lives of parents--especially single ones--and those schedules certainly structure our work lives. You don't have to have children to have additional family responsibilities: a family member, of any age, could need your care and assistance, forcing changes at work.

People who have just graduated from college are probably scoffing, weekends, that's when I worked my job. And yes, that's true for many college students, but what you did do was something else. Occasionally boring and sometimes fulfilling but you did something other than study. And be honest: some of those days were spent beer drinking or napping during the afternoon.

And notice in the article, it isn't about weekends, it's about work hours and constant access to wage slaves. The article talks about how Gen-Y is so frustrated that they can't be in constant contact all the time and just meet when they need to--which means after hours, and on Saturdays, or Sundays after hours. So instead of eight hours a day, we become Blackberry Minions, answering all types of queries until the wee hours.

But two days a week, if we can afford it, we should be allowed to work on separate projects and be with our families and friends. Sleep in, eat pancakes. Church, or another religious service, if we are so inclined. That's what the weekend is for.

DIY Yahoo! Pipes

You can make your own personal search engine using Yahoo! Pipes. Yahoo! Pipes uses drag and drop modules into a sandbox that you can use to remix your RSS feeds, searches from Yahoo! Local and the Google Base. You can also add a filter to sort by job title (didn't work so well in the one that I created for library jobs) and sort by publication date (field needs to be filled in the original RSS to really work).


I also used some RSS fields from some vertical search engines (Eluta, WowJobs and Indeed Canada) to give it some power. You can tinker even more with their feeds by adding the province or state that you would like to work in and get a better geographical fix when you run your searches.

Now, you don't have to cobble together your own pipe: you can use the pre-existing pipes (there are about 10 for library jobs). You can also easily clone one that you like and make some changes, provided that you have a Yahoo! account.

I did notice something weird looking for library jobs as my keyword: I got lots of pipes for lesbian (oh, yes, the first thing I think of when I hear librarian, so easy to confuse the two). Trying to remove the erotic search engines just didn't seem to work (maybe they use librarian or library as a tag?). I found lots of erotic pipes (ha ha!) on the Yahoo! Pipes service, so you may not be able to get results from the pipes service if you are running a family friendly search or are behind a finicky filter.

What was the most difficult course you've taken?

This is a good question for a person who is fresh out of school, usually asked if the employer expects the candidate to apply their classroom knowledge to the real world.

You have to pay attention to the question though: this class was difficult, meaning that it was a hardship in some way. You can answer it by saying the subject matter didn't interest you--but if you mention your cataloging course and you're interviewing to become a cataloger, you're could be in trouble. Some people are a bit too forthcoming and describe their clashes with their prof (too difficult/obscure/hidebound/whatever), which could be a legitimate reason, but makes you seem like a maverick--great on film, but we don't want to work with you. So here's a strategy: tell the truth.

We don't always like all of the stuff that we have to do, but we persevere or we find a part of the task that we like and we do it well. You persevere because you have to pass the class to become a librarian. To pass, you need to find some aspect of the dreaded class that you can understand so you can either crack the code of the rest of the subject matter, or to finish enough components of the class well enough to pass.

For example, the research methods class that we had to take included statistics which are not my favorite subject--there are stronger words I normally use for statistics but I won't use them here. But students could focus on qualitative methods and that is what I used to pass the class--and do pretty well. It also helped that I had a kick ass prof who wanted everyone to do well in the class. I'm still not happy with statistics, but because I took the class and did extra reading, I was able to pass (better than pass) and I can still deal with them now. I have to: they're part of my job.

So pick the class that you found difficult--and hope it isn't 90% of the duties of the job that you are interviewing for--and describe what you found difficult, why and how you dealt with it. Stay focused on your difficulties--not problems real or imagined caused by others (difficult professor, dog ate my homework)--and how you manage yourself and your resources to overcome obstacles.

Follow-ups to this question could include what do you like least or best about your current job? or what do you do to overcome obstacles?

Common Craft explains LinkedIn

What is LinkedIn? from LinkedIn Marketing on Vimeo.

Spotted on iLibrarian.

I think this can give you an idea and even explain networking. But the true benefit to LinkedIn, for job seekers, is that there are many human resource professionals on the site. Many of them are LIONs--many of them are not, and hate the idea. They pay a lot of attention to the Answers section, so you should be in there answering and asking questions, when relevant to your expertise. I have gotten recommendations from strangers, but LinkedIn connections, that I have been able to use in my work. You can use it in your job search, but you need a bigger network than other librarians and your college pals, so you have to make connections to people, usually by answering and asking questions.

That is the power of LinkedIn: you can expand your current network, which is limited by geography, and connect with people, linked to you by others or who ask to be introduced to you. But sitting passively on LinkedIn is not going to get you anywhere.