Blog on What Employers are Looking for in a Great Hire
I like to feature other bloggers entries that are written about tips for the job search. Marc Andreessen, in his blog, BLOG.PMARCA.COM, features an interesting entry on what it takes to hire well. This entry can give you a heads-up on what it takes to match what employers are looking in a great employee that's going to stick-around and perform well. Enjoy!
How to hire the best people you've ever worked with
June 6, 2007
There are many aspects to hiring great people, and various people smarter than me have written extensively on the topic.
So I'm not going to try to be comprehensive.
But I am going to relay some lessons learned through hard experience on how to hire the best people you've ever worked with -- particularly for a startup.
I'm going to cover two key areas in this post:
Criteria: what to value when evaluating candidates.
And process: how to actually run the hiring process, and if necessary the aftermath of making a mistake.
Criteria first.
Lots of people will tell you to hire for intelligence.
Especially in this industry.
You will read, hire the smartest people out there and your company's success is all but guaranteed.
I think intelligence, per se, is highly overrated.
Specifically, I am unaware of any actual data that shows a correlation between raw intelligence, as measured by any of the standard metrics (educational achievement, intelligence tests, or skill at solving logic puzzles) and company success.
Now, clearly you don't want to hire dumb people, and clearly you'd like to work with smart people.
But let's get specific.
Most of the lore in our industry about the role of intelligence in company success comes from two stratospherically successful companies -- Microsoft, and now Google -- that are famous for hiring for intelligence.
Microsoft's metric for intelligence was the ability to solve logic puzzles.
(I don't know if the new, MBA-heavy Microsoft still does this, but I do know this is how Microsoft in its heyday worked.)
For example, a classic Microsoft interview question was: "Why is a manhole cover round?"
The right answer, of course, is, "Who cares? Are we in the manhole business?"
(Followed by twisting in your chair to look all around, getting up, and leaving.)
Google, on the other hand, uses the metric of educational achievement.
Have a PhD? Front of the line. Masters? Next. Bachelor's? Go to the end.
In apparent direct contraction to decades of experience in the computer industry that PhD's are the hardest people to motivate to ship commercially viable products -- with rare exception. (Hi, Tim! Hi, Diego!)
Now, on the one hand, you can't question the level of success of either company.
Maybe they're right.
But maybe, just maybe, their success had a lot to do with other factors -- say, huge markets, extreme aggressiveness, right time/right place, key distribution deals, and at least in one case, great products.
Because here's the problem: I'm not aware of another Microsoft that's been built by hiring based on logic puzzles. And I'm not aware of another Google that's been built by hiring PhD's.
So maybe there are other hiring criteria that are equally, or more, important.
Here's what I think those criteria are.
First, drive.
I define drive as self-motivation -- people who will walk right through brick walls, on their own power, without having to be asked, to achieve whatever goal is in front of them.
People with drive push and push and push and push and push until they succeed.
Winston Churchill after the evacuation of Dunkirk:
"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
That's what you want.
Some people have it and some people don't.
Of the people who have it, with some of them it comes from guilt, often created by family pressure.
With others, it comes from a burning desire to make it big.
With others, it comes from being incredibly Type A.
Whatever... go with it.
Drive is independent of educational experience, grade point averages, and socioeconomic background.
(But Marc, isn't a 4.0 GPA a sure sign of drive? Well, it's a sign that the person is driven to succeed on predefined tests with clear criteria and a grader -- in an environment where the student's parents are often paying a lot of money for the privilege of having their child take the tests. That may or may not be the same thing as being driven to succeed in the real world.)
Drive is even independent of prior career success.
Driven people don't tend to stay long at places where they can't succeed, and just because they haven't succeeded in the wrong companies doesn't mean they won't succeed at your company -- if they're driven.
I think you can see drive in a candidate's eyes, and in a candidate's background.
For the background part, I like to see what someone has done.
Not been involved in, or been part of, or watched happen, or was hanging around when it happened.
I look for something you've done, either in a job or (often better yet) outside of a job.
The business you started and ran in high school.
The nonprofit you started and ran in college.
If you're a programmer: the open source project to which you've made major contributions.
Something.
If you can't find anything -- if a candidate has just followed the rules their whole lives, showed up for the right classes and the right tests and the right career opportunities without achieving something distinct and notable, relative to their starting point -- then they probably aren't driven.
And you're not going to change them.
Motivating people who are fundamentally unmotivated is not easy.
But motivating people who are self-motivated is wind at your back.
I like specifically looking for someone for which this job is their big chance to really succeed.
For this reason, I like hiring people who haven't done the specific job before, but are determined to ace it regardless.
I also like specifically looking for someone who comes from some kind of challenging background -- a difficult family situation, say, or someone who had to work his/her way through school -- who is nevertheless on par with his/her more fortunate peers in skills and knowledge.
Finally, beware in particular people who have been at highly successful companies.
People used to say, back when IBM owned the industry: never hire someone straight out of IBM. First, let them go somewhere else and fail. Then, once they've realized the real world is not like IBM, hire them and they'll be great.
And remember, an awful lot of people who have been at hugely successful companies were just along for the ride.
Career success is great to look for -- but it's critical to verify that the candidates out of hugely successful companies actually did what they claim in their roles at those companies. And that they really get it, that the real world is a lot tougher than being IBM in the 80's, or Microsoft in the 90's, or Google today.
Second criterion: curiosity.
Curiosity is a proxy for, do you love what you do?
Anyone who loves what they do is inherently intensely curious about their field, their profession, their craft.
They read about it, study it, talk to other people about it... immerse themselves in it, continuously.
And work like hell to stay current in it.
Not because they have to.
But because they love to.
Anyone who isn't curious doesn't love what they do.
And you should be hiring people who love what they do.
As an example, programmers.
Sit a programmer candidate for an Internet company down and ask them about the ten most interesting things happening in Internet software.
REST vs SOAP, the new Facebook API, whether Ruby on Rails is scalable, what do you think of Sun's new Java-based scripting language, Google's widgets API, Amazon S3, etc.
If the candidate loves their field, they'll have informed opinions on many of these topics.
That's what you want.
Now, you might say, Marc, that's great for a young kid who has a lot of spare time to stay current, but what about the guy who has a family and only has time for a day job and can't spend nights and weekends reading blogs and staying that current?
Well, when you run into a person like that who isn't current in their field, the other implication is that their day job isn't keeping them current.
If they've been in that job for a while, then ask yourself, is the kind of person you're looking for really going to have tolerated staying in a day job where their skills and knowledge get stale, for very long?
Really?
Remember -- because of the Internet, staying current in any field no longer costs any money.
In my experience, drive and curiosity seem to coincide pretty frequently.
The easiest way to be driven is to be in a field that you love, and you'll automatically be curious.
Third and final criterion: ethics.
Ethics are hard to test for.
But watch for any whiff of less than stellar ethics in any candidate's background or references.
And avoid, avoid, avoid.
Unethical people are unethical by nature, and the odds of a metaphorical jailhouse conversion are quite low.
Priests, rabbis, and ministers should give people a second chance on ethics -- not hiring managers at startups.
'Nuff said.
One way to test for an aspect of ethics -- honesty -- is to test for how someone reacts when they don't know something.
Pick a topic you know intimately and ask the candidate increasingly esoteric questions until they don't know the answer.
They'll either say they don't know, or they'll try to bullshit you.
Guess what. If they bullshit you during the hiring process, they'll bullshit you once they're onboard.
A candidate who is confident in his own capabilities and ethical -- the kind you want -- will say "I don't know" because they know that the rest of the interview will demonstrate their knowledge, and they know that you won't react well to being bullshitted -- because they wouldn't react well either.
Second topic: process -- how to run the hiring process.
First, have a written hiring process.
Whatever your hiring process is -- write it down, and make sure everyone has a copy of it, on paper.
