{"id":76019,"date":"2014-07-04T11:30:15","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T16:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=76019"},"modified":"2014-07-03T16:15:13","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T21:15:13","slug":"library-hiring-from-the-other-side-of-the-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=76019","title":{"rendered":"Library hiring from the other side of the table"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Hawtin, Head Editor,\u00a0<\/span>INALJ Saskatchewan<\/a><\/p>\n

Library hiring from the other side of the table<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"George<\/a>In my misspent youth, I served on my hometown\u2019s library board, where one of our duties was to\u00a0hire a new chief librarian. Later, I served on the selection committee to hire my own replacements\u00a0at the library board. I would dearly love to share with you the graphic details of what the person we\u00a0hired did right and what the people we chose not to hire did wrong, but this would violate all sorts of\u00a0confidentiality agreements. Therefore, let me share some more general advice, from the perspective of\u00a0someone who\u2019s sat on the other side of the table.<\/p>\n

What are library boards looking for?<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Self-awareness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Know who you are. Know what you can do, what you\u2019ve done before, what you can learn to do, and\u00a0what you can bring. A candidate who demonstrates awareness of her own shortcomings is much more\u00a0appealing than candidates who thinks his greatest flaw is that he\u2019s too good-looking. (This may or\u00a0may not be something someone actually said to me in a job interview \u2013 curse those confidentiality\u00a0agreements!) Every time, I\u2019ll hire the candidate who\u2019s day-one ready to excel at 80% of the job, who\u2019s\u00a0excited to learn to do another 10%, and who has a realistic plan in place to delegate to others those few\u00a0things they honestly aren\u2019t the best at. Every time, I\u2019ll have grave misgivings about the braggadocious\u00a0candidate who has no experience, no education, no self-awareness, and is completely sure they can do\u00a0everything better than everyone.<\/p>\n

Confidence is wonderful…but it doesn\u2019t always need to look like extroversion. Sometimes it just means\u00a0awareness of your own abilities, and your own limitations.<\/p>\n

2. Simplicity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Generally (especially when you\u2019re dealing with boards or HR people and not librarians doing their own\u00a0hiring), whoever is hiring you doesn\u2019t know as much about the job you\u2019re applying for as you do. When\u00a0I was a 23-year-old library trustee who\u2019d never had a library job before, I wouldn\u2019t have been impressed\u00a0with cover letters that were dissertations on the intricacies of AACR2. Mastery of library jargon would\u00a0have been technically impressive, sure \u2013 I would have thought, \u201cWow, this person sure knows library\u00a0jargon!\u201d but it wouldn\u2019t have resonated. Keep it simple. Tell your story. Tell what you did in previous\u00a0jobs—what ideas you had, what programs you led, how you made your last workplace better, how you\u2019ll\u00a0make this workplace better. Five years later, I don\u2019t remember which of the candidates was a motivated\u00a0self-starter who served on this, that and the other CLA committee \u2013 I remember the ones who did\u00a0interesting and innovative things and told me about them in easy-to-understand, non-cliched language.<\/p>\n

3. Fit with the corporate culture…<\/strong><\/p>\n

People in library HR are looking for people who\u2019ll fit in with the existing organization, so if they call\u00a0their patrons \u201ccustomers\u201d, it\u2019s a good idea for you to call their patrons \u201ccustomers\u201d too. It\u2019s about\u00a0demonstrating that you play well with others \u2013 that you\u2019re socially agreeable, that you can put on a\u00a0happy face when dealing with the public, that you\u2019re here to further the library\u2019s mandate and not your\u00a0own. But it\u2019s also about fit.<\/p>\n

From the job-seeker\u2019s perspective, there\u2019s one (1) of you, and one (1) job you want, and you have your\u00a0LT diploma or your MLIS, and you have the requisite years of experience, and you think you\u2019re pretty\u00a0great, so why shouldn\u2019t they hire you? But from the hiring committee\u2019s perspective, there are two\u00a0hundred applicants, a hundred of them have all the qualifications, and the best ten are substantively\u00a0identical in their qualifications. What\u2019s going to set you apart? Fit. This means that if you\u2019re enthusiastic\u00a0about serving \u201cpatrons\u201d in \u201clibraries\u201d, and all of a sudden you find yourself applying for a job serving\u00a0\u201cusers\u201d of a \u201clearning commons\u201d, you could be at a disadvantage. How to address this? Try to mesh with\u00a0the culture of where you\u2019re applying, whatever that might be…but if you can\u2019t, recognize that it could\u00a0be a blessing in disguise and that a job where you do fit could be just around the corner. I\u2019ve regretfully\u00a0voted against hiring candidates who were excellent, because there were other, equally excellent\u00a0candidates who were better fits. It (probably) doesn\u2019t mean the hiring committee hated you.<\/p>\n

4. …but not to the point of losing your own identity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Next to boastful candidates, my least-favourite phenomenon is candidates who try too hard to sell that\u00a0they\u2019re a \u201cfit\u201d. If there is a fit, this will be readily apparent to the applicant and the hiring committee. So\u00a0in your application and interviews, tell them who you are and how your qualities will serve the library. If\u00a0there are particular things that draw you to this library beyond needing a paycheque, let them come up\u00a0organically. Don\u2019t be the candidate who spends the entire interview fulsomely praising the library (or,\u00a0even worse, the profession of librarianship) while not making the sale that you\u2019re the best person to fill\u00a0this role. Focus on yourself and on what you can do for the library.<\/p>\n

The people doing the hiring already think their library is great. They already know they have the best\u00a0circulation stats in the region or the catchiest motto. Definitely acknowledge things you like about the\u00a0library, definitely demonstrate knowledge about the position, but only in the service of explaining what\u00a0you can bring to the role, not to demonstrate how much trivia you\u2019ve memorized.<\/p>\n

The library leaders I\u2019ve hired have had these things in common: they\u2019ve known who they were and\u00a0what they could bring to the library, they\u2019ve known how to communicate that to me in a simple and\u00a0straightforward way, they\u2019ve been a good fit for the role they were seeking, and they\u2019ve made that clear\u00a0in an organic way. If you can develop these traits, you\u2019ll be the next INALJ success story!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Hawtin, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Saskatchewan Library hiring from the other side of the table In my misspent youth, I served on my hometown\u2019s library board, where one of our duties was to\u00a0hire a new chief librarian. Later, I served on the selection committee to hire my own replacements\u00a0at the library board. I would dearly love…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":70493,"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":[69,3592,6210,5946,4514,6307,3975,5929,3980,111],"class_list":["post-76019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-george-hawtin","tag-inalj-saskatchewan","tag-interview-tips","tag-interviewers","tag-interviewing","tag-job-interview","tag-on-hiring","tag-tips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/George-Hawtin.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-jM7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76019","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=76019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}