Disaster Preparedness! Job Search Edition

by Yandee Vazquez, Head Editor, INALJ Texas

Disaster Preparedness! Job Search Edition

yandeevAlright, this may seem a little silly, but it is a topic that has been on my mind with the coming of the 2013 hurricane season (June 1st). Many people stock up on a few essentials food, water, and flashlights but few think about preparing their extremely important and sometimes sensitive documents. It can be hard to pack passports or social security cards when things with much more emotional value won’t fit in the car, but remembering to have back-ups of resumes often isn’t even on the list!

These are just a few things I try to do to be prepared, especially when hurricane season rolls around:

1. If you have a multiple versions of resumes and cover letters, or even electronic copies of your transcripts, maintain backup copies on a USB drive or, preferably, on a cloud-based storage system. They make all those copies portable and, in the case of cloud storage, impervious to weather.

2. If you already keep such a system of storage (good for you!) try to update them a certain number of times per year. It’s great to have back ups, but they won’t be as useful if they’re out of date.

3. Keep multiple paper and/or electronic copies of your references’ contact information. Just like the resumes, keep those copies somewhere safe! You don’t want your contact list wiped out, especially if they’re harder to track or difficult to reach people.

These are things that should be lower on the end of your disaster preparedness list, but that should definitely be looked into. Be aware and stay safe!

 

Naomi House

Naomi House, MLIS, is the founder and publisher of the popular webzine and jobs list INALJ.com (formerly I Need a Library Job) and former CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of T160K.org, a crowdfunding platform focused on African patrimony, heritage and cultural projects. INALJ was founded in October 2010 with the assistance of her fellow Rutgers classmate, Elizabeth Leonard. Its social media presence has grown to include Facebook (retired in 2016), Twitter and a LinkedIn group, in addition to the interviews, articles and jobs found on INALJ. INALJ has had over 21 Million page hits and helped many, many thousands of librarians find employment! Through grassroots marketing, word of mouth and a real focus on exploring unconventional resources for job leads, INALJ grew from a subscription base of 20 friends to a website with over 500,000 visits in one month. Naomi believes that well-sourced quantity is quality in this narrow job market and INALJ reflects this with many new jobs published daily. She has also written for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 LexisNexis Government Info Pro and many other publications in the past decade. She presents whenever she can, including serving on three panels at the American Library Association's Annual Conference in Las Vegas; as breakout presenter at OCLC EMEA in Cape Town, South Africa; as a keynote speaker at the Virginia Library Association annual meeting; at the National Press Club in Washington DC; McGill University in Montreal, Canada; the University of the Emirates, Dubai, MLIS program and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Naomi was a Reference, Marketing and Acquisitions Librarian for a contractor at a federal library outside Washington, DC, and has been living and working in Budapest, Hungary and Western New York State. She spent years running her husband’s moving labor website, fixed and sold old houses and assisted her husband cooking delicious Pakistani food. She is preparing to re-enter the workforce and is job hunting. Her husband is now the co-editor of INALJ, a true support!  She has heard of spare time but hasn’t encountered it lately. She pronounces INALJ as eye-na-elle-jay. 

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