It's continually shocking how many startups have a random hiring process, and as a result hire apparently randomly.
Second, do basic skills tests.
It's amazing how many people come in and interview for jobs where their resume says they're qualified, but ask them basic questions about how to do things in their domain, and they flail.
For example, test programmers on basic algorithms -- linked lists, binary searches.
Just in pseudocode -- it doesn't matter if they know the relevant Java library calls.
It does matter if they are unable to go up to the whiteboard and work their way through something that was covered in their first algorithms course.
A lot of people come in and interview for programming jobs who, at their core, can't program.
And it's such a breath of fresh air when you get someone who just goes, oh yeah, a linked list, sure, let me show you.
The same principle applies to other fields.
For a sales rep -- have them sell you on your product all the way to a closed deal.
For a marketing person -- have them whiteboard out a launch for your new product.
Third, plan out and write down interview questions ahead of time.
I'm assuming that you know the right interview questions for the role -- and frankly, if you don't, you probably shouldn't be the hiring manager for that position.
The problem I'm addressing is: most people don't know how to interview a candidate.
And even people who do know how, aren't necessarily good at coming up with questions on the fly.
So just make sure you have questions planned out and assigned to each interviewer ahead of time.
I do this myself -- always enter the room with a list of questions pre-planned -- because I don't want to count on coming up with them on the fly.
The best part is that you can then iteratively refine the questions with your team as you interview candidates for the position.
This is one of the best ways for an organization to become really good at hiring: by iterating the questions, you're refining what your criteria are -- and how you screen for those criteria.
Fourth, pay attention to the little things during the interview process.
You see little hints of things in the interview process that blow up to disasters of unimaginable proportions once the person is onboard.
Person never laughs? Probably hard to get along with.
Person constantly interrupts? Egomaniac, run for the hills.
Person claims to be good friends with someone you know but then doesn't know what the friend is currently doing? Bullshitter.
Person gives nonlinear answers to simple questions? Complete disorganized and undisciplined on the job.
Person drones on and on? Get ready for hell.
Fifth, pay attention to the little things during the reference calls.
(You are doing reference calls, right?)
Most people softball deficiencies in people they've worked with when they do reference calls.
"He's great, super-smart, blah blah blah, but..."
"Sometimes wasn't that motivated" -- the person is a slug, you're going to have to kick their rear every morning to get them to do anything.
"Could sometimes be a little hard to get along with" -- hugely unpleasant.
"Had an easier time working with men than women" -- raging sexist.
"Was sometimes a little moody" -- suffering from clinical depression, and unmedicated.
You get the picture.
Sixth, fix your mistakes fast... but not too fast.
If you are super-scrupulous about your hiring process, you'll still have maybe a 70% success rate of a new person really working out -- if you're lucky.
And that's for individual contributors.
If you're hiring executives, you'll probably only have a 50% success rate.
That's life.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is hiring poorly and doesn't realize it.
Most startups in my experience are undisciplined at fixing hiring mistakes -- i.e., firing people who aren't working out.
First, realize that while you're going to hate firing someone, you're going to feel way better after the fact than you can currently imagine.
Second, realize that the great people on your team will be happy that you've done it -- they knew the person wasn't working out, and they want to work with other great people, and so they'll be happy that you've done the right thing and kept the average high.
(The reason I say "not too fast" is because your great people are watching to see how you fire people, and if you do it too fast you'll be viewed as arbitrary and capricious -- but trust me, most startup managers do not have this problem, they have the opposite problem.)
Third, realize that you're usually doing the person you're firing a favor -- you're releasing them from a role where they aren't going to succeed or get promoted or be valued, and you're giving them the opportunity to find a better role in a different company where they very well might be an incredible star.
(And if they can't, were they really the kind of person you wanted to hire in the first place?)
One of the good things about our industry is that there are frequently lots of new jobs being created and so you're almost never pushing someone out onto the street -- so don't feel that you're dooming their families to the poorhouse, because you aren't.
You're not that important in their lives.
I can name a number of people I've fired or participated in firing who have gone on to be quite successful at other companies.
They won't necessarily talk to me anymore, though :-).
Finally, although this goes without saying: value the hell out of the great people you do have on your team. Given all of the above, they are incredibly special people.
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Posted by kkowatch on August 25, 2008 at 08:16 AM | Comments (0)
Things Not to Do in Your Online Job Hunt
Great, fun article about job hunt blunders... sent from a SI Alumnus. Talks about some things never to do, and also highlights the rise of social networking sites like LinkedIn as a way to find career success in the coming years.
When Cara MacDonald placed an ad on Craigslist for an administrative assistant, the last thing she expected to get was a peep show. But that's exactly what she found when one of the job applicants sent a link to her personal Web site, complete with YouTube videos.
"Intrigued and admittedly nosy," MacDonald followed the link, horrified to find a clip of the woman dancing provocatively in a lacy lingerie top and super-short mini skirt.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
"Periodically, throughout those five minutes of disturbia, she flashes the camera, and it's 'I see London, I see France -- she's not wearing underpants!'" said MacDonald, a member services manager at HigherBracket.ca, an executive job search site that caters to six-figure earners in Canada.
"I'm not sure I would even believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes. If only I could un-see it now."
Needless to say, the dancing queen wasn't contacted for an interview. After all, sex only sells if you want a job in the adult entertainment industry.
But posting suggestive videos of yourself on YouTube, filling your Facebook page with photos of your latest beer bong-a-thon, or blogging about how much you wish your current employer would implode, aren't the only ways to blow your chances of landing a new job. (Yes, Virginia, like it or not, hiring managers do Google you.)
Some digital deal breakers are less obvious. So, if you're thinking about using a personal site, an online resume, a job search site, or a social networking site to woo potential employers, listen up.
The Devil's in the Digital Details
In case no one's enlightened you, IM-speak like "would luv 2 work 4 u!" has no place in your cover letters, even those you e-mail or submit through a job search site like Monster. Same goes for smiley faces and any variation of the acronym "LOL."
But it's not just the text message set who make the mistake of letting down their digital guard while job hunting.
Nicole Cox, director of recruitment for Decision Toolbox, an online recruiting firm based in Irvine, Calif., found herself less than impressed with a candidate who entered his resume in the company's online database -- along with the username "Sexpig."
Continue reading at http://abcnews.go.com/Business/CareerManagement/Story?id=5483048&page=2
Posted by kkowatch on August 01, 2008 at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
Libraries Are Hanging in There During Tough Economic Times
Last night, I was driving home and listening to NPR and they were discussing the rise in the use of public library services during these tough economic times. I thought this was great news to share with our readers! I can't say that I think that this will directly lead to an increase in hiring’s in this field (but it’s always possible), but I think that employment trends for work in public libraries will stay steady and if you already have a PL job, then I don't see it going anywhere. I certainly see a consistent number of public library positions still going out on the listservs.
This may not be as true for special libraries, but it depends on the level of public access. On the flip side, companies such home internet providers, Amazon.com and other online book sellers will see a direct decrease in revenue as people tighten their belts and switch to using the free services at public libraries such as newspapers, magazines, internet services, and, of course, books. On a more positive note, Joanna and I have continued to meet with and hear from many organizations – libraries and many others - in the Ann Arbor and SE Detroit area and they are looking to hire.
The whole text for this bit isn't available, but you can listen to it online on the NPR website. Link below.
Libraries Shine In Tough Economic Times
Listen Now [4 min 7 sec]
All Things Considered, July 29, 2008
With the economy slowing, many Americans are doing research in the public library. Boyd County, Ky., Library Director Debbie Cosper says public-use computers are always full and people are checking out books rather than buying them.
