Take time with the application.

The application itself may include screening questions asking for descriptions of your experience. Be thorough but succinct. Complete every step in the hiring process. Is a cover letter optional? Provide one anyway. Taking extra steps shows your attention to detail and investment in getting this job. An incomplete application is likely to remove you from consideration.

On the flip side, do not write a novel-length cover letter. Comprehensively detailing all your past projects is not respectful of the reader’s time. If your cover letter takes five minutes to read, find a good editor.

Public jobs mean public processes.

A public employer needs to fairly process all candidates. Don’t be surprised if several people interview you, either as a panel or through a series of interviews. If you apply for a director-level position, your interview may include members of the library board or the city staff, or it may even be attended by the public. Be aware that your name could be shared as part of the hiring process, even if you don’t get the job.

Education counts.

If you’re enrolled in a library program, include your anticipated graduation date. You may be asked to provide your transcripts. Do you have other degrees? Be ready to describe how your educational background relates to the job. Our library will count a bachelor’s degree as partially meeting a master’s level educational requirement, but not all libraries do, so ask about this before submitting your application.

Show your experience.

Some libraries will consider library volunteering, internship, or work experience toward educational equivalence. Experience at a public service desk is relevant. Have you conducted storytimes or attended Every Child Ready to Read training? Do you have a teaching background? This could set you apart in a candidate pool. Supervising volunteers or student workers shows leadership, so be sure to mention it. Share any pertinent projects you completed in library school. Did you study web design and have a homework example? Bring it along to the interview.

Share your nonlibrary experience, too.

Where you obtained customer service skills—whether at a circulation desk or in retail—really doesn’t matter. Marketing and social media skills are increasingly important in libraries; don’t overlook your experience in these areas. Be descriptive: Do you tweet daily? How do you manage your Facebook or Instagram account? Problem solving skills are desirable. Have you dealt with a difficult situation well? Find a way to tell that story. In one of the best interviews I’ve been part of, a candidate described how experience with a furniture-moving company demonstrated teamwork skills—and, yes, they were hired!

Research!

Use your librarian superpowers to learn about the organization. Most libraries have a public web and social media presence. Who are the leaders? Are there any recent news articles about projects or events happening there? Is the tone of their public communication formal or informal? Use this information to understand the job you’re applying for and to craft questions for the interview panel.

Come ready with educated questions.

An interview is a two-way conversation to help everyone involved understand whether you’re the best fit for the job. I’m surprised at how little some candidates will ask about our library or their prospective job. Make sure this is work you’ll want to do daily. Questions to consider include:

• What will you be expected to carry out this year?
• How big is the department?
• What are the expectations around work hours, time off, or telecommuting?
• Is this job vacancy due to a retirement, or is it a new position?

It’s not over until it’s over.

Don’t forget to follow up with a personalized thank you e-mail or handwritten note to show you are serious about the position. Recognize that public processes can often take a long time to complete. Reference and background checks are common practices and add extra time to the hiring process.

If you don’t receive the job, reach out and ask your interviewers how you can improve in the future. This demonstrates your willingness to learn from constructive criticism. You’ll be better prepared the next time you apply for a library job.

Resources for Library Job Seekers

ALA JobList

INALJ (I Need a Library Job)

State Library Associations

The post Landing the Library Job Interview first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

RICHLAND LIBRARY BUSINESS AND JOB CENTER STAFF includes Chris Barstow, Kris Dempster, Charletta Felder, Sylvie Golod, Janet Hatch, Andrena King, Bland Lawson, Diane Luccy (Business and Job Center Manager), Megan Mathis, Debra Talton, Jennifer Thompson, and Mary Vicks. Contact Diane at dluccy@richlandlibrary.com. She is currently reading The Little Book That Still Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt.

Originally published in Mar/Apr 2016, PUBLIC  LIBRARIES,  VOLUME 55, NUMBER 2.

