Infonista http://infonista.com On being an information entrepreneur Wed, 10 Jan 2018 22:06:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4 Losing steam already? 7 approaches to achieve your 2018 goals http://infonista.com/2018/01/10/losing-steam-already-7-approaches-to-achieve-your-2018-goals/ Wed, 10 Jan 2018 22:06:16 +0000 http://infonista.com/?p=1453 So how’s the resolution stuff coming?

According to the experts, something like 40%-45% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, with generally less-than-stellar success rates. Been there, done that.

But with each new year, I’ve come a bit closer to a goal-achieving method that works for me. The key was realizing that willpower was simply a non-starter (or non-achiever) for me; instead, I found that creating an environment, processes, and habits that supported my goals was what kept me on track.

Approaches that (might) work for achieving your goals
Like so many things in life, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to achieving goals – it’s more a case of trying a specific approach, seeing what works or doesn’t, and then building on what does. Not sure where to start? Here are the best resources I’ve found for designing a goal-achievement approach that will work best for you:

The Power of Habit / Charles Duhigg, Random House, 2012. Understanding how habits drive our lives and choices (“the habit loop”) enables you to tweak your habits to support –rather than undermine – your goals.

Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently /Caroline L. Arnold, Penguin, 2014. By transforming big goals into tiny, easily achievable actions, you build momentum and a track record of success. Arnold’s is one of the most accessible, actionable, and realistic of the books on achieving personal goals. Works especially well in conjunction with S.J. Scott’s Habit Stacking / CreateSpace, 2017.

Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals / Heidi Grant Halvorson, Hudson Street, 2011. How can you not love a book that has “goals for optimists” and “goals for pessimists?” Focuses on understanding how goals work, what tends to go wrong, and what you can do to reach your goals or to help others reach theirs. Think of this as the inner game of goal-achieving. Halvorson’s follow-up book, 9 Things Successful People Do Differently (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), focuses on the specific success strategies of anticipating obstacles, using positive thinking, and creating a plan to overcome those anticipated obstacles.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard / Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Crown Business, 2010.  Overcoming the battle between your rational and irrational minds, between instant gratification and long-term benefit, is a game rigged against us by our instincts. According to brothers Chip and Dan Heath, however, it can be done – and they provide highly practical methods of doing just that.

The Willpower Instinct / Kelly McGonigal, Avery, 2012. Willpower can be a powerful tool, as McGonigal makes clear, even if difficult to master. The book’s subtitle – “how self control works, why it matters, and what you can do to get more of it” – provides a good overview of the author’s approach, and her actionable focus.

Write It Down, Make It Happen / Henriette Anne Klauser, Fireside, 2000. Writing down their goals has helped countless individuals trying to change their lives. The key is to incorporate a level of written accountability related to the goals you seek – by when will you accomplish each step, how many actions will you take this week, how many networking lunches will you schedule for this month?

Lastly, my friends Mary Ellen Bates and Marcy Phelps pointed me toward a terrific resource, The 12-Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months / Brian P. Morgan and Michael Lennington, Wiley, 2013, which is the perfect antidote to keeping yourself on track and accountable for reaching your goals. (Not that any of us have been known to procrastinate, of course….)

Whats works for me (on a good day)
Once I realized that willpower wasn’t really going to be my ticket to consistently achieving my goals, I changed my approach to creating an environment and processes that made it easy for me to stay on track.

I started planning my upcoming week on Friday afternoon, assembling all necessary documents and information, phone numbers, meeting logistics, etc. in a single folder and lining out a weekly overview of meetings and project work time banks for each day. (Plan your week ahead of time so once you hit your desk you know exactly what to start working on.)

I signed up for Netflix and Amazon streaming so I could watch my favorite mysteries at the same time I worked out on my elliptical trainer (habit stacking).

I’ve broken down my major goal for 2018 – create and offer an online LIS career course – into its smallest incremental activities on which I can easily and quickly make progress and build momentum (small moves for big change).

And I now organize my major project goals in 12-week sprints so I can quickly see whether or not I’m on track according to my own commitments.

My intent is to create a frictionless environment that removes obstacles – whether logistical, structural, or psychological – to achieving my goals, whether small or large. Do I actually pull that off every day? Not a chance. But I come a lot closer now than I did a year or two ago. How about you?

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Time to leave that awful job? Make sure you do this first! http://infonista.com/2017/12/12/time-to-leave-that-awful-job-make-sure-you-do-this-first/ Tue, 12 Dec 2017 10:11:29 +0000 http://infonista.com/?p=1443 Sometimes even the most ideal job goes south.

The boss you loved working for gets promoted to a great new position, but her replacement is the spawn of the devil.

Your company, which for decades had been known for valuing its employees, is bought by an equity fund whose only value is stakeholder profits.

The job you love is “re-engineered” into a new set of responsibilities, several (if not all) of which make you crazy….