Posted by kkowatch on July 30, 2008 at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)
SI's Own Entrepreneurs Featured in Ann Arbor News
Growing young entrepreneurs
RPM Ventures helps U-M students launch 3 businesses
by Tina Reed
Ann Arbor News
July 24, 2008
Apple's iPhone is much more than a cool gadget to Gaurav Bhatnagar, Hung Truong and Adam Torres.
This summer, the three graduate students at the University of Michigan School of Information have spent their time tinkering with computer code and mocking up sketches in an attempt to develop the next big geo-sensitive application for the iPhone.
Their business, Troubador Mobile Inc. - a rough configuration of their initials - is one of three student-launched business teams receiving venture capital help from Ann Arbor's RPM Ventures to launch business ideas this summer. The RPM-10 program, part of a partnership between the venture capital firm and the U-M engineering school's Center for Entreprenuership, gives students advice from the local business community, office space for 10 weeks and the money to get the idea off the ground.
The program is designed to get both undergraduate and graduate students thinking more about being entrepreneurs. It culminates in mid-August when the groups present their businesses to venture capitalists and the public.
"It's often entrepreneurs don't get good at this until the second, third, even fourth time they start a company,'' said Tony Grover, an RPM managing director. "It's only through people giving them the opportunity to try and figure this out that these guys get an opportunity to get better at this.''
The entrepreneurship program was modeled after similar ones around run around the country, said the center's director Thomas Zurbuchen. "For students, it is a continuation of the classroom,'' Zurbuchen said. And for RPM, "they get the first look at some potentially great companies.''
One of the other projects, Pacific Atlantic Entertainment Corp., is being built by undergrads in U-M's engineering and business schools as a campus Web service called Tradeversity to allow students to buy and sell books or find jobs.
Another project, CampusRoost Inc., is a group of three U-M engineering seniors who hope to create a one-stop Web shop for campus rentals.
They've helped about 25 incoming business students find leads on housing so far, said Jason Bornhorst, the group's chief executive officer.
"The biggest thing for all of us is, we go to work every day and we decide what we're going to do,'' Bornhorst sad. "And that's what determines our success.''
The hope from the businesses helping with the project - including Bank of Ann Arbor, Miller Canfield, McKinley real estate and Menlo Innovations software developing - is that the students will end up staying in Michigan and will build successful companies here in the future, Grover said.
"We take the long view,'' Grover said. "It might not help us today. But in five years, that's 15 student teams that might not otherwise have ever started their own business .... They're such talented people that we might've lost them to California, but this program could be the thing that keeps them here.''
For Troubador Mobile, the learn-by-doing process led its group members, who mostly have technology backgrounds, to figure out firsthand what customers want before they designed their product. They now regularly take their sketches out to passersby on the U-M Diag.
"Some of the things we thought were really cool were actually kind of creepy,'' Truong said. "But some of the things we though were kind of invasive, people were interested in.''
For example, Truong said, people weren't interested in an application that could tell users where their friends were at all times. They did like an application running in the background on the phone that could offer pop-up discounts from nearby restaurants.
The strength of the program is that it takes students without business backgrounds and teaches them the accounting, legal and market savvy elements that go into building a company, Torres said.
"For me, starting a company is such a mystifying process,'' Torres said. "I'm not the kind of person who thinks like an entrepreneur. I don't like to take financial risks. But this program seems to have brought out that entrepreneurial spirit in me."
Posted by kkowatch on July 25, 2008 at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)
So You Weren't the Chosen Candidate...
Today, I read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education written by a search committee member for a faculty position at a university giving the reasons that many candidates were not chosen to be hired. Often times, people are eliminated from being hired before they even open their mouth! Although the focus of this letter is on a faculty-position, the idea that a tailored and truthful job search is essential for success in your job search transcend the pursuit of any type of position. Enjoy!
The Rejection Letter I Wish I Could Send
If we had to make up a story for why you might be interested in our position, then interviewing you was too risky.
By CLEMENT VINCENT
Dear Unsuccessful Applicants,
By now you are in receipt of the generic, photocopied letter indicating that our tenure-track position was filled by someone other than you. Unfortunately, our letter gives you not a smidgeon of information about why you were not that person; you are left to divine what went wrong.
Ideally, I would call each of you to explain what we found wanting in your cover letters and CV's, but I suspect my university would never approve of that plan. Still, I want to let you know why we placed your applications at the bottom of the pile.
Let me be the first to admit I am no expert on academic searches. My own job search was considered a success simply because out of 65 applications, I was rejected only 64 times. But now I am on the other side of the hiring table. So I can tell you why I didn't argue on your behalf during our lengthy search-committee meetings, and I hope that my remarks here will help some of you as a new job cycle gets under way.
No secret formula exists for securing a tenure-track job, but there certainly are things you can do to make it unlikely you'll ever get one. To my dismay, many of you did them.
Surprisingly, about half of you didn't seem to take our detailed position announcement seriously. I wrote the ad meticulously, not just because the publisher charged for each word, but because our department has particular teaching needs.
Several of you were simply unqualified for the position. A law degree is not a Ph.D., and a Ph.D. in another discipline is not equivalent to one in our field — notwithstanding one cover letter colloquially inviting us to "think outside the box" in making a hire.
A few of you had doctorates in literature, religious studies, or political science, but those degrees do not give you a professional competency to teach our classes, even in this interdisciplinary age. In another cover letter, one of you promised to enter a Ph.D. program upon being hired. Surely we are not anomalous in preferring that our colleagues begin their graduate degrees before starting employment here.
Our ad also noted that candidates had to have the Ph.D. in hand before the start of the next academic year. Some of you were very creative in omitting the fact that your dissertation was nowhere near completion; your references were not so creative.
Several of you were perceptive enough to recognize that our university's mission includes the serving of minority students. A few of you, however, spoke rather ineloquently about that fact in your cover letters. What, exactly, did you expect us to think when you said you were "comfortable having Asian students" in your classes, or that you regularly give "extra support" to African-Americans? I happen to be of minority descent, and I found the implications of your brief discussion of racial matters to be bewildering, at best.
At a small university like ours, teaching is primary. Therefore, it was not a good idea for one of you to mention your personal Web site on your CV, because when I visited it, I read the part where you described your aspiration to be an independent scholar free from the obligations of a university career. Like teaching?
As noted in our ad, we are a teaching-oriented institution with some expectation of research for all faculty members. In the end, we decided to consider only applications that listed at least one peer-reviewed article or book. That principle helped me reduce the pile. Some of you stumbled here.
Not all publications are scholarly publications. Several of you claimed articles in print but neglected to say where those articles had been published. With a little digging, some of those interesting-sounding titles turned out to be opinion essays in local newspapers or guest columns in newsletters.
Some of you had a section on your CV's titled "Publications," but you listed submissions that were only under review at prestigious journals. Since many of those journals have acceptance rates of only 3 to 5 percent, we simply could not assume that your submissions would necessarily result in publications.
While a diversity of interests surely counts for much in an application, it was not a good idea to emphasize, as one of you did, your side interest in anarchism. Academe is surprisingly full of regulations. I asked myself, "Would a self-styled anarchist show up for classes regularly, turn in grades, attend meetings promptly, exhibit customary civility, and fulfill other expected academic obligations?"
Many of you did not tell us why you were applying for our assistant-professor job. To those full professors who applied, we were complimented that you assumed we possessed the rhetorical powers to persuade the administration to change the search in medias res. If you truly were willing to start over here at the assistant-professor level, you should have explained that in your cover letter. Perhaps your family lives near here? Such an explanation might have persuaded us to interview you.
Then there were several deans who applied for our position. Perhaps you wanted to return to full-time teaching, or maybe you just saw our position as a stepping-stone to a deanship here? You didn't say.
Similarly, for those tenured professors at more prestigious universities and elite colleges who applied, we had to wonder why you would be interested in coming to teach at our institution. In the absence of a stated reason, it seemed to me that you were just fishing for an offer that you could use as leverage to get a raise at your home institution. Some indication of your motives would have led us to give your applications more consideration.
