{"id":74504,"date":"2014-06-13T11:30:30","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T16:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=74504"},"modified":"2014-06-13T11:39:29","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T16:39:29","slug":"why-i-turned-down-my-first-professional-library-job-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=74504","title":{"rendered":"Why I Turned Down my First Professional Library Job Offer"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Natalie Kahn<\/em><\/p>\n

Why I Turned Down my First Professional Library Job Offer<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Kahn_Natalie\"<\/a>They offered me the job. I haven\u2019t even received my MLIS in the mail yet, but a small\u00a0college has offered me the HEAD Librarian position. They offer a little more money,\u00a0fine benefits, and the seemingly limitless opportunity to explore every and any aspect\u00a0of librarianship my newly-graduated heart desires: creating information literacy classes,\u00a0cataloging, collection development policy drafting, and perhaps even starting a volunteer\u00a0program to give student patrons real work experience.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll tell you why I didn\u2019t accept their offer.<\/p>\n

When I hung up the phone, I wanted badly to take the position for all of the reasons listed\u00a0above, but I needed to consider a couple things first. Well, really I had to consider a million\u00a0things, but it boiled down to two things: risk and regret.<\/strong> There are countless studies that\u00a0explore if, why, and how men take more risks and rise professional ranks faster than\u00a0women. Leadership and strategy analyst Doug Sundheim writes<\/a> in the Harvard Business\u00a0Review that this is problem of perception, in that female professionals are perceived as\u00a0risk-averse compared with their male counterparts. This perception is more than anecdotal,\u00a0there is clinical evidence that women are less risky when debating a new job. Some psychologists\u00a0have identified that risk-taking is similar in males and females until stress levels increase,\u00a0in which cases women take fewer risks- link to an article with that study here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Business\u00a0and psychology research notes that women take fewer risks professionally than men, but\u00a0librarianship is dominated by women, so is this true in our field? Yes. The ALA (American\u00a0Library Association) notes that the percentage of male library directors salary is larger than that of\u00a0female directors<\/a> despite the fact that women largely outnumber men in the field. In order to climb out of the paraprofessional realm into\u00a0professional librarianship, would I have to risk my current happiness and stability in order to\u00a0climb the ladder?<\/p>\n

Regret was easier to consider than risk. It is that \u201cgut feeling\u201d folks talk about… If I did\u00a0not accept the job offer, would I regret that decision? In my case, I wasn\u2019t taking a risk\u00a0for a great reward- money had to be taken off of the table for this decision. I am lucky in\u00a0that I have a financially stable current job and you know the saying about money buying\u00a0happiness (it doesn\u2019t). I felt accepting the position would be running, not risk taking, and\u00a0I do not want to run a race where there is no reward at the finish line. And regret. My\u00a0first thought was not the \u201cwhat if\u201d of not accepting an offer, but rather the opportunities,\u00a0professional and personal, I would regret missing by leaving my current paraprofessional\u00a0job. It is also worth noting that there existed things I would not regret passing on with the\u00a0professional gig, like a significantly longer commute.<\/p>\n

There is power in saying \u201cNo.\u201d I had a real choice. A hiring committee did not choose me,\u00a0I chose to be loyal to my workplace and myself. Interviews should not be a judge and jury\u00a0situation, but rather a mutual selection process to reveal how the interviewee can improve\u00a0an organization and how the organization can benefit the interviewee. They could not\u00a0offer me more than I have and will have at my current position, so I said \u201cNo.\u201d \u201cNo, thank\u00a0you,\u201d actually, but still \u201cNo.\u201d Do I worry that my loyalty is a crutch that keeps me in the\u00a0paraprofessional realm? A bit. Would a male counterpart have taken the risk despite the\u00a0professional and personal development opportunities he\u2019d be leaving behind? Perhaps. But\u00a0will I regret not taking a job that offers little more than a title? No.<\/p>\n

Natalie Kahn, MLIS, is the circulation manager at a community college library in Hawaii and recent\u00a0graduate of San Jose State\u2019s MLIS program. Though her days at work are mostly spent clearing paper\u00a0jams, stuffing ILL bags with books, and directing patrons to the testing center, Natalie is passionate\u00a0about uniting and strengthening academic services, promoting diversity in academic libraries, library\u00a0management, intellectual freedom, open access, and staff training and development. She believes in\u00a0the importance of upholding the tenets of the United States Constitution to ensure all patrons who seek\u00a0information will find it freely and easily. When she is not working toward this goal, Natalie enjoys hiking,\u00a0running, and eating in beautiful Hawaii.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Natalie Kahn Why I Turned Down my First Professional Library Job Offer They offered me the job. I haven\u2019t even received my MLIS in the mail yet, but a small\u00a0college has offered me the HEAD Librarian position. They offer a little more money,\u00a0fine benefits, and the seemingly limitless opportunity to explore every and any…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":74580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,5380,6305,6303,4932,6304],"class_list":["post-74504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-job-offers","tag-loyalty","tag-natalie-kahn","tag-rejecting-a-job-offer","tag-risks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/natalie-kahn.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-jnG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/74580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}