Category Archives: Job Searching

Oct 20

Placements & Salaries Survey 2012

The Library Journal 2012 Placements & Salaries Survey was released on the 15th, marking another year of job-hunting hardship, offset somewhat by the claim that starting salaries are increasing. A glance at the data shows:

2162 responding graduates from 41 schools, half of whom have found permanent professional employment (no word as to whether permanent connotes full time status). Of the rest, 22% are working temporary or nonprofessional positions in libraries, and 28% are unemployed or working outside the field.

My alma mater, Kent State University, seems to be pumping out graduates far faster than they can be placed, with 251 graduates and only 81 employed (a 32% placement rate, yikes!). Other schools are in the same boat, but Illinois, Iowa and Michigan are all doing enviably well with placement rates above 80%.

While it would be great to see higher placement rates, as someone who job searched for two years post-graduation the numbers do not look entirely discouraging. Almost 73% of the 2011 graduating class reports at least working in the library field, if not as a professional. That seems to be an improvement, and maybe also a sign that job seekers are being more creative and flexible.

When it comes to salaries, however, I begin to question the veracity of the study. All of the salary data is purported to represent full time positions, and yet three of the 12 lowest salaries reported are below federal minimum wage. The $44,500 national average starting salary seems quite inflated too, at least when referencing personal experience.

Regardless, I’m sure the majority of us are quite happy to land a part time or full time position paying whatever is sufficient to cover the bills, as long as the job requirements include MLIS.

Aug 5

I’m a librarian!

I bring fantastic news! I, the “sweet librarian”, am officially a REAL LIBRARIAN! I go in to fill out paperwork and make it official tomorrow afternoon, start on Monday, and I know I’ll have a lot more material for blog posts in the near future, what with the ability to draw from real-world experiences. I do have a few thoughts today for job seekers, now that my search has paid off.

One, automate your search. I wrote about this in my very first blog post and it was very helpful to me – I created queries on Indeed, Simply Hired, LibGig Jobs, OLC Jobline, and ALA JobLIST, then found the RSS feeds for them and put them in Google Reader (you can also have them sent to your email). That way, I never missed a posting.

Two, and more importantly, check the employment pages on library websites – this is where you find the unadvertised jobs with (most likely) smaller applicant pools. I made a hyperlinked list of 43 academic and public libraries in the Akron area, I checked them all about once a week, and that’s how I found the posting for the job I’m about to start.

Three, don’t ever give up. It took me two years and 40 applications, I was called to five interviews, but in all that paperwork and perspiration I found the right job posting and was called to the interview that ultimately lead to a job offer. Don’t get discouraged and don’t stop looking – there are plenty of job seekers and not many jobs, which makes it doubly hard for a new graduate to get their foot in the door, competing with experienced librarians, but each application and interview is a learning experience that will prepare you for the one that will lead you ino a career.

Jul 10

Re.vu Review

In light of my recent focus on job searching topics, today I would like to discuss the new resume site Re.vu.

The Basics

Re.vu (short for Resume View) is “the cure for the common resume” – an infographic-inspired representation of your work history, skills and accomplishments designed to sell you to potential employers more effectively than a traditional resume. The site is free and partners with LinkedIn, so if you already have a profile there it’s easy to transfer your information and get started.

The site is somewhat locked down for nonmembers, so here’s what you’re getting when you sign up:

  • Personalized URL and design
  • Infographics – vital stats, job duties, skill evolution, proficiencies, quotes, percentages, pastime, interests over time, languages
  • Timeline of your work history
  • Headline, biography, education, and personal links section
  • Portfolio, work examples and traditional resume downloadables
  • Profile statistics to see who’s looking/downloading

The Pros

  1. Professional, edgy, current designs create a nice website to send prospective employers, especially if you don’t have time/skill/inclination to make your own site.
  2. Infographics make it easy to quantify your achievements – something employers always like to see.
  3. Examples are provided at each step to help you fill out your profile.
  4. It’s free – can’t argue with that!
  5. You’ll be in good company – the President has a page.