In short, if we had to make up a story for why you were interested in our position, then interviewing you was too risky. There were many other applicants who stated in concrete terms why they wanted to teach on our campus. Here's the moral of all this: Every cover letter should state precisely and persuasively why the applicant is seeking the job.
A few of you seemed quite excited about fonts in your applications. I must tell you that wildly underlining or bolding phrases, or occasionally changing the font size for keywords, does not betoken professionalism. When I encountered such cover letters, it was hard not to hear the intonation of a desperate sales rep trying a bit too hard to close a deal.
Additionally, we set aside a few applications with cover letters that came across as arrogant. One of you stated that you considered yourself to be one of the few instructors in the country qualified to teach in our discipline. We couldn't help wonder how you would feel about your colleagues if we were to hire you.
Our job ad carefully explained that we are a religiously affiliated institution. Omitting any recognition of that fact in your cover letter wasn't a deal-breaker, but I wondered how well you knew our institution. Some of you discussed our religious affiliation, but it came off sounding like you didn't mind that we were religious, or you were congratulating us that we happened to hold some beliefs that you happened to hold. Letters of that sort raised all sorts of red flags about whether you would be a good fit here.
I should state openly that I tried to find out as much as I could about you by consulting the modern oracle Google. Yes, I did find those pages about you. You're surprised? At a university like ours, we have to be careful about whom we bring into our community. And yes, I did see the photos. When I also found all of your rantings — political, religious, autobiographical, and otherwise — I wondered whether you would say such things in classes to our students.
Perhaps you are reading all of this, and even though you didn't commit any of the application sins I have mentioned above, you still received our bland rejection letter. If that is the case, take heart. Your application survived several rounds of paring, and you know how to prepare a strong package. In the end, we had a handful of well-qualified applicants with only one job opening.
When we hire again in the new academic year, I will send you an e-mail message encouraging you to apply again. In the best-case scenario, you'll be able to respond and then reject me, saying you've already secured a tenure-track position.
Signed,
A Search Committee Member
Clement Vincent is the pseudonym of an assistant professor of philosophy at a university in the Midwest.
Posted by kkowatch on July 24, 2008 at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)
The Rise of Health Informatics
For those readers that are exploring different information-related industries... health informatics is on the rise.
Baby Boomers Fuel Thriving Health Industry
Bright Economic Picture, but High Medical Costs Hurt Consumers
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
July 17, 2008 —
Americans accustomed in recent months to a daily dose of gloomy economic news may find a silver lining in the health care industry as aging baby boomers fuel demand for drugs, health services and medical supplies, boosting the companies that make them.
Employers and investors have fought for relief this year as housing prices fall, gasoline and food prices rise and credit and financial markets continue struggle for stability.
But health care, which today makes up 16 percent of gross national product, three times as much as in 1960, according to Kaiser Foundation, is one of a handful of sectors like mining, farming and natural resources to thus weather the economic storm.
While some experts fear rising costs for drugs and services could eventually mean bad news for individual Americans, small business and government spending, the thriving health care industry is welcome news for company profits and many investors.
Companies like Johnson & Johnson, the biotechnology company Genentech and Abbott Laboratories saw big second-quarter profit gains. And the sector has steadily created new jobs during the past year.
The quickening economic strides come as more Americans are slowing down and getting older, but also living longer.
The number of Americans over the age of 45 has jumped from 77 million in 1990 to about 112 million people in 2006, according to AARP, the organization that advocates the rights of older people.
And according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report, the average American spends $7,000 annually on health care, much of that coming from growing millions of baby boomers approaching old age. "As baby boomers we have more access to health care," said Oscar Gonzalez, economist for John Hancock. "We are living longer, we use it more and we demand more from the system. You can have every kind of test from an MRI to replacement of hips and joints."
Drug Profits Soar
It's been a steady earnings season for many of the companies that make medical products.
Health care giant Johnson & Johnson posted an 8 percent jump in their second-quarter profits, with a boost coming from the new non-prescription allergy pill, Zyrtec, new Acuvue contact lenses for astigmatism and surgical products for treating obesity.
Sales of medical devices and diagnostics, led by joint replacements and diabetes and vision care items, jumped 12 percent.
"The penetration of drugs has increased, so more are available," said John Hancock's Gonzalez. "How can you blame us when they do us good? Why not take them?"
Genentech, the biotech firm, saw second quarter profits rise 5 percent due to strength from its blockbuster cancer drugs. The company added breast cancer to its list of uses for its drug Avastin earlier this year, in addition to colon and lung cancer, resulting in a 15 percent sales increase.
Sales of Rituxan, which treats non-Hodgkin lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis, gained 12 percent.
And Abbott Laboratories Inc. announced a 34 percent jump, driven by robust international sales of its arthritis drug Humira and other medical products and its cholesterol pill Niaspan.
Health Care Jobs Booming
Along with the steady demand for health care products, the industry seems to be bucking the employment tide.
Total U.S. job losses for the first six months of the year have hit 438,000, with an average of 73,000 jobs lost each month, many in construction, manufacturing and employment services. Construction alone has lost 528,000 jobs since its peak in September 2006
But job openings in the health care field continue to grow, according a July 3 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since June 2007, health care has added 348,000 jobs. In June alone, 15,000 jobs were added in the field, 13,000 in ambulatory services.
Meanwhile, financial planners say health care companies are a good investment in bad economic times.
"I don't want to be giving stock tips," said Mark Johannessen, president of the national Financial Planning Association. "But for a long term investor, related stocks in the pharmaceutical industry and extended-care facilities are a reasonable place to be, especially if you take into account the baby boomers and their medical needs when they come of age."
Johannessen advises following tried-and-true investment rule of diversifying your portfolio, but he added that mutual funds that specialize in health care issues are a good bet.
Offering Second Careers
The burgeoning industry also offers job opportunities for baby boomers, many of whom are staying in the work place longer or returning to second-career jobs in health care after retirement, according to AARP, the organization that advocates for the rights of older Americans.
"But this positive economic news is not necessarily a good sign," AARP spokesman Jim Dau told ABCNEWS.com.
AARP commissioned a nationwide survey to determine how people age 45 and older were responding to the current economic slowdown. It found that 17 percent of younger boomers ages 45 to 54 were making cutbacks on their medications because of the economic downturn.
Taking those types of medical shortcuts can have long-term medical and financial consequences, according to Dau.
There are also concerns that the growing acceptance and array of medical choices could lead to difficult economic decisions that don't always pay off in better health.
"Health care costs are exploding, and it has a huge impact on individuals, employers and government spending. This is the biggest issue we are looking at for the next administration," Dau said.
"The health care system's rapid adoption of emerging medical technologies has, in many instances, provided enormous clinical benefits, such as prolonged life and improved quality of life," according to a recent Congressional Budget Report.
Those technologies come at a price.
"Newer, more expensive diagnostic or therapeutic services are sometimes used in cases in which older, cheaper alternatives could offer comparable outcomes for patients," it said. "And expensive services that are known to be highly effective in some patients are occasionally used for other patients for whom clinical benefits have not been rigorously demonstrated."
'Walking a Thin Line'
The companies reaping profits say the effective and cost-conscious delivery of medical care is on their agenda as well.
"Access to health care is a critical issue to the country, and we are working with our industry peers to develop programs and make it more affordable through patient assistant programs and sensitive pricing," Johnson & Johnson Corporate Communications Director Bill Price told ABCNews.com.
Still, Gonzalez says Americans should not get too excited about the strong health care indicators, despite the bright albeit short-term investment and employment opportunities.
"The truth is on both sides," said Gonzalez. "Clearly, people are living longer. At the same time, there are more types of treatment available and new drugs that are costly to develop. Some of the costs come through increased profit, but over a long period of time, consumers, patients, Medicaid and Medicare absorb the costs.