When it’s clearly time to leave
Having personally been in each one of these situations, let me be the first to tell you that there comes a time in almost all careers when it’s undeniably time to move on. If for you that moment is now, there are several steps you want to take before delivering your resignation letter.

Yes, there’s an overwhelming, momentary joy in a defiant “I’m outta here” declaration, but your goal in this very small profession is to never burn bridges. That means that no matter how unhappy you are in your current situation, you want to leave in the most professional, mature manner possible. (Your long-term career opportunities are way more important than your current crazy-making circumstances.)

For your employer
You want to make it clear that although you’re leaving, you still have the best interests of the organization, your department, and your colleagues at heart. So start putting together a transition package of information for your replacement, including:

  • Status overviews of all the projects you’ve been working on
  • An overview of other individuals involved in the work you do, with their names, titles, and responsibilities
  • A schedule of regular communications and/or team meetings your replacement should be aware of and prepared for
  • Any upcoming reports that will be due, the nature of the reports, and examples of previous similar reports
  • A list of any key documents and where to find them on your computer or the company intranet
  • A welcome note with any other information you think will help your replacement succeed in the job

This will help create a much smoother transition, for which everyone will be grateful (and you will be greatly appreciated).

For your career
Your goal is to divert all that “this is making me nuts” energy and emotion into something much more positive and useful, specifically, the action items that will help launch you into your next opportunity. These items include:

  • Contacts.  Make sure that you’ve captured all of your contacts’ information from your office computer. Don’t neglect to include contact information for any vendors you may work with – salespeople, account managers, service reps, etc., are often goldmines for learning about other opportunities with related companies. And they can tell you which companies/libraries to avoid!
  • Work materials. Make electronic copies of any non-proprietary work you’ve done, correspondence you’ve had, papers you’ve written, etc., that you might want to have available to refer to in the future. (Note: if it’s work product, your employer owns it so you can’t re-use it or make it public, but you may want to review how you approached a topic in the future, and previous work can provide examples).
  • Network outreach. Figure out who in your network you want to let know right now that you’ll be looking for a job as of [date], and tell them what kind of help you’d appreciate from them (e.g., a contact, insight about an industry, a recommendation, an introduction, a pep talk, a resume critique, etc.).
  • Professional marketing materials. Make sure your LinkedIn profile, master resume, and master cover letter are terrific representations of you in terms of 1) work you’ve done and 2) work you’d like to do. If your network starts reaching out on your behalf, you want to make sure that all your online professional materials are ready to represent you brilliantly.
  • LinkedIn requests. Ask several people you know and trust to write LinkedIn recommendations for you, and help them out by identifying the strengths you’d particularly like them to mention. If they don’t get to it within a couple of weeks, it’s okay to send a reminder email, but if they still don’t get it done, drop the request.
  • Stay in touch. If colleagues you like are also leaving the company or library, stay in touch with the people who are departing. Let them know you’ll be following them out the door, ask them if there’s any way you can be of help to them, and ask them similarly to keep an eye out for opportunities for you.
  • Explore internal options. Think about whether you want to stay with your current employer but work for a different department, and if so, start putting feelers out for potential jobs of interest.

Take control of your focus
When you job makes you crazy, it’s easy to get so wrapped up in the negatives that they become the entire focus of your time and energy. The problem is that your deep dive into being miserable does nothing to help you get to a better place.

Instead, use your breaks, lunch hours, weekends, and other down time to put together your “I’m outta here” action plan with the steps outlined above. Once completed, you’ll be in a great position to leave on a positive basis (which you definitely want to do) and also be prepared to hit the ground running toward your next opportunity.

Ideally, you’ll want to have a new job lined up before your leave your existing one, but if that’s not possible, with these actions you’ll at least be ready to leave and launch.

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Which font should you use for your resume? http://infonista.com/2017/11/28/which-font-should-you-use-for-your-resume/ Tue, 28 Nov 2017 10:09:17 +0000 http://infonista.com/?p=1439 Recently a friend of mine who specializes in resume coaching explained to me that anyone still using the Times New Roman font on their resumes was absolutely dooming their application the second it left their printer. I, who had assumed TNR was a pretty reputable choice as far as fonts go, was surprised to hear this (and in fact wondered if she was just being her usual joyously opinionated self).

But it turns out that recruiters, designers, and resume experts do have some pretty strong preferences when it comes to resume fonts, both best and worst. Notes a Monster.com interview, “You want to stick with fonts that are legible, neutral and easy to read,” says Amanda Augustine, career expert at TopResume. “Recruiters are scanning resumes for 6 seconds, and if they can’t get past an unprofessional font, your resume may get overlooked.”