The Cons

  1. The LinkedIn data transfer option is nice, but there’s still a lot of legwork involved, and the site is graphic-heavy, making it cumbersome and slow to load. (Note: I’ve only see this problem on the back end – your personalized page should load fine!)
  2. The timeline can work against you – it’s very easy to see gaps in relevant employment when it’s charted on a graph.
  3. There is limited control over the design/layout – access to the HTML would be great, but I won’t be too picky since it’s a free site.
  4. A lot of the infographics are subjective – you pick your own proficiency rating, for example, which may make your skill level look impressive but is ultimately fabricated data.
  5. Re.vu makes the argument that each page is a unique representation of the individual, but there aren’t enough page options to make a unique site – you can change your background and you can organize your data, but you’ll still have the same infographics as everyone else (much like a traditional resume).

The Bottom Line

Re.vu has only been out for a short time and I’m sure some of my complaints (lag and usability) are temporary issues, so overall it seems like a worthwhile endeavor. If you’ve got an hour to spend inputting information and tweaking your page then you may as well take advantage of the free service, but keep in mind that the success and effectiveness Re.vu boasts over traditional resumes is entirely dependent on the work you do to promote yourself. Set up a Re.vu page and send the link to 50 people or spend time writing an eye-catching inquiry letter and send your resume to 50 people, the result will likely be the same.

Jul 5

On Cover Letters

I’ve written quite a lot of them in the past two years, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s possible to write one sincerely and meaningfully. Librarian job postings have been my first foray into professional job applications requiring cover letters, and despite all the mandatory resume classes of high school and college I’d never before written one.

I found resources online – ‘how to’, formatting and hired librarian cover letter examples – figured out the purpose and the formula, and hodgepodged my first cover letter together from sample text and my own experiences. It was a hot mess, but it was a start.

With quite a few of them under my belt now, the construction is almost old hat and the new challenge is sincerity. The medium itself necessitates formality and ego (“Dear Sir or Madame, I am writing in response to your job opening and I am excited by the possibility of working in a position where I can utilize my skills…” begins every cover letter ever) and I’m suspicious that all job seekers are following the same templates. It’s hard to imagine a hiring manager excited to read a stack of cover letters gleaned from the likes of jobsearch.about.com, but there are only so many ways to say ‘I have the experience and education you’re looking for and I’d be really excited to do the work you require’.

This leads me to wonder about getting creative. In the library world it’s a bit of a gamble – the person reading your application could be innovative and open-minded or a traditionalist who’d take a less formal cover letter as a sign of disinterest. Ultimately it comes down to the vibe of the job posting and the company atmosphere, but here are some good examples of people having fun (while still being effective):

Jun 30

Peace Corps Libraries

There’s only so much retail work a girl can take before she’s up to her eyeballs in consumerism. That’s what I was thinking earlier this week as I listened to the umpteenth customer confuse ‘need’ for ‘want’ in regard to our sugary, empty-calorie, nutrient-free products. I began wondering how I could apply a library education to real need, going beyond under-served and urban areas to places librarians don’t normally go. The Peace Corps immediately came to mind, so I did some research and found several library projects and a need for more ‘missionary librarians’.

Library Development in Liberia - Ruthia Yi’s account of working as a Peace Corps librarian in Liberia, helping citizens whose educations were interrupted during civil conflict
Peace Corps in Libraries: Kherson Oblast Library for Children in Kherson, Ukraine  - Deborah Garofalo’s project to set up a sister library relationship between Kherson, Ukraine and Lackawanna, PA
African Library Project – Libraries in Action – An organization that partners with education providers to develop libraries in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Cameroon

I don’t know much about the Peace Corps volunteer process, but these opportunities to help people in a meaningful way are exciting and intriguing. There’s an Info Session webinar coming up on July 11th at 10pm EST, I think I’ll attend!