"We are walking a thin line."
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
Posted by kkowatch on July 17, 2008 at 04:38 PM | Comments (0)
Article: Every User Deserves a Personalized Interface
From the Chronicle of Higher Education...
Every User Deserves a Personalized Interface
July 16, 2008
One size does not fit all, at least when it comes to user interface design. Researchers at the University of Washington have come up with a system to automatically generate interfaces that fit the users’ vision and motor abilities, making clicking easier.
In a paper presented yesterday at the meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the researchers described a system, dubbed Supple, that puts each user through a test of mouse pointing, dragging and clicking skills. The system then assesses the person’s performance and automatically generates a personalized interface that improves the user’s performance when using a specific program. This is particularly useful for people who have trouble controlling a mouse or a pointer, such as disabled and elderly people.
Thus, Supple will build an interface with larger buttons and expanded lists for users with cerebral palsy, who move cursors spastically. If the user suffered muscular dystrophy and had trouble in moving the cursor, the system would generate an interface with smaller buttons and a condensed layout.
Supple can reduce the performance gap between people with disabilities and those users who don’t have any by 62 percent. Disabled users also say they prefer the custom-made interfaces, a University of Washington’s press release says.
—Maria José Viñas
Posted by kkowatch on July 17, 2008 at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)
The "Other" Jobs on iTrack
For everyone that has an iTrack account with SI, when searching for jobs, you may have noticed that under the Jobs tab, there are two choices:
-- iTrack Jobs
-- Posted Jobs (but not specific to SI).
Obviously, the iTrack jobs are the main ones you should be looking at. These are jobs that our recruiting partners (4235 companies, but who's counting?) post for you to apply to and also some jobs that our staff pulls and adds to iTrack. But what are these Posted Jobs?
SI contracts iTrack from a professional organization called NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) who contracts the software from a vendor called Symplicity.
Formerly, the jobs posted in the "Posted Jobs" section came from CareerBuilder. We had the option to approve the ones that we thought were relevant to SI students and alumni interests. All others would be not approved and thus went to the Posted Jobs section.
Today, I received an email that notified us that the relationship with CareerBuilder has been discontinued, but replaced with something even better. Here's the message we received from our NACELink contact:
"I am writing to inform you that CareerBuilder has discontinued their previous feed to NACElink CSM sites, and the link has been removed from your instance.
However, the good news is that your students already have access to those job listings through our partnership with DirectEmployers Association (DEA). The DEA JobCentral.com site has partnerships with individual member companies and other job indexing sites like: Indeed, SimplyHired and Google. Through those indexes the CareerBuilder jobs are represented. In total there are millions of jobs that can be searched on by your students/alumni through the NACELink Extended Job Search."
If you are curious about other schools that use this system, you can see them all at: http://www.nacelink.com/nl_schools_list_c.php
I've always been a big fan of the index job search sites such as SimplyHired and Jobster. So, this is good news and we should be seeing more jobs that fall under the "NACELink Multi-School Postings" category that are relevant to your interests and career pursuits.
Posted by kkowatch on July 16, 2008 at 04:36 PM | Comments (1)
SI Careers Blog Ranked #10 Career Services Blog
I recently was notified by a fellow job search blogger, that he ranked our SI Career Blog #10 of all university career services blogs! I'm pretty excited about this -- and it encourages me to continue posting interesting and relevant articles and tips for our readers.
See the link here (and the opening text below) to read about our blog and the other top 10!
Top 10 College Career Services Blogs
Posted by Willy Franzen on Monday, June 30, 2008
A lot of people ask us, “Where do you find all the companies and jobs that you write about?” We’ve already told you about how we use Google, magazine lists, and television to find jobs, but we have a few other tricks up our sleeves as well. One is blogs - we use them a lot. Some of the most useful blogs are those published by career services offices at colleges and universities. They’re full of great tips and excellent entry-level job and internship opportunities. Although the blogs are usually geared towards the students of the school, they’re open to the public.
All of the sites we’ve included on our list of the Top 10 College Career Service Blogs are of great quality, but there weren’t too many blogs that we left off the list. That begs the question: Why aren’t more career services offices blogging? Is it lack of student interest? Many career services offices offer newsletters through e-mail, and some of these are published online, but why not use a blog for updates? It’s really easy to do, and it’s a much more flexible form of communication. We hope to see more career services offices pick up blogging. They can take a lead from the blogs listed below.
Posted by kkowatch on June 30, 2008 at 03:45 PM | Comments (0)
CV Critique Day at The Career Center
Your CV is usually the first chance a search committee has to assess your candidacy for an academic job, so you'll want your document to be as strong as possible. Our CV Critique Day offers individual feedback on your document. Contact our Information Desk at 734-764-7460 to schedule your half-hour appointment:
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Monday, July 14
12:00-2:00 p.m.
The Career Center
3200 Student Activities Building
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Posted by kkowatch on June 27, 2008 at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)
Calling all Current and Future Records Managers!
From the SAA Student Discussion List....
Are you involved in a records management-related project?
Are you a recent graduate of a records management program?
If yes, please send your news to Debra Kimok for inclusion in the July issue of The Records Manager, newsletter of the SAA Records Management Roundtable (RMRT).
We'd also like to know if you are a student of records management, or interested in records management, and are attending the SAA annual conference in San Francisco.
The RMRT annual meeting wiki page is http://www.ibiblio.org/saawiki/2008/index.php/Records_Management_Roundtable_Meeting
Tiny URL for the above: http://tinyurl.com/5hshqv
Past issues of The Records Manager can be found at http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/recmgmt/
Debra Kimok
Editor, The Records Manager
Posted by kkowatch on June 24, 2008 at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)
Employers@SI Recruiter on NPR!
Much to my surprise, I was listening to NPR on the way to work on Wednesday (6.18.08) morning, and I heard a discussion about a company that has software that can review huge amounts of electronic correspondence and use it as evidence. As I listened, I immediately knew that the company was Cataphora and the speaker was Elizabeth Charnock, CEO of Cataphora. In the fall of 2007, SI Careers hosted Ms. Charnock, a UM alumnus, as a recruiter at SI. She did a impressive presentation on her company which resulted in the recruitment of at least one of our students. If you are interested in learning more about Cataphora please contact SI Careers. Please see below for the commentary from the NPR discussion:
Investigating Employees' E-Mail Use
Morning Edition, June 18, 2008 · Co-host Steve Inskeep talks to Elizabeth Charnock, CEO of Cataphora. The California-based firm helps companies in legal matters by investigating patterns of employee e-mail use.
The E-Mail Age
E-Mail at Work: Tips to Keep You Out of Trouble
by Heidi Glenn
Ever wonder whether your boss is looking over your shoulder as you write e-mails from work? You're not being paranoid. Companies large and small have turned to monitoring employee e-mail, looking for everything from proprietary data leaks to cyberslacking.
E-mail creates the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence, according to the ePolicy Institute, which conducted, along with the American Management Association, surveys of e-mail monitoring among U.S companies. That means your electronic paper trail can be restored and reviewed — and can also be retrieved as part of a future lawsuit's discovery process.
Here are some suggestions on how to e-mail without worry.
Expect Zero Privacy. Employers are increasingly monitoring staff e-mails, instant messages and Internet usage. According to a 2007 American Management Association survey of 304 U.S. companies, 43 percent of employers store and review employees' e-mail messages. Nearly 30 percent of them have fired workers for e-mail misuse — for violating company policy, for using inappropriate or offensive language, for excessive personal use, and for breach of confidentiality. So unless your company states otherwise, assume your employer is monitoring your workplace communications, including e-mails and IMs, according to Sharon Nelson, head of Sensei Enterprises, a computer forensics and data recovery company in Fairfax, Va. Nelson suggests that before you hit send, conduct this three-part test: imagine your e-mail in a major newspaper, imagine your mom reading it and imagine it winding up on a billboard along the highway. "If it passes these tests, then it's fine," Nelson says.
