Many years ago, I wrote a tips on job applications post, because I had been seeing a lot of poorly formatted and written applications. While good formatting and tailoring to job postings are important, the content is obviously important as well. Again, there is so much literature out there, but what I’ve seen recently has spurred me to write this post to discuss what I find most important and the tips I give others. Continue reading “Yet another resume (cv) writing guide”
Tag: job search
Getting better at resume writing: Results oriented job descriptions
Note: This a copy of the Notes Between Us post.
I used to think I was good at resume writing. I recently realized I was okay, but not great at it. Considering my success rate, I’d like to say it was “good enough”, but who am I to shy away from thinking about how to get better, especially when I often get asked to review people’s applications and provide feedback.
I originally posted on LinkedIn and on Mastodon about this topic, but wanted to expand on it. Continue reading “Getting better at resume writing: Results oriented job descriptions”
Applying for Jobs is a Job in Itself, seriously.
I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but I am still amazed at the number of students, especially in library school that do not understand that applying for jobs is hard work and might as well be a part time job. So much of this will sound redundant or obvious to those who know what they’re doing, but I have been asked by a few people before what I’m doing to get jobs, so here are all my “secrets” spilled. Continue reading “Applying for Jobs is a Job in Itself, seriously.”
Code4lib Day 3: Lightning Talks
David Uspal – Project Grab Bag
Interactive Map
- Javascript baed (for accessibility)
- Data stored in JSON file
- SVG graphic
- Uses the Raphael.js library – just use HTML5 instead
- Search by: ocation, person, call number
- To do:
- decouple from CMS (Concrete 5)
- SVG path generation as a web application
- add more configurable options (colors, etc.)
Tap Tour
- started at the Indianapolis Museum of Art
- easy to create a mobile tour application
- currently iPhone/iPod, plans to expand
- Drupal CMS back-end (new version released 1/25/2012)
Robert Haschart – Adding Publicly-Accessible Hathi Trust Items to Your Solr-based Discovery System
- Assumptions:
- Solr-based index
- SolrMarc used for indexing
- only want publicly-accessible items
- MARC record based with one Solr record per title
- list of Hathi-items and download
- tweak SolrMarc index specification
- add all Hathi records to your index, and adjust interface code to display records correctly
- download daily updates, merge updates
- Code not yet available
Jeremy Nelson – Aristotle a Django based Discovery Layer
- See it in Action
- originally forked from Kochief
- refactored to use Sunburnt for Solr interactions
- developed custom authentication middleware with Millenium
- did web redesign
- Code on Github
Dennis Schafroth – Turbo MARC in YAZ Library
- Problem: XSL transformation on MARC XML is slow
- Rule: combined the element with tag/code value when value is allowed
- Pazpar2 became twice as fast
- a lot faster, but not official standard
Yuka Egusa, Masao Takaku – Recovery of Minamisanriku Town Library from Tsunami Disaster
- implemented technical support for a library system – thanks to OSS and cloud service
- Amazon’s wish list for books needed from supporters
- library can announce library service and daily activities on Facebook
- Next-L Enju OSS search system
Ed Summers – jobs.code4lib.org
- Jobs are posted
- Tags allow to see all the jobs with that tag
- OpenID log in
- pushes to twitter @code4lib
- pushes to mailing list
- Code on Github
Christopher Spalding – Search in a Blender
- works for ExLibris
- collect results and sort
- works in VuFind and Solr
Erik Hetzner – Strategy for c4l voting
- majoritarian: top-rated talks are chosen
- no representation for small parties
- each voter gets unlimited votes, 0-3 points
- Plurality-at-large
- 1 vote total
- Cumulative voting
- number of votes up to talks, but can allow multiple votes
- Hacking
- the way done now, reduces to plurality at large
- Fix
- limit points users can assign
- and/or only users to give one vote to teach talk
- or adopt a proportional representation system
- Inspire by Numbers Rule: The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy
Lightning Talks That Didn’t Happen
- Hillel Arnold – Occupy Wall Street Documentation
- Jason Clark – BookMeUp (Book Suggestions App)
- Jason Ronallo – Digital Collections, Crawling, and Aggregating Content
Current Job Opportunities for System Librarians
For one of my management assignments, I decided to do a job analysis of the current job opportunities.
Purpose
Looking at the various aspects of the job postings to look at where and what opportunities are available as well as what is being looked for.
Methodology
Collected all systems related librarian positions which were primarily either systems or web services from September 1 to October 15. I collected 19 job postings and tallied the various aspects including skills and areas of knowledge required and preferred.
Results
The Basics
Jobs were primarily in academic libraries (17 of 19) and a majority were permanent full time (13). The job subareas and titles differ, but were generally broken down in this way:
| Systems & Technical Services | 2 |
| Systems | 8 |
| Web Services | 11 |
| User Experience | 1 |
Jobs were also generally in the East.
| Canada | United States | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| West | 1 | West | 4 |
| Central | 1 | Central | 2 |
| East | 4 | East | 7 |
Finally of the salaries that were listed the average minimum of $49,000.
Education & Work Experience
No surprise that every single posting required: MLIS degree from ALA accredited school or equivalent.
Most required or preferred at least 2 years of experience, and preferred but did not usually required experience within the area of hiring.
Note that the “type” is an indication of whether the experience needs to be in the same type of library (e.g. academic library by posting from academic library).
Duties
Many positions included non-technical related duties. The top two:
- Reference – 37% (7)
- General/Student Instruction – 26% (5)
Technology Related Skills & Areas of Knowledge
As the majority of the positions were web services related, there was a bit of a bias towards skills that are web related, but generally for systems, I simply found that there were less specific technology requirements and it was also more diverse. The top technology related required skills & areas of knowledge:
- HTML/XHTML – 58% (11)
- Web Development/Design – 47% (9)
- CSS – 42% (8)
- Standards & Best Practices – 37% (7)
- Emerging Technologies, Trends, & Issues – 37% (7)
- Usability/User Experience – 32% (6)
- JavaScript – 26% (5)
As I said, the range was wide and included everything from server administration to proxy to analytics.
General Skills & Areas of Knowledge
What might (or might not) surprise people is that the top required skills and areas of knowledge were general in nature and not technology related.
- Communications & Interpersonal – 95% (18)
- Collaboration & Teamwork – 84% (16)
- Project Management, Planning & Organization – 68% (13)
- Problem Solving & Analysis – 58% (11)
- Work Independently – 47% (9)
- Leadership – 26% (5)
- Flexible & Creative – 26% (5)
If anything, I think this trend is encouraging for new graduates as it seems that “soft” skills are more important than the technology/technical skills which frankly, many of us just do not have the opportunity to learn in library school, but with some tech savvy would be more than willing and able to learn on the job.
Limitations
There are some obvious limitations to my analysis. For one, some job postings were no longer accessible as they were closed, which meant that they were not included. For my purposes, I also left out all management positions, such as AUL and director positions.
Another issue is that how qualifications were grouped was very subjective on my part, so may not have been consistent. For example, planning and organization was grouped with project management, but results would have been different if the three had been kept separate.
Possible Future Work
It would be interesting to see what the trends are in general rather than only looking at systems positions, but that would be a much larger effort.
Hopefully this information is useful for anyone else in North America interested in systems related jobs.