Based on checking several different “best fonts for resumes” list, the following consensus emerged:

Best, according to everybody:

  • Calibri
  • Cambria

Best, according to almost everybody:

  • Arial, Arial Narrow
  • Book Antigua
  • Calibri
  • Cambria
  • Didot
  • Garamond
  • Times New Roman (but see caveat below)My pre
  • Gill Sans, Gill Sans Light
  • Trebuchet MS
  • Verdana

And what about Times New Roman?
This classic font was considered one of the “best” options by one source, an acceptable but boring and unimaginative font by another source, and was on the “worst” list of yet another source. Given the solid number of other recommended font alternatives, it’s probably wise to avoid TNR unless you’re pretty sure that boring and unimaginative are considered strengths in the job you’re applying for.

The reject list
The following fonts were considered automatic disqualifiers for any applicant unwise enough to have used them in their resume:

  • Apple chancery
  • Bradley hand ITC
  • Braggadocio
  • Brush Script, Mistral, or any other script font
  • Chaldkuster
  • Comic sans
  • Courier new
  • Futura
  • Harrington
  • Impact
  • Lucida console
  • Mayalam MN
  • Papyrus

Which works best for you?
My preference would be to go for the cleanest look possible, and I find that serif fonts (i.e., the ones with no curls or strokes at the end of their letters such as Calibri or Arial) are easier to scan on the page. If you, on the other hand, prefer the more graceful aesthetic of a serif font, then several of those on the best or almost best lists above should fit the bill.

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12 LinkedIn headlines for LIS students http://infonista.com/2017/11/21/12-linkedin-headlines-for-lis-students/ Tue, 21 Nov 2017 22:05:11 +0000 http://infonista.com/?p=1431 In a recent coaching session with several MLIS students, we worked on their LinkedIn profiles with the goal of positioning each of the students as someone intent on joining the ranks of LIS practitioners. In other words, a serious, engaged, almost-professional-level contributor.

Realistically, and quoting well-known LIS leader Jan Chindlund, you become a professional the day you take you very first class. Sometimes, however, it can be so easy to get wrapped up in assignments, group projects, exams, and student activities that you miss the reason you’re in grad school, which is to launch a rewarding LIS career.

Your LinkedIn profile will help you start launching that career while you’re still in grad school, so it’s a free, highly valuable tool you want to take advantage of. The challenge: as a student, how do you create a headline (with only 120 characters, including spaces) that starts letting people how terrific you are right now and how even more terrific you’re going to be at graduation?

What should your LinkedIn headline include?
Optimally, your headline should cover 3 essentials, which admittedly can be a bit of a challenge in such a small number of characters, so you may need to go for 2 out of 3:

  • What are you passionate about in terms of your studies or coursework (assuming this is where you’d like to find job openings)
  • What strengths will you be able to bring to an employer in your area of interest? (If you don’t have an LIS work history to draw from, it’s just fine to pull strengths from other jobs you’ve had or volunteer work)
  • Any special or distinguishing characteristics that make you fit for a certain type of work especially relevant

In addition, you want to use the specific keywords or phrases that are commonly used in the field you aspire to (for example, “bibliographic instruction” or “information literacy” among academic libraries).

A good way to make sure you’re using the correct phrasing is to run several terms or phrases you’re thinking of using through LinkedIn’s Jobs search box. When you start to type in a phrase such as “user experience,” a dropdown list will show you the most commonly used phrases. You can then check those phrases to see which one your field uses.

In addition, you want to indicate that you are a student. The statements below will provide some ideas for how to do that.

What about style?
You want to use first-person style in your headline, and it’s just fine to show a bit of personality if you have the room within the 120-character constraints.

Keep your audience in mind, however; your headline is one of the ways you signal to potential hiring managers how appropriate you are for their workplace.

Examples of possible headlines
The following headline statements are simply idea-generators to help you come up with your own best headline. See what works best for you!

  1. MLIS candidate developing digital asset management expertise and application via real-life DAM projects, internships
  2. MLIS, training for public library outreach role among underserved/recent immigrant populations; fluent in Spanish
  3. MLIS student who’s supported myself via 2 years of part-time public library reference work, and loved every minute!
  4. MLIS student honing data science skills; eager to contribute in higher education, community organizations, or nonprofits
  5. MLIS; strengths in digital preservation | taxonomies | team collaboration | Spanish/Russian fluency |Aug ‘18 grad
  6. MSIS (May ’18) with exceptional STEM research skills, including advanced expertise in key STEM databases, resources
  7. Customer-centric extrovert/MLIS student eager to contribute my energy, skills to your public library upon graduation
  8. MMLIS student; I combine my healthcare management background and health informatics studies to provide strategic data
  9. Research assistant working on MSIS (Jun ’18), honing expertise in data management for research/grant-funded projects
  10. Archivist-in-training (Mar ’18) with several professional-level projects completed, including 2 private collections
  11. Aspiring academic librarian with focus on and internship experience in digital humanities, bibliographic instruction
  12. Data librarian with passion for turning numbers into knowledge, seeking alternative-energy industry entry level job

The most important takeaway is to make the very most of your LinkedIn headline statement, because you never know what doors it may open for you while you’re off working on that class assignment.