Jun 25

The Infamous Forbes Article

There’s been a lot of negativity about the library job market after Forbes’ article, ‘The Best and Worst Master’s Degrees for Jobs’ pegged the MLIS as #1 worst, and I figured I’d add my perspective to the discussion.

The Article
Forbes analyzed 35 Master’s degrees using job growth projections and average mid-career earnings using the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Payscale.com. The results were averaged and the MLIS came out lowest, with an 8.5% growth prediction and $57,600 salary.

The Reactions
Those somewhat questionable calculations resulted in a maelstrom of feedback from MLIS holders across the country. The Reddit community weighed in first, placing blame with library schools and ALA for exaggerating the demand for librarians and leaving a generation of newly graduated librarians feeling hopeless. There were multiple comments concerning the very real difficulty of finding a job after school – some had gone up to three years without a job or with one or more part-time no-benefits positions. One person stated, “the moment you aren’t employed they assume you don’t want to be” – which rings particularly true to me. And then there was the link to this comic, which says a lot about the prevailing attitude:

There were some refreshingly optimistic comments as well, suggesting we play to the strengths of our profession and focus on information technology and knowledge management rather than the traditional roles of a librarian in our job search. To go along with this good advice, there was the question of what undisclosed search terms Forbes used to find the mid-career salary information. A librarian with specialized technical skills, or one using their MLIS outside a library, would undoubtedly make more than a reference librarian in a public library.

The blogging librarians are beginning to respond as well, the most provocative of which is Andy Woodworth’s Are We in the Midst of a Lost Generation of Librarians? In his post he discusses the effect of new graduates spending prolonged periods seeking employment, the impact of this wasted time on professional organization involvement, and the existence of a ‘moving target’ of skills for new librarians. It’s essentially the perfect storm of obstacles to starting a successful career, and he argues that the result will be a generation of ‘lost librarians’ who earned their MLIS in the vortex of the problem, are unable to find jobs, and will be unable to compete with ‘fresher’ graduates when things eventually improve (fingers crossed). Pretty scary.

The Bottom Line
I’ve been out of school for nearly two years and have come to realize how sneakily “life happens”. None of my coworkers planned to have a career in retail, and they all have similar stories – they took the job because it was full time, had benefits, and paid the bills… and then more bills came up, marriage, kids, et cetera, life happened, and ten years later retail has become their career. Over the past two years I’ve been applying and applying and occasionally interviewing, and in the mean time life has happened – I can’t afford not to have benefits, can’t afford to work as a part time librarian or take a leap of faith that a second part time position will come along, and as a result I find myself in Woodworth’s “lost generation”, hoping I have something better to offer than the newer graduates.

But I refuse to make retail my career, I refuse to give up, and I refuse to let my Master’s degree gather any more dust. It deserves to be framed in an office, as do the degrees of all the rest of the struggling under- or unemployed librarians. There are still things we can do, like looking outside of traditional jobs and beefing up our technological competencies – a librarian on the cutting edge can still succeed, even in an uncertain world. There will always be a need for information professionals, organizers of the chaos of human knowledge, and now is a great time for innovation and creativity in our field.

Apr 30

Systems Librarian Job Interview Questions

This, to borrow Jenny Lawson‘s phrase, ‘isn’t a real post’ because I’ve been busy preparing for a very important interview, but I wanted to share a few thought-provoking interview questions I came across this week. What do you think, how would you answer them?

  1. Whats the next big thing in library technology?
  2. If you had a magic wand that could resolve one library/technical issue, what would you fix?
  3. What motivates you to come to work?
  4. What kind of library best attracts patrons to use it?
  5. What makes an ideal librarian?
Apr 5

The Over-Qualified Retail Employee

When I graduated from library school, the first thing I did was take a retail cake decorating job in order to pay my student loans and afford to live on my own again while I hunted for library jobs. That search has now been in progress for 18 months, and I’ve noticed a surprisingly high number of people in my situation – college graduates working unskilled positions in retail.