With the onset of the Great Recession in 2008 and the resulting surge in unemployment, public library systems throughout the United States saw increased demand for services related to job searching. The Job Center at Richland Library in Columbia (SC) was established in 2010 with a $438,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This funding made possible the acquisition of eighteen comput­ers for job search–related tasks as well as the hiring of a career specialist and a job readiness trainer to meet individually with customers for résumé review and advice on job searching

After a few months of assisting jobseekers with résumés and job searching, the Business and Job Center staff realized that they needed to include interview practice sessions as part of their career services. Customers were getting calls for interviews, which indicated that their résumés were effective, but in many cases they were not receiving job offers. It became apparent that they needed to learn how to promote themselves, during inter­views, as the best candidate for the position.

In order to demonstrate that there was more to finding employment than simply writing a résumé and uploading a job application, staff members developed a career process model involving the following steps: Discover It, Define It, Present It, and Promote It. Through the process of writing and revising a résumé (Present It), customers would learn where they had been and where they were now in their career (Discover It). Perhaps most importantly, this process would help them clarify their career aspirations (Define It). The résumé would become more than a “marketing tool” to introduce the customer to a prospective em­ployer; it would serve as the script for the interview (Promote It).

The Business and Job Center decided to begin offering weekly interview practice sessions for customers to overcome their fears, learn storytelling techniques to better promote them­selves, and gain confidence in presenting their qualities as job candidates. These practice sessions have proven to be one of the most popular services offered by the center.

Many types of job seekers have availed themselves of the interview practice service at Richland Library, as is illustrated by the remarks of a Business and Job Center librarian describing her interview practice experience in the course of one morning:

My first customer was a mature woman looking for a position in a finance office; her dream job was to work for the University of South Carolina athletic department. My second customer had twenty-eight years of experience in medical sales. She wanted lots of direct feedback about everything from the suit she was wearing to how to handle questions about a termination from several years ago and her lack of a college degree.

The next customer was a Hungarian immigrant with a Ph.D. in immunogenetics who was hoping to transfer from eighteen years in academia to a new career in pharmaceutical research. He felt that he was solid with discussing his CV and accomplishments but that he needed some practice with traditional interview questions and with pleasing an HR representative.

Finally, I interviewed a college senior who wanted to work for Barnes & Noble while pondering her application to graduate school. This young woman was the most polished interviewee of the day.

Creating an Interview Practice Service for Less

For libraries that would like to offer more employment-related services for their customers but face budget constraints, the establishment of an interview-prac­tice program is an attractive option. With a little study and training, staff can take on the role of interviewer in practice ses­sions. The only equipment requirements are a desk and a relatively private area of the library.

The first step in developing an interview practice service is to designate team lead­ers in order to ensure consistent training. The Business and Job Center’s career specialist and job readiness trainer took on the leadership roles, and soon four busi­ness librarians joined the team. Once staff members were trained, they had a greater appreciation of what the interview process involved and became more intuitive about how to advise job seekers.

The team leaders developed a staff training guide identifying topics to dis­cuss with customers regarding interview preparation, the interview itself, and follow-up. Points to consider for prepara­tion include what to bring to the interview and the proper attire to wear. For the interview, the training guide advises staff to address issues such as nonverbal com­munication (posture, eye contact, and so on), best practices for phone interviews, and the use of storytelling techniques in responses to interview questions. For the follow-up, topics include the importance of writing a thank-you letter and what to do if no response is heard from the pro­spective employer after the interview.

The staff guide also discusses resources to share with customers, the most im­portant of which is the evaluation form the interviewer completes at the end of the session (see image, upper right). Staff may also consider referring customers to resources such as Richland Library’s vocational databases (Career Cruising and Ferguson’s Career Guidance Center) and O*Net OnLine (an occupational informa­tion source sponsored by the US Depart­ment of Labor) if it appears they need to gain a better sense of what their career goals are and the kind of job they can realistically hope to obtain.

Richland Library’s Interview Practice

The interview practice area at Richland Library features a desk and chairs donated by a local office-supply store. Mannequins nearby provide examples of proper attire (a clothing-store donation) for the employment in­terview. Unlike one-on-one career coaching sessions, which require the scheduling of an appoint­ment in advance, the practice interviews are conducted on a first-come, first-served basis, with customers signing up at the refer­ence desk for a half-hour session. These sessions are conducted biweekly on Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to noon.