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Becoming a free-agent learner: 7 learning hacks to level up your LIS skills http://infonista.com/2017/11/12/becoming-a-free-agent-learner-7-learning-hacks-to-level-up-your-lis-skills/ Sun, 12 Nov 2017 05:48:49 +0000 http://infonista.com/?p=1411 We live in the age of the free-agent learner – which is really good news for LIS professionals. Because as a free-agent learner, regardless of your circumstances, you’ve got multiple ways to expand your skill set.

Which options work best for you?
You get to determine which options are best for you at any given time. To do that, it helps to ask yourself some key questions.

For example, do you prefer a formal learning experience (that is, interacting with an instructor in a face-to-face or online classroom, either with fellow students or independently)? Or perhaps an informal experience, such as working with a mentor or learning community, reading a book, taking an online tutorial?

Additional questions might include:

  • Does online learning work best for your hectic schedule, or does the learning dynamic of face-to-face classroom interaction suit you better?
  • Is getting official credit for your learning important for your career, or would a noncredit option work just as well for you? (Often this choice is related to employee tuition reimbursement.)
  • Is it important that your education be delivered within the context of an MLIS program (perhaps through a continuing ed course), or is it useful to take courses outside the profession? For example, sometimes for purposes of building a portfolio, it makes more sense to take courses outside the library profession to demonstrate your interest in and ability to bridge multiple disciplines. (It’s also a great way to start building a broader professional network.)

Which learning paths work best for you?
Once you’ve thought through those options, you’ll want to next consider how and where to pursue your learning goals: on the job, from the LIS profession, from your own professional community, from an MLIS program (as either an enrolled student or occasional, self-directed learner), or from other sources.

Some things to consider for each of these options….

Learning on the job.  A learning organization is an effective and competitive organization, according to Peter Senge’s landmark 1990 work, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization (Doubleday, 2006). Senge identified the habits that keep companies from learning from their experiences, and then sharing that knowledge in a collaborative environment. Senge’s core insights are just as applicable to individuals. One of his key points, that today’s problems come from yesterday’s “solutions,” resonates equally strongly with our natural human instinct to cling to the comfort of the solutions we know and are comfortable with. That said, it’s still possible to take a page from Fifth Discipline and create your own mini-learning organizations.

Learning on the job may include on-site training programs, project work, professional development funds, tuition reimbursement, or formal mentoring programs. (In fact, you may want to consider negotiating for professional development opportunities and support if not already company policy as part of your total compensation package when you start talking about salary.)

Or learning on the job might just be hanging out with those new Gen Y staffers who know the latest technology tools and are willing to share their knowledge, or those seasoned practitioners willing to coach you through your first budgeting adventure. These informal learning exchanges are perhaps one of the greatest benefits of working in our new four-generation workplace, so it only makes sense to take advantage of it whenever possible.

Your workplace is also a great place to learn by doing. Work projects give you an opportunity to develop new skills by working with experienced pros, and you’ll get immediate and ongoing feedback on whether your skills are up to the task. Get proactive and volunteer for new initiatives based on what new knowledge or skill development they’ll provide you. Or look into “job rotation,” which allows you to cross-train and add additional skills to your portfolio.

Learning from the LIS profession. It’s often noted that one of the really great things about this profession is people’s willingness to share knowledge. That means you’re part of one of the world’s biggest, friendliest learning communities.

There are all sorts of ways to tap into this broad and deep knowledge base. Find successful local practitioners who have done what you’re interested in doing, take them to coffee or lunch, and ask them what the key skills are in their position – and how they learned theirs. Even if they can’t take the time to meet in person, most will at least be willing to respond with an e-mail answer, albeit a brief one (and possibly a few weeks down the road). Be as specific as possible with your questions; “what should I do with my life?” is guaranteed to produce a glazed look and no useful answers.

In addition, enlist one of the most valuable and easily accessed learning tools of the professional community by signing up for the best blogs, electronic discussion groups, tweets and RSS feeds in your areas of interest. To get a sense of who’s most knowledgeable, most innovative, and/or most credible on a given topic, ask colleagues you respect who they follow, see who’s stuff gets cited, linked to, or retweeted most often, check out who’s writing for key publications or speaking at conferences or giving terrific web- or podcasts. Check out who your favorite bloggers have in their blogrolls and follow the links. Your goal is to identify and then begin to monitor a group of experts whose shared knowledge will help you increase your own.

In addition, you may want to consider signing up for online and regional courses, workshops, and one-day seminars through professional associations like ALA, SLA, PLA, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), or the Medical Library Association (and their regional chapters). Check out classes offered by your state library (if your state has one) or library association, your regional bibliographic utilities or training organizations, or look into regionally-delivered vendor training. Attend preconference workshops at state and national association conferences, where you can often also pick up vendor technology training sessions for free. In addition, if you’re new to the profession, consider programs like ALA’s New Members’ Round Table.