I’m the only MLIS holder I know of at my company, but my peers include those with degrees in computer technology, photography, education, philosophy, business and nursing. They’ve either taken jobs in retail while waiting out a bad job market and trying to find work in their field, or sought higher education after putting in time at the company and realizing that working every weekend and holiday until retirement isn’t their idea of a white picket fence. For one reason or another, though, a lot of us are getting stuck.

Some find jobs in their fields only to suffer a kind of separation anxiety, afraid to leave the retail nest where they’ve racked up time, vacation hours, and most importantly seniority, and they end up working both jobs. It’s a legitimate concern – in the time I’ve spent with my current company, I’ve earned seniority over at least five new-hire decorators. When I find my coveted library job, as happy as I will be to have it, I’ll be instantly shifted to the bottom rung, the most vulnerable place to be in a shaky economy.

Others realize in the midst of their job hunt that their degree hasn’t adequately prepared them for practical experience, and that hiring attitudes have changed from ten or twenty years ago when having a degree sometimes mattered more than the subject studied. You may have a degree in English (a-hem!) but without internships, practicums and connections you’re no more able to earn a living as a writer than if you hadn’t gone to college. One great thing about cake decorating is that anyone with a high school diploma and a willingness to learn can be trained on the job in an apprenticeship program and in just six months work their way up from the minimum wage to skilled laborer status.

Yet another hurdle in escaping retail is complacency – an issue I know very well. For the first few months, I spent my days cake decorating and my evenings job hunting. I was very serious about finding a librarian job and applying what I’d learned in graduate school; plus, decorating hurt my hand and my boss was a nightmare. Then I started to get the swing of things, my techniques improved, I learned cool icing tricks, I built rapport with my coworkers, and I liked how fast the days went when I wasn’t behind a desk. I got complacent and my job hunt slackened. Now that I’m back on my game, the going is tougher and I have to try harder to make up for it.

So what’s the result of an increasing college-educated population in retail? In a nutshell, displacement. There’s someone in the job market right now with a high school diploma and a desire to be a cake decorator, and I’m taking their place. I’ve got an MLIS and I’d love a librarian position, but there’s a more experienced librarian taking my place and waiting for a management position to open up. Perhaps the managing librarian is waiting to retire but is afraid because of the uncertainty of the economy. It all trickles down, creating a situation where overqualified people take the jobs others need, where the average number of college-educated retail employees multiplies, and we end up getting stuck. But hey, at least I can decorate a mean cake now!

Mar 10

The Automated Job Search

Sometimes the simple thing of knowing where to look for a job can be daunting. I’ve been searching since I graduated library school last August, and I think I finally have a pretty good system in place to catch as many job vacancy notifications as possible as they pop up.

When I first began looking, I tried all the usual places – Monster, Career Builder, the ALA JobLIST – and I found a few jobs here and there. I applied, so did everyone else in the tristate area, and if I wasn’t vigilant, disciplined, and constantly searching, a lot of job opportunities slipped through the cracks. Now I have the entire process practically automated to work for me and I don’t feel nearly so lost. Here’s what I did:

  • Locate all the relevant job search engines available, including Monster, Career Builder, Indeed, and USAJobs, as well as library-specific ones like ALA JobLIST, LISjobs, and LibGig
  • Perform job searches in all of these with specific criteria such as ‘full time’ and ‘entry level’.

  • Find the RSS feed button (most job search engines have them these days) and subscribe!

  • See, I have 24 jobs waiting for me in Google Reader without any labor except the initial setup:

  • To make sure you’re not missing out on local jobs that don’t advertise, make a list of local libraries (I searched for public libraries, hospitals and universities in my area for my three areas of interest and came up with a total of 52 libraries within 50 miles of my house). Find the employment page on each library’s website, and save it as a hyperlink in a document.


  • Now all the initial legwork is out of the way there as well and you can just go back and check each employment page once a week or so.

And that’s how I took the dread out of job searching and automated the process. It is a lot of work to set up – I probably spent a good six hours over several days putting my system into place, but so far it has been well worth it, and I’m finding a lot more relevant job postings on a consistent basis.