After an introduction, the staff member conducting the interview determines whether the customer has a résumé, asks a few questions about the type of position being sought, and records the information on the evaluation form. The interviewer explains that the purpose of the evaluation is to provide constructive feedback. At the end of the interview, the evaluation is reviewed, with the customer receiving a copy.

Richland Library Job Center’s Interview Practice Evaluation Form [click to enlarge]

Situation: Describe a situation you found yourself in or a task that you needed to accomplish. This situation can come from a previous job, volunteer experience, or any relevant event.

Task: What goal were you working toward?

Action: Describe the actions you took to address the situation with an appropriate amount of detail, and keep the focus on yourself.

Result: Describe the outcome of your actions, and don’t be shy about taking credit for your accomplishments

The interviewer stresses the impor­tance of showing passion and enthusiasm in an interview. Allison M. Vaillancourt of the University of Arizona notes that job candidates often unwittingly come across as aloof before search committees because they don’t wish to appear “des­perate,” or they feel that a nonchalant attitude will somehow shield them from the embarrassment of rejection, when in truth “which of the finalists seems to want the job most is often factored into the decision” the employer reaches.[2] A candidate who comes across as uncom­mitted may strike an employer as a risky hire, since the time and resources needed for training would be wasted if the new employee were to become dissatisfied and leave the position after a short time.

The staff member conducting the practice session also covers issues that prospective employees (as well as em­ployers) should watch out for, such as illegal interview questions. Any question that could come into conflict with Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in hiring based on factors such as race, gender, age, religion, or nationality, is considered illegal.[3] Ex­amples include “Are you a US citizen?” “How old are you?” and “Are you planning on starting a family soon?” The informa­tion sought in questions such as these can usually be obtained legally through rephrasing—for instance, “Are you autho­rized to work in the US?” instead of “Are you a US citizen?” Business and Job Cen­ter staff have found illegal questions to be an important concern: several customers have reported that they encountered such inappropriate questions and were caught off guard by them.

At the end of a practice session, the interviewer completes the evaluation form, highlighting positive aspects of the interviewee’s responses as well as areas needing improvement, and then reviews it with the customer. The staff member may also provide supplemental handouts for further study. These cover issues such as the “elevator speech” (or “elevator pitch”), a pithy summary of one’s experience and abilities. Like the impromptu sales pitch that a salesman delivers in the course of a brief elevator ride with a potential custom­er, the elevator speech in the context of an interview should quickly convey to the employer the qualities that would make the candidate a promising hire. As Denise Leo writes, it should “give your audience concrete and memorable ways in which you solve problems or help people.”[4]

Customers participating in interview practice are also advised to ask questions during an interview as another way of demonstrating interest in a position. Doing some research on the prospective employ­er allows the job candidate to ask informed questions, and libraries are, of course, well-positioned to provide the resources for this research. Online reference tools such as ReferenceUSA and Business Insights: Essentials, as well as print resources such as the International Directory of Company Histories, can provide useful information to help the interviewee craft thoughtful ques­tions to ask at the end of an interview.

Customers who have participated in an interview practice session are encouraged to return for further sessions in order to reduce anxiety and gain the perspective of a different interviewer. Staff members have found that interviewees who attend multiple practice sessions generally have greater success in gaining employment. One customer summarized the benefits of taking part in two practice sessions, noting the constructive criticism provided by the interviewer in each case:

Interviewer 1:

1. Provided positive feedback that helped reinforce the things I did well, such as smiling, making eye contact, and answering questions by describing a problem, identifying the actions taken, and stating the results.

2. Advised me to end on a positive note when discussing the reasons I left my previous job.

3. Provided general feedback after every question, so that I knew what I did well and what I needed to improve.

4. Interview practice helped me regain the confidence I had lost.

Interviewer 2:

1.Advised that I state the facts surrounding why I left my previous job.

2. Summarized my main strengths; also advised me to incorporate them in my answers.

3. Advised me to review the bullet points in my résumé prior to the interview, so that I would know how to present myself well.