Also, look for online tutorials and discussion groups (try, for example, Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn groups focused on your topic of interest), which can often be a great source of lessons learned and wise counsel. LinkedIn provides an especially wide range of professional groups whose members share questions, answers and expertise. Additionally, consider relevant YouTube videos and industry podcasts or explore the amazing presentations at TED: Ideas Worth Spreading.

Learn in grad school. Being in grad school is a terrific opportunity to learn – but it’s up to you to set your own learning agenda in order to most effectively position yourself for maximum career opportunity. Every course you take provides two learning paths that should go forward side-by-side: the structured learning identified in the course syllabus, and the self-directed learning you identify for yourself.

For example, in a business research class, your learning agenda might include researching the telecommunications industry, trends in corporate information centers, or social entrepreneurship if these are areas of interest for you. In an information ethics class, you may decide to perfect your presentation or group leadership skills. In a knowledge management class, you may choose to research bioinformatics for your class project with an eye toward expanding your sci/tech expertise. Approach every course assignment asking “what do I want to learn with this?” rather than “what do I have to do to get an A on this?” Align every paper, project, and class activity with your personal career agenda whenever possible, and you will be both learning the core LIS knowledge and positioning yourself for your post-graduation career.

Learn after grad school. Many MLIS programs are beginning to realize that continuing professional education/development (CPE) is not only a critical need among practitioners, but can also be a lovely source of additional revenue for the schools. So, for example, schools such as Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the iSchool at Drexel College of Information Science and Technology, San Jose State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library & Information Studies are now actively promoting their online CPE courses to the entire profession, regardless of whether participants happen to be alumni.

Alternatively, consider community colleges, training DVDs, books for beginners, online tutorials, or the offerings of private training companies not affiliated with the LIS world. Depending on how LIS-centric the topic is that you need to master, these can be inexpensive and efficient learning options.

Learn from a mentor. For many of the skills you want to develop, especially the people-related ones, a mentor who will coach you through your learning path can be invaluable. As noted in Chapter 4, although some organizations have formal mentoring programs, the informal ones you seek out and structure yourself can be just as helpful, and sometimes more so. Keep in mind that the responsibility for making a mentoring relationship work will rest with you; in other words, you’ll need to identify what types of advice or learning you seek, how often you’d like to meet (although this will be decided by your mentor’s availability), etc. And most importantly, you’ll need to be willing to follow through on any learning assignments your mentor recommends.

How do you choose a mentor? There are many considerations, but perhaps the most important is chemistry. In Mentor Match-Ups – How to Find “The One” (or Two or Three), if the mix of personalities isn’t right, find someone new. Anyone who’s been in this awkward situation will vouch for the wisdom of finding someone who “gets you.”

Read books! There are a number of publishers who focus primarily on helping the LIS profession keep up with new knowledge, for example, Libraries Unlimited, Neal-Schuman, ALA Editions, and Chandos. This book is an example of a professional development book whose aim is to help you begin or advance your career. But there are others that deal with such topics as technology advances, programming for emerging populations, taxonomy-building, user experience, competitive intelligence, social media, gaming in the library, and hundreds of other topics that probably weren’t covered in grad school but are now either a hot job opportunity or a new responsibility that just landed on your desk.

Learn from your own professional community. Lastly, don’t forget that your network of professional colleagues is an incredibly valuable, informal, and readily available source of knowledge and expertise. As you go through your career, you’ll build relationships with fellow students, co-workers, association colleagues, fellow panelists at professional conferences, and myriad other connecting points. This community of colleagues is not only one of the most rewarding aspects of having a long career, it also offers a rich source of advice, counsel, and insight.

In fact, a still-timely book on “learning outside the academy” and a terrific resource on the topic of self-directed group learning is Michelle Boule’s Mob Rule Learning: Camps, Unconferences, and Trashing the Talking Head (Information Today, 2011). Boule (a former Library Journal Shaker and Mover) suggests that it’s time for individuals in the profession to start creating their own “knowledge ecosystems,” and then proceeds to provide clear instructions on just how that can be done, and where to find these types of learning opportunities. Unconference, anyone? More recent, very successful options are the San José State University iSchool’s Worldwide Virtual Conference 2.0 series and Library Juice Academy.

There are many, many ways to expand your knowledge and skills, depending on what criteria you need to meet. If you’re able to focus on the learning itself and don’t need a credential or credit to document it, then consider the least expensive options first, including informal learning.

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How to keep a career time-out from becoming a career drop-out http://infonista.com/2017/11/12/how-to-keep-a-career-time-out-from-becoming-a-career-drop-out/ Sun, 12 Nov 2017 05:47:57 +0000 http://infonista.com/?p=1421 Perhaps you’ve decided to stay home to spend more time with your young children for several years.

Or your elderly parents are beginning to need more attention from you and it’s compromising your ability to work full-time.

Or you’ve had a major health setback, and recovery is likely to sideline you for a substantial period of time.