How Do They Do It? Computer monitoring takes several forms. Most employers use software to automatically monitor e-mail, but many hire staff to read and review chunks of random e-mail, the survey found. Time stamps allow employers to gauge time spent on personal e-mail. And if you're afraid your boss may have it out for you, be careful: she could be monitoring your e-mail for when you slip up. So avoid using obscene, pornographic, sexual, harassing, discriminatory, defamatory, menacing or threatening language — anything that could make you a liability in your employer's eyes.
Will I know? Not generally. Two states — Connecticut and Delaware — require that employers notify employees when they're being monitored. And while an alert at log-in is a best practice for all companies, monitoring e-mail is generally unregulated. Besides, Nelson says, it's a universal given that the computer you work on is your employer's equipment. That has been "tested in the courts over and over again. It's their equipment. It's their right" to monitor. As head of Sensei, she says "I even assume I'm monitored" by Sensei's vice president of technology.
G-Mail Is No Refuge. Employers can still recover and read Internet-based e-mail like Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail when it's opened from a work-based computer. That's because the e-mail is saved to your local, company-owned hard drive. For this reason, personal e-mail from your attorney opened on your company's computer may result in waiving the attorney-client privilege.
But I Hit Delete! Computer forensics firms like Sensei can recover work e-mails that you thought you deleted. Over time, e-mail is overwritten from your work's server, but don't expect to know whether it's an e-mail from five days ago or five years ago, Nelson says. She recalls a case involving three stockbrokers who claimed they did not leave with the company database when they separated from their employer.Their e-mail logs indeed said the information had been deleted just before they left, but there was also evidence that their Palm Pilots had been synced up to their computers and, sure enough, forensics discovered the database on their handheld devices.
Disclaimers Aren't Worth a Darn. Most experts agree the sometimes ridiculously long disclaimers at the bottom of e-mails are worthless, Nelson says. "They're rote. Nobody's reading them." However, she adds, a lawyer may tell you to include them on your e-mails anyway.
Avoid the AutoComplete. One of the most frequent e-mail blunders is the AutoComplete function featured in programs such as Microsoft Outlook. AutoComplete predicts the e-mail address as you type, and if you're not careful, your message could wind up in a very different inbox than the one you intended. Case in point: the New York Times broke a story early this year that Eli Lilly and Co. was in settlement talks with the government after a lawyer associated with the company accidentally e-mailed confidential information to a Times reporter instead of to her colleague with a similar name. Either double-check that your e-mail's recipient is who you intend, or try disabling your AutoComplete function.
Watch out for copyrighted material. You wouldn't make photocopies of a chapter of a book and distribute them, would you? Same goes for electronic publications. So watch out before you send your co-workers and friends a magazine article that your company subscribes to. Say, for example, your company of a few hundred has only a handful of subscriptions to a magazine, but an article is distributed companywide. The publisher is losing out on all that subscription revenue, and your company could be liable. And if the publisher sued, your forwarded e-mails would be discoverable (and your company may be scanning your e-mail to head off potential copyright infringement lawsuits). Kim Jessum, an intellectual property attorney with Stradley Ronon in Philadelphia, suggests that before forwarding articles, find out what's permissible under the contract with the publisher: Your contract may allow for printing rights, which means you can make a printout copy of the article available to staff.
*****
National Public Radio featured a week-long series on email usage and ideas. See below for the topics and links to the articles.
Monday - E-Mail Sins, Horror Stories and Strategies
Tuesday - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91573868 by Yuki Noguchi
Wednesday - E-Mail at Work: Tips to Keep You Out of Trouble by Heidi Glenn
Posted by kkowatch on June 19, 2008 at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)
Think Social Networking is Good For You? Maybe Not!
Link to http://tinyurl.com/6aa3my* to view a great podcast by Valdis Krebs (the long-term innovator in Social Network Analysis), in which he describes how social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are silos that can actually cut us off from our social networks.
Posted by kkowatch on June 16, 2008 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)
Skills Needed To Get the Job -- Students Not Trained on The Job Anymore
IBM’s answer to IT skills crunch: Woo students
Reaches out to colleges with Web tools for honing IT skills
By John Cox , Network World , 06/13/2008
Go to http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/061308-ibm-skills.html?page=1http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/061308-ibm-skills.html?page=1 to read the article at NetworkWorld and to access all the included links.
As part of an expanded outreach to college IT students, IBM is releasing a set of Web-based tools and resources to help them hone marketable skills in the fastest-growing IT job opportunities.
IBM is adding a section to the Web site of its long-standing Academic Initiative program, which until now has focused mainly on working with faculties who teach IT and IT-related courses. The new section is designed for students, with tutorials, games, skills assessments and online forums that can supplement, and be incorporated with, regular college and university courses.
“Our key concern is the ‘skills pipeline,’” says Kevin Faughnan, an IBM veteran who’s been director of the company’s Academic Initiative since 2004. The mega-trends of globalization and services-oriented economies are made possible by information technology, creating a growing U.S. and global demand for IT skills, he says. "The information system -- the hardware and software and networking ‘complex’ -- is what’s driving the services-oriented businesses,” he says. “They need young workers who have the skills to continue innovating."
And these companies can no longer afford the lengthy and costly internal training programs that have been standard features of the business landscape, according to Faughnan. Young workers need to be productive sooner, with skills that are ready to be used. (Read “Wanted: 10 IT skills employers need today.)
College and university faculty understand this, Faughnan says. And the expanded Web resources are part of IBM’s commitment to facilitate this skills development in colleges and universities, in conjunction with the company’s existing collaboration with faculties.
But the nature of these skills and the role they play in the developing global economy mean that IT skills are no longer limited to IT professionals, but become an important, even essential, part of other business disciplines such as marketing, accounting, security and business process re-engineering. So IBM’s outreach extends beyond computer science departments to include areas such as business.
Brandeis International Business School, part of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., is using IBM’s 3-D video game, Innov8, unveiled last November, as a complementary tool for teaching business process management. In the game, a student becomes an outside consultant working with a company to re-engineer a business process in its call center, says Preeta Banerjee, assistant professor of strategy at the school.
It takes one to two hours to go through the scenario, and students write up and then talk over their impressions and reactions. As members of the Academic Initiative program, Banerjee and other faculty have taken students to IBM’s Lexington campus to meet with employees whose job is re-designing business processes. IBM says about 100 institutions of all types and sizes are now using Innov8.
IBM has keyed many of the new student resources to emerging skills that are in high demand. Many of these are in Web services and Web application development, database, and open source programming.
The new Web resources fall into seven broad areas, accessible via an extension to the IBM Web site – www.ibm.us.com/university/students:
* Service Science Management and Engineering (SSME), an emerging discipline that combines works in science, engineering and business management, intended to equip students to work in a new class of jobs, such as environmental engineering, that need a multidisciplinary expertise.
* Database technology, a package of information tools, dubbed DB2 Express-C, including free software downloads, access to a tech support forum, and publications and materials for preparing for certification exams.
* For Web 2.0 development, the new site offers WebSphere sMash, which includes scripting runtimes such as Groovy and PHP, software, and access to an online development community at ProjectZero.org.
* Web server technology, a battery of education and development resources around IBM’s downloadable lightweight Java application server, WebSphere Application Server Community Edition, based on the open source code delivered in Apache Geronimo.
* “Team-based development” with IBM’s just-unveiled Team Concert, a portal that keeps development teams in sync, based on IBM’s Jazz collaboration platform for distributed software development. Team Concert is a free download, and students can join the Jazz.net online community.