The six interview practice team mem­bers of Richland Library’s Business and Job Center have conducted more than 535 sessions since the opening of the center in 2010. The number of custom­ers served represents a rich return on an investment that chiefly involved only the time required for training. Customers who take advantage of every aspect of the career process model (including interview practice) have a greater chance of find­ing employment. Libraries interested in establishing an interview practice service are encouraged to contact the Richland Library Business and Job Center at (803) 929-3401.

References

[1] Deborah Walker, “Behavioral Interviews: 3 Steps to Great Answers,” PA Times 30, no. 9 (Sept. 2007): 22.

[2] Allison M. Vaillancourt, “Job Seekers, Don’t Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Chronicle of Higher Education 60, no. 42 (July 25, 2014): 21A.

[3] Jane Thomas, “Beware of Illegal Interview Questions,” Women in Business 51, no. 4 (July-Aug. 1999): 14.

[4] Denise Leo, “Finding the Right Words,” California Job Journal 26, no. 1122 (Feb. 17, 2008): 11.

The post FEATURE|Interview Practice Service at Richland Library first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

A job interview is like a first date. All parties should be trying to present their best.   The situation described above is rude, inconsiderate, and unprofessional. If that behavior is the library’s best face, then one must wonder how they treat their employees. This story is a true one. It is one I’ve experienced more than once and one that has been undergone by several people I know on more than one occasion in the last few months. I must believe that libraries do not realize this lack of response is highly unprofessional and reflects on all of us in the profession, not merely on their library.

While it is understandable that an employer would wish to hold off writing to candidates who are not selected until the actual employment offer is accepted, it is still important to communicate to these non-selected candidates as soon as possible. This gesture is not simply a courtesy for the candidate, but also an investment in the library’s reputation.

Letters of non-acceptance can be formulaic and can be ready to go as soon as a candidate has accepted a position. Such letters can be sent via email, to save on cost and time. For those who are unsure what to say or find the prospect uncomfortable, there are hundreds of thousands of samples available online.

In my library, I keep three generic letters on the computer: one is sent to all candidates when an application is received. It is short and simply acknowledges that I have received their information and assures them they will hear from me again. In sending this note, I, personally insert the candidates name at the top (e.g., Dear Mr. Smith…) since this takes very little time and helps me keep track of responses. It also communicates to the potential future employee that my library values human and interpersonal communication. However, as a candidate, a nonspecific generic note is equally acceptable. The purpose of this communication is to verify receipt. Often this note is sent via email, as that is how the application is received.

The second letter I keep on file offers acceptance of a position. This one requires more editing depending on the position. This letter is always addressed to a specific person, as this serves as a contract of intent. It is also always sent as a formal letter, not in the body of an email.

The third is a letter of non-acceptance. Like the acknowledgement letter, this is short. It thanks the candidate for their interest. It states that an offer was made to and accepted by another, and wishes them well in their pursuits. Mine also states that the candidate’s information will be kept on file for a year as this is required.

I personally keep two generic non-acceptance letters. One is for those whom we have interviewed and one to those who were not met. The letter for those who have interviewed is longer and thanks them for their time. This letter is always addressed to a specific person and is sent in the mail with a real signature. It is my library’s’ feeling that if a person has taken the time to spend a few hours with us and write a thank you note, they deserve a respectful response even if they were not chosen as an employee. Sometimes the decision was very close and we want that candidate to consider us again should another opening occur. It is important to us that we make a good impression. We also want that candidate to tell their friends, family, co-workers, and colleagues that our library is friendly, respectful, and professional, thereby supporting us in the future, even if they were not chosen.

The generic letter for those who were not interviewed is shorter and less personalized. I still address it to a particular person (e.g., Mr. or Ms. Smith) because I feel this is polite. Often this note is emailed and requires very little effort. Its purpose it to be respectful of a candidate, communicate the status of the job as is fair to them, and end what has been a potential relationship.

The time it takes to copy and paste the text, insert a name, and print or send these notes, even when responding to hundreds of applicants is very miniscule. However, the payback for this investment is great. If a library is not showing respect to potential employees, it is showing no promise of professionalism or respect to those on staff.

The post Not Only Candidates Are Interviewed first appeared on Public Libraries Online.