A career timeout, however, doesn’t have to mean career derailment. By staying professionally engaged and connected, you’ll be able to keep doors open for you when you’re ready to return. 

Regardless of your reasons for stepping away from your LIS career, the following steps will keep you professionally engaged, and show others that you are, as well:

Stay professionally visible. Attend LIS conferences if you can (especially local/regional ones) and the meetings of the local chapters of your professional associations. Serve on virtual committees if possible to keep up your national visibility.

Maintain your professional memberships. These are your key to maintaining your network, staying current with issues and emerging trends in your field, and finding potential volunteer opportunities that will signal your ongoing career engagement. Check to see if your preferred associations offer discounted memberships for unemployed members.

Do occasional information-based projects if you can. Are you a “timing-out” researcher? Cataloger? Information architect? Whatever your information skill, consider undertaking occasional projects (fee-based or volunteer) that use and demonstrate your information skills. This offers multiple benefits: you’ll be able to point to professional-level work when speaking with an interviewer, you’ll keep your confidence level up, and you’ll be continuing to build your professional network and career brand.

Stay current with the LIS trends and issues relevant to your expertise. Set aside a regular time to read about what’s going on in your field. Whether print or online, there are dozens of resources available to help you stay abreast of your professional discipline and maintain your understanding of changes that impact how you’ll work when you restart your career.

Take courses to maintain the currency of your existing skills or expand your value with new skills. See Becoming a free-agent learner for ideas on how to keep your skills current or expand your knowledge into new areas. Not only with this demonstrate to potential interviewers that you’ve taken responsibility for your professional growth during your time-out, but will potentially open up additional job opportunities. (For free or inexpensive options, see Becoming a free-agent learner: 7 learning hacks to level up your LIS skills.)

Your goal is to devote just a small, but consistent, amount of time to keeping your career active so that when you do decide to return to the workplace, you haven’t lost all that professional equity you built up before you (temporarily) stepped out.

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I didn’t even know that job existed! http://infonista.com/2017/09/12/i-didnt-even-know-that-job-existed/ http://infonista.com/2017/09/12/i-didnt-even-know-that-job-existed/#comments Tue, 12 Sep 2017 16:01:45 +0000 http://www.infonista.com/?p=1393 young woman smiling hitting her head - aha momentOne of the downsides of giving LIS students and professionals career advice is that you’ve pretty much got to follow your own advice if you want to have any credibility at all (translation from my students: “do as I say, not as I do” isn’t going to fly!).

So with that in mind, I’m following one of my key career mantras, which is to never stop learning new stuff. I decided to teach myself how to create e-books so I could share more of the webinar information I provide for students at LIS grad schools.

This is my first attempt, and trying to be fearless, not perfect, I’m just going to put it online and share it with anyone for whom the information might be useful. As I do so, however, I’ll point out that I have the design sense of a turnip! (Yep, we all have strengths and weaknesses, and design smarts ended up in the latter category for me….)

Dority – I didnt even know that job existed

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Making the most of your starter job http://infonista.com/2017/09/07/making-the-most-of-your-starter-job/ Thu, 07 Sep 2017 16:37:24 +0000 http://www.infonista.com/?p=1382 Or, why you should consider that job in Smalltown, USA

 

Female student working in the libraryRecently I had an opportunity to work with a young woman who had just graduated from an MLIS program. She was unsure of how to proceed with her job search given the precarious job market for librarians (and everybody else).

This young woman had never worked in a library before, and, like many of us when we complete our degrees, wanted to get a job in the same town where her university was located. But the reality is that with little or no library experience and facing the stiff competition that comes in an area flooded with fellow MLIS graduates, this young woman’s job prospects would be dim at best.

In fact, probably her best opportunities lie in a direction often avoided if not dismissed by recent grads: working for a library in Smalltown, USA.

The Starter MLIS Job
A starter job is the one you take when you’ve got little or no experience, so need to build up this aspect of your professional value. It may offer few of the elements you’re might want to go after in subsequent jobs throughout your career (high salary, cutting-edge projects, flexible hours, etc.), but it provides something else of high value: the opportunity to establish for yourself and others who you are as a professional.

A starter job can be of fairly short duration, which can be one of its attractions – if you find you really don’t like the place you’ve landed, you can comfort yourself that most of us can put up with anything for two years. (On the other hand, you may be surprised to find that the job and town you thought would bore you to death turned out to be a delightful community with a wonderful library, and you’d like to build a career there.)

Regardless, when you take a starter job, consider it a terrific opportunity to identify and practice those professional behaviors and attitudes that will help you succeed in the coming years.

Put together an agenda for what you want to accomplish/learn/practice over a given period of time – say two years. Then, if you love your job, you’ll have positioned yourself to continue to grow in value to your employer – and if you don’t love your job, you’ll have prepared yourself to move on to a better position.