* Enterprise systems, a group of tools around emerging large-systems computing models and issues, such as the new data center, virtualization, “green IT,” and cloud computing. One element is mainframe “games” hosted on the 3-D virtual site, Second Life.
* Skills certification and job opportunity database: faculty members who are members of the Academic Initiative can request 50% discounts for their students on almost 50 IBM software and hardware certification tests. Students who pass these tests can post their résumés on the Student Opportunity Systems, a database accessed by IBM customers and business partners around the world.
BM’s Faughnan likes to quote former University of North Carolina Professor Daniel Reed, now with Microsoft Research, that IT is “the Liberal Arts of the 21st century.” “A lot of people consider [all] this as vocational training,” Faughnan says. “The truth is that this kind of education is pervasively relevant.”
Posted by kkowatch on June 16, 2008 at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)
10 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Boost Your Career
From TechCareers.com
Posted by: Logan Kugler
On: 06/10/2008 09:54:29
In: Information Technology
How to make LinkedIn work for you
As far as I'm concerned, LinkedIn is the single greatest networking tool in the world - ever. The problem is, not everyone knows how to use it to their advantage. Of all the people I've talked to about LinkedIn, most acknowledge that they're a member but only a handful are actually getting value out of the networking website. Most signed up because a friend sent them an invite and haven't really given it a second thought since.
The reality is, with more than 20 million business professionals on LinkedIn, you're missing out on countless business opportunities and the chance to build long-lasting relationships. Here are ten ways to get the ball rolling.
1. Your LinkedIn Profile = Your Resume
Instead of having a dedicated website with your resume, use LinkedIn to double as your online resume. Not only does it offer a world of more information that puts you ahead in the minds of employers, but it also boosts confidence in your credibility and can act like a qualified reference all by itself. Understand though that you need to put a reasonable amount of effort into creating an effective profile. Here Guy Kawasaki offers a primer on what it takes: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/linkedin_profil.html
2. Increase Your Visibility
Every minute LinkedIn is used a resource to find qualified people to hire or do business with. By adding the right keywords in your profile (such as the words someone would probably use to search for someone with your expertise) you're much more likely to appear at the top of search results. My LinkedIn profile is a good example of this (note all of the references to the areas of writing I specialize in): http://www.linkedin.com/in/logankugler
3. Grow Your Network Fast
Expanding the size of your network is a snap. Aside from being able to easily import your entire address book from most email clients and automatically view who is a LinkedIn member, you can search for other members by companies you used to work for, people you used to work with, and people who went to school with you. In order to use LinkedIn to its full potential, you should have at least 50 first degree connections.
4. Ask For Advice
Recently, LinkedIn added a feature called LinkedIn Answers and it's phenomenally useful. It allows you to ask virtually any business-related question across the collective knowledge of both your network and the greater LinkedIn network. For example, here are some questions that were recently answered:
• What should a presentation about a major acquisition include?
• How do I set a retainer fee for my consulting business?
• Which slogan do you like most?
• What should we pay a Chief Strategy Officer?
Its uses are infinite from anything to starting your own business to getting help with a marketing proposal to finding a mentor.
5. Migrate Into a New Job
When starting a new job, you're often treading into unknown territory. To help familiarize yourself with the company and your new co-workers, you can use LinkedIn to study their profiles and get to know them better, maybe even send them a quick note letting them know that you're looking forward to working with them.
6. Fill-in Your Business Trip
Have a business trip scheduled for Atlanta and Chicago next week but have some time in-between meetings? Using LinkedIn, you can search your network for connections local to your destination(s) and then reach out to those people to meet for a power lunch or quick meeting to put faces to name, suggests Eric Butow, CEO of Butow Communications Group and author of the upcoming book How to Succeed in Business Using LinkedIn (September 2008; $19.95).
7. Learn More About New Contacts
Say you have a meeting scheduled with John Smith tomorrow morning but don't know anything about him besides that's he's the VP of business development for XYZ Corporation. Using LinkedIn, you might find out that you went to the same school or share similar interests, giving you a number of creative ways to break the ice.
8. Accelerate Sales Delivery
When a client drops a large project on your plate that requires skills beyond the scope of your team's abilities, LinkedIn is a great resource for finding top subcontractors to outsource parts of the project to. "With LinkedIn, you can find partners who have the skills you need to deliver a complete solution for a client," says Butow.
9. Research a Potential Employer
If you're thinking about working at a particular company, LinkedIn offers some unique statistics. By clicking on the company name in someone's profile, you're brought to a page that will show you a list of all of the employees working for that company on LinkedIn, LinkedIn members that were newly hired by the company, recent promotions, and key info like the size of the company, when it was founded, and the average age of employees. Uniquely, it will also show the common career path of where former employees ventured to next and which companies current employees are most connected to. You can also learn who previously held the position you're currently applying for. Here is TechCareer's parent company Beyond.com's company page: http://www.linkedin.com/companies/5259/Beyond.com
10. Farm References
Everyone wants testimonials, but sometimes they can be difficult to obtain. Not only does LinkedIn make it much easier to ask a former co-worker or boss for a "recommendation," but it's also a whole lot easier for whoever you're asking to give you one because assuming they enjoyed working with you, writing a testimonial on LinkedIn only takes a few minutes. Moreover, it has an even greater impact than one just stuck in your resume because it's visible to the world and it's interchangeable so you can copy and paste your LinkedIn recommendations into your resume as well.
Posted by kkowatch on June 11, 2008 at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)
Ann Arbor's Pure Visibility Hires 3 SI Alums...
May 23, 2008 - Ann Arbor, MI - Leading internet marketing company Pure Visibility, Inc., has grown its team with three new hires: Analytics Muse Jessica Hullman, Information Superhighway Tour Guide Jason Young, and User Experiologist Michael Beasley.
About Jason Young, Information Superhighway Tour Guide
Jason earned his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Temple University and came to the University of Michigan School of Information for his Master’s Degree in Library and Information Services. As an AdWords-certified librarian and web junkie, Jason cares a lot about information resources that meet people’s needs.
About Jessica Hullman, Analytics Muse
Jessica is tied for the most degreed person at Pure Visibility. She has two Master’s degrees, one from Naropa University in Writing and Poetics, and another in Information Analysis and Retrieval from the University of Michigan School of Information. She brings her creativity and writing skills in addition to her deep understanding of information design, web analytics, and data visualization to add to Pure Visibility’s quantitative user experience and web analytics team.
About Michael Beasley, User Experiologist
Mike completed his education at the University of Michigan School of Information, where he earned his Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction. Before that, he earned his undergraduate degree in English and Music at the University of Michigan. Mike was previously a usability engineer at Compuware and at Thomson Gale. Mike is currently president of the Michigan chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Organization and Associate Content Editor for UX Magazine.
About Pure Visibility
Pure Visibility is an Internet marketing firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, specializing in Web site optimization and pay-per-click management. Founded in 2005, Pure Visibility helps national and local companies increase their visibility on the Web with its “Own Page One” strategy, which combines multiple forms of online marketing and web analytics to generate business and competitive advantage for their customers. Pure Visibility’s owners have been search engine marketing experts since 1997. Their company has continued leadership in the field of search engine marketing by employing one of the first 100 Google AdWords certified professionals in the world, and Pure Visibility is now a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant. Pure Visibility has recently been recognized for its growth by the National Association of Women Business Owners and the Michigan Small Business and Technology Development Center awards.
Posted by kkowatch on June 11, 2008 at 11:25 AM | Comments (1)
This Summer at The Career Center for Graduate Students
Summer is often an important time for career exploration and decision-making, and beginning a job search. Wherever you are in your process, The Career Center is here to support you. Whether you are clarifying your plans or beginning to take action steps, we offer a range of services and resources to help you along the way. This Summer at The Career Center highlights a number of ways to connect with our office during the next few months.
