by Matthew Tansek, Head Editor, INALJ Rhode Island
Advice on Finding Career Advice
Right now as you are reading this there are thousands of articles, books and blogs out there waiting to provide you with all of the career advice you would ever need. Unfortunately just sticking a couple of words into the google search box and pressing enter will only get you mired in an unimaginably huge pile of results. The following is a quick set of pointers to get you on track and spending your time constructively learning instead of endlessly searching.
If you’re coming from a MLIS background you’ll already know how important it is to narrow down your searches. The same rule applies when you’re looking for some help landing your perfect job. Casting a wide net with your search engines is almost NEVER helpful, especially when you’re looking into a subject that lets face it everyone has something to say about.
If you’re looking for help with building your resume try and figure out what exactly would help you most, a template to work off of? font styles? an organizational plan? And then once you have a better picture of what you are looking for try and search specifically as you can for those results.
Interviews can also be a very broad topic that you are not going to want to tackle all at once. Instead try and break down the elements of the interview process in your mind. For example : Clothing, posture, language, questions/answers, and presentations. Breaking the process down also has the added benefit of creating nice stopping points. You are much more likely to retain that information if you are able to set yourself up some milestones before hand and tackle it in chunks.
Don’t trust one size fits all websites. Sure there might be some general knowledge that is useful, but in most cases you are going to want advice that is better tailored to the position you are trying to get. For example if your job is tech heavy, try searching out articles that focus on buzzwords for that field and tips for landing tech jobs. Articles that are focused on jobs in general might be academically interesting to read, but odds are you are going to want something a bit more practical. Bypassing the clunky generic pieces is going to save you from glossing over before you get to the really important ones.
Finally, try and get as much information from the posting itself. This may seem like a no-brainer, but reading up about what to do and not do in an interview all day long isn’t going to impress your interviewer as much as having everything that they were asking for on the job posting.