The Starter Job Agenda
Here are some ideas for what you might want to consider as action items:

  • Try out as many roles as you can, and then note what you enjoy and what you do not. What do you enjoy enough that it might be an area you’d like to explore further?
  • Establish your professional persona, for yourself – establish and practice positive habits, expectations of yourself, and “best practices” for how you handle your career. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to watch and learn from others, good and bad.
  • Focus on the lessons you learn about yourself and how you respond to circumstance around you – if you don’t like what you’re discovering about yourself, determine better responses and practice them.
  • Learn everything you can about management by observing the managers around you, and how their actions are or are not successful and effective. (Trust me here – you may start out your career wanting to avoid any management responsibilities, but they tend to sneak up on you when you’re least anticipating them.)
  • Start building your professional brand by writing, presenting, researching, and collaborating on topics that interest you, and for which you’d like to become known.
  • Start building your community of colleagues. Establish positive, supportive relationships with the people you work with, but also consider joining regional and national professional groups in your area of interest. When you volunteer, no one cares how much experience you have – they’re just thrilled to have you on board!
  • Become known as a great person to work with – focus on building rather than burning bridges.
  • Start bulking up your portfolio of professional capabilities and accomplishments – on the job if possible, outside the job if not.
  • Learn to work with all types of personalities, a skill that will be critical to you over a decades-long career. Anyone who’s played team sports knows that you don’t have to like a team-mate to win a game with her; it’s the same thing with work. If you’ve got a problem co-worker, disengage emotionally, stop taking it personally, and embrace it as an opportunity to practice a very important job skill.
  • Learn how to work with a boss. In general, this means (besides just generally doing a good job) 1) learning how to provide the information he or she needs in the preferred manner, and the preferred frequency; 2) making sure your boss is always up to date on any situations that may come up with his or her boss; and 3) whenever possible, making your boss look good. (Corollary here: try never to make your boss look bad….)
  • Learn self-management. Be honest with yourself regarding your professional strengths and weaknesses, and practice how to manage your weaknesses and play to your strengths. If in doubt about these, ask a trusted colleague, mentor, or boss.
  • Develop an attitude of respect for the knowledge of everyone you work with. No matter how smart you were in grad school, you’ve still got a lot to learn. People will always be much more willing to respect the new knowledge you may bring with you if you first bend over backward to make it clear that you respect their hard-won knowledge.
  • Learn how to collaborate within and across teams. Being seen as a strong and positive contributor willing to share information, experience, and credit will cause people to trust you and seek out your participation.

Bottom line: understand that paying dues is an honorable and wise activity. Your job is to learn, to establish your professional persona, to contribute to the best of your ability, and to become known as a strong, valuable contributor who employers will hate to lose.

Then when you’re ready to move on from that starter job, you will have built a solid career base from which to launch, and will have a folder-full of people eager to write letters of recommendation for you, the now-experienced information professional.

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Career branding for introverts http://infonista.com/2017/09/05/career-branding-for-introverts/ Wed, 06 Sep 2017 03:04:16 +0000 http://www.infonista.com/?p=1369 How to tell the world you’re terrific when you don’t want to talk to anybody

 

Personal branding – showcasing your professional strengths – is one of the most important aspects of building a resilient career. However, if you’re an introvert, the idea of telling others about yourself can be unnerving at best, nausea-inducing at worst.

So what if your “elevator speech” generally consists of a muttered “which floor do you want?” The good news is that you’re living in the right era, because these days you can do a major portion of your brand-building online.

In fact, resources like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter offer an invaluable opportunity for those of you likely to be hiding your light under a bushel, if not in a cave. These social communities and communication sites allow you to connect with the world without actually having to talk to it. Blogging or creating a personal website is another great way to get the word out, as are the online communities of professional associations.

LinkedIn.  The fastest way to get your professional brand visible is via LinkedIn, the online professional community that enables people to create profiles (basically, your resume on steroids) that highlight areas of expertise and interest.

In addition to the standard information about your current job, you’re able to not only create a showcase for past projects and engagements, but also provide a summary of your most outstanding career highlights, areas of expertise, and “specialties.” In the Experience section, you can post information about previous jobs and/or projects, but then can enhance that information via “recommendations,” statements about the amazing wonderfulness of your work posted by colleagues, bosses, clients, etc. You may need to request these from your contacts, but most people are happy to oblige (and of course you’ll do the same for them).

What if you’re a student just starting out in your career and don’t have a lot of job experience to list?  Then look for other evidence of your potential value to a prospective employer. Are you doing interesting projects or research in one of your courses that relates to your career interests? Have you volunteered with an organization in a way that lets you point to leadership skills or personal initiative or community impact? If you find that you don’t have any items to describe that indicate your value, then you’ll know this is an area you need to focus on.

Also, whether you’re a working professional or still a student, consider joining the LinkedIn groups that relate to your field, and posting a helpful comment or question now and then. You may never be one of the people who are contributing all the time, but even occasional participation will help establish your professional presence.

