Another Take on Temping

by Beth Gemella, INALJ California Assistant 

Another Take on Temping

bethgemellaTemporary jobs are good for making money while you are looking for a permanent job, but another way to view them is as paid training for your future positions.  Here are a few ideas to get the most out of your temporary position.

Take advantage of as much training as possible during your temping time.  If your employer or a vendor offers either in person or online training, schedule time for them.  Your employer wants you to be able to use the tools they have to the best of your ability even in a short term position.  You will gain experience using specialized software and you can add this to your job skills set.

Volunteer for special projects in new areas.  If you only have some skills for a project, it might be enough to start work on it.  As you work on it, you can learn additional skills or expand on the skills you already have.  As an example, for most of my library career I have done reference. In one recent position, the library moved to a new library vendor software system and I assisted in re-cataloging some material. While I was learning the new software, it also sharpened up my cataloging skills.

Finally, take time to meet with your co-workers both inside and outside your department.  You can find about what duties and skills people have in different positions and this could help you decide if you want to explore a new area.  And, of course, you will also expand your professional network.

INALJ Jobs always has temporary positions listed and library placement agencies usually have a variety of short term and long term temp positions. It could lead to something new and better for you.

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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