Blogs and websites.  Blogs and websites can be a great way to let the world – or at least potential employers – know about your areas of expertise by writing about them. You might want to comment on key trends you’ve read about in your profession, or on books by industry thought leaders. Or, if you’re a student, you could discuss interesting aspects of what you’re studying in your courses or research/assignments you’re working on. The point is to demonstrate your engagement with your chosen field, and your enthusiasm for exploring and contributing at a professional level.

In addition – or as an alternative – to having your own blog, you can identify and monitor the best blogs in your field and then post thoughtful comments about the ideas or information being blogged about. Again, this helps to establish you as an individual who is interested in your field and its issues.

Associations.  Joining the key professional association(s) in your discipline will not only help you stay current, it will also help you build your career network and can provide you with an opportunity to connect virtually and start building your professional brand via the group’s online community if they have one (most do).

Although you may be tempted to “lurk” rather than participate in the discussions, try to start contributing questions, answers, or resources after you’ve gotten used to the flow and format of how people communicate. Remember, everyone now contributing to the conversation was a newbie at one time, too.

In her wonderful, wise, and empathetic  book Self-Promotion for Introverts: The Quiet Guide to Getting Ahead (McGraw-Hill, 2010), author Nancy Ancowitz notes “While the inward-facing nature of introverts can be a source of strength, if we neglect to reach outward, we miss out on the richness that human interaction can bring – not to mention the career advancement associated with our increased visibility.”

Start easing into that “outward reach” by using online tools to let the world – and potential employers – know how terrific you are.

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Use Google for Scholarly Research? Yep, and Here’s How http://infonista.com/2017/09/04/use-google-for-scholarly-research-yep-and-heres-how/ Tue, 05 Sep 2017 03:49:02 +0000 http://www.infonista.com/?p=1360 Harnessing Power of GoogleIn his excellent guide Harnessing the Power of Google: What Every Researcher Should Know (Libraries Unlimited, 2017), author Christopher C. Brown asserts that:

Librarians often hear from students that their instructor said not to use Google in their research. I believe that what is meant in most cases is that students shouldn’t only use resources that they just found with simple Google searches. Too many times students cite Wikipedia as an authority for their research. But what this book is arguing is that there is a proper place for Google in academic research.

Not only does the author argue his point successfully, he does every academic librarian and serious researcher the favor of showing them how to use Google so that it truly can become a credible component of rigorous scholarly and business research.

Brown is the Reference Technology Information Librarian for the University of Denver, a widely recognized expert in government information, and an affiliate faculty member in DU’s MLIS program, where his research courses are both wildly popular and dauntingly challenging.

The reason I mention his teaching role (I teach on an adjunct basis in the University of Denver MLIS program as well, so know the author as a colleague and friend) is that one of the terrific aspects of this book is how approachable and understandable it is. It’s reader-centric in the way a good teacher is student-centric, explaining basic if complex concepts through introductory overviews, familiar analogies, understandable examples, step-by-step case studies, and dozens of clarifying screen shots and comparative tables.

In terms of topic coverage, The Power of Google comprises 10 chapters that lead readers through the basics (how online and/or database searching works in general, how Google is structured and works, how to search using Google Web), then moves into more specialized knowledge areas.

These include “Power Searching for Primary Sources,” “Google Scholar and Scholarly Content,” “Google Books,” Google as a Complement to Library Tools,” “Academic Research Hacks,” and “Searching for Statistic.” A separate chapter is devoted to four step-by-step case studies in academic research that bring together the various strategies Brown has discussed throughout the book so readers can see strategy and tips become an effective implementation process.

Interwoven throughout are basic research concepts such as subject headings vs. subject descriptors; controlled vocabulary vs. full text searching; natural language searching; searching across metadata fields vs. full text; and the pros and cons of these various approaches to information structures. Brown does a great job of clarifying that one approach is not necessarily better than another, but rather that each approach has its strategic uses and drawbacks. His goal is not just to tell readers “here’s how this works,” but instead to clarify how to approach Google’s strengths and weaknesses to make the best use of the former and not be misled by the latter. For example, in one research approach he’s discussing, Brown points out that the searches being discussed “are often most valuable as a discovery tool, rather than a text-access tool.”

The book’ overarching question is “how do we think about information if it is not first categorized and normalized for us” through subject headings and similar guideposts. Brown’s goal is to provide an answer to that question by laying out a well-drawn roadmap that will enable students, researchers, teachers, professors, and librarians to confidently find, use, and cite authoritative primary and secondary sources using Google. As a business researcher, I find Brown’s book to be exceptionally helpful and confidence-building (even if my copy is by now a bit disfigured with multiple margin notes and highlights). It’s a must-have resource not only for academic librarians, but also for all serious researchers.

Brown, Christopher C. Harnessing the Power of Google: What Every Researcher Should Know. Libraries Unlimited, 2017. 134p. ISBN 978-1440857126.

 

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