View This Summer at:
http://careercenter.umich.edu/students/gradservices/thismonth/index.html.
We hope to see you at The Career Center as your summer progresses!
--
Tom Lehker
Senior Assistant Director,
Graduate Student Services
The Career Center
3200 Student Activities Building
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1316
734-764-7460
Click below to read the events being offered.
Connecting with The Career Center over the Summer
The Career Center is open throughout the summer, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Career advising is available Monday-Thursday 11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. and Friday 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. These 20 minute sessions can get you started with our office, or help with specific needs such as a resume or cover letter critique. Call 734-764-7460 to reserve your time.
Career counseling is available by appointment throughout the summer. Stop by our Information Desk or call 734-764-7460 to schedule a time to meet with a member of our Graduate Student Team. Half-hour and hour appointments can help with the full range of career planning and job search needs.
Academic Job Search Strategies and Resources: Sciences and Engineering
Are you planning to launch an academic job search in the fall? The summer is often a critical time for those planning to be on the market next year. To help you prepare for the academic job search, plan to attend this session. Come learn tips and strategies from UM faculty who have been through the process as both candidates and committee members. The panel will include representatives from Engineering, PIBS and The Career Center.
Academic Job Search Strategies and Resources:
Sciences and Engineering
Tuesday, June 17
11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Room 2710 Furstenberg Student Study Center,
Buhl Building (2nd Floor Taubman)
Academic Job Search Strategies and Resources: Humanities and Social Sciences
Are you planning to launch an academic job search in the Fall? The summer is often a critical time for those planning to be on the market next year. To help you prepare for the academic job search, plan to attend this session. Come learn tips and strategies from faculty who have been through the process as both candidates and committee members.
Academic Job Search Strategies and Resources: Humanities and Social Sciences
Thursday, June 19
12:00 p.m.–1:30 p.m.
The Career Center
3200 Student Activities Building
Career Assessment “Tests”
There really is no such thing as a career test with right or wrong answers, or that indicates the best career. However, The Career Center does offer a variety of self-assessment instruments to help you build your list of career possibilities and assist you in making informed career decisions. Visit our web page to learn more about the career assessment tools that we offer.
CV Critique Days
Your CV is usually the first chance a search committee has to assess your candidacy for an academic job, so you’ll want your document to be as strong as possible. Our CV Critique Days offer individual feedback on your document. Contact our Information Desk at 734-764-7460 to schedule your half hour appointment:
Monday, July 14, 12:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m.
Thursday, July 24, 9:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m.
Tuesday, August 12, 3:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
Posted by kkowatch on June 10, 2008 at 03:20 PM | Comments (0)
Department of State U.S. Student Fulbright Award
Have you considered applying for a Department of State U.S. Student Fulbright Award? Grants provide round-trip airfare, a stipend and health insurance for approximately nine months for U.S. citizens to study, conduct research, to teach English, or to work in the creative and performing arts in over 100 countries.
To apply for this program through the University of Michigan, applicants must (a) be U-M students, alumni or staff; (b) be U.S. citizens; (c) have completed an undergraduate degree by the beginning of the award; and (d) demonstrate the language skills necessary to complete the proposed project.
Candidate and project eligibility vary by participating country, and applicants can usually only apply to one country. Please see complete program and application information on-line at www.fulbrightonline.org. Please note: as with all universities, the U-M application deadline is significantly earlier than the “at-large” deadline listed on this website.
The application deadline is noon on Wednesday, September 10 – 2008 for awards which will begin approximately a year later. Applicants must submit one copy of their (a) application form (signed), (b) project proposal (maximum length: 2 pages, single-spaced 12-pt. font), (c) personal statement (maximum length: 1 page, single-spaced, 12-pt. font), (d) official transcript for all undergraduate and graduate work, and (e) original or faxed letter(s) of affiliation (if any). (f) Three letters of recommendation must be submitted through the Embark application system, as well (see instructions on the web site).
Information Sessions will be held at the International Institute, School of Social Work Building (on the corner of East and South University), in room 2609 (second floor) on the following days and times:
Tuesday, June 10th at noon
The Institute of International Education (IIE) administers the Department of State U.S. Student Fulbright Program. At the University of Michigan, the program is administered by the International Institute. Please email your questions to Fulbright Program Advisor, Amy Kehoe at akehoe@umich.edu
Posted by kkowatch on June 09, 2008 at 08:43 AM | Comments (0)
Accept A Job and Keep Looking - Ethical or No? You Decide
A recent listserv discussion posted this question/scenario to a listserv and gathered the following responses on whether or not its ethical to accept a job offer and then continue to interview and ultimately accept another job offer. (FYI - Our policy here at SI Careers is that it is not ethical to do so). But, you'll see that the opinions on this topic vacillate widely! Its an interesting debate to consider from all perspectives.
SCENARIO
I have a disturbing situation I would like your help with - I'm not exactly sure how to handle this. One of our '08 grads just accepted a job offer a week or so ago, through one of our vendor partners. He then received a call to interview with another company that has recruited through our school rather heavily in the past (5 of our alumni work there). He told them he had accepted another offer and they asked him to stop by anyway and talk about future possibilities. He agreed to the meeting,
Long story short, the 2nd company, knowing full well that he had accepted another offer, gave him an offer anyway, for $10000 more than the first company.
He wants to take that 2nd offer and we have been extremely firm with him, counseling him that under no circumstances should he do so. We can only counsel him though - we can't force his hand, although I would like to.
How would you suggest we handle this situation with both of the companies? Should we cut off all ties with the company that acted so unethically? Should we report that company to our recruitment vendor (I don't think they are a member)? Have you had this situation happen before, and if so, how did you handle it?
RESPONSES
I agree with you. Competition is great but when a recruiter knows an offer has been extended and accepted, I have a problem with that. I think we (career srvicews staff) are bound by morals, ethics and our recruiting vendor's policies. I think many recruiters feel that the students have to do their part to be ethical but they can do whatever it take to meet the goal. I have heard several professionals from Business and Engineering fields who would see no issue with what that recruiter did. I think simply letting that recruiter know that he put the student and your institution in an awkward situation may be all that you can do. Remind the recruiter that the student is going to renege and that other company may call and share that with you and ask you to address it. The recruiter with the higher offer would probably be upset if the shoe was on the other foot. There is really not a whole lot you can do.
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I'm curious about what's unethical regarding the employer's behavior. I thought I'd share another perspective of this - maybe more from the "other side" of the table. I don't think it's an ideal situation, but unethical? There are times when a competitive job market allows for multiple offers to be extended to the most desirable candidates-- an example of supply and demand. I know plenty of recruiters that this happens to them often-- and that it often comes down to the candidate choosing the option that works best for them. Maybe the first company should have made a more competitive offer.
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I would say this is the way the free market works, so this is a good thing for all, even the first company as it provides them information that they need to be competitive with salaries. I wouldn't say this is unethical, as this is the way thinks work.
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I used to work in HR for the 11th largest industrial corporation in the US, many moons ago. My experience working with this company involved a lot of competition with like companies. We typically offered more money AND benefits, and got the person. What the second company did is not unusual. It's really based on free enterprise. The student has the ultimate decision. This may not be what you wanted to hear, sorry.
Continue reading...
For what it's worth--both my husband (with over 30 years experience in business) and I (with over 20 years experience in higher education administration) feel that the student should definitely take the larger offer and have no compunction about doing so.
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I would suggest that you have the student call the first company and ask them what they would advise him to do. If the first company cares about what's in the best interest of people then they will suggest he take the position at the second company.
In the business world what the second company is doing isn't all together uncommon. I would suggest that you cut off ties with the second company and report them to the vendor. I agree with you that what they're doing is unethical. I would also suggest that you tell the second company that what they did was very unethical. I've never dealt with this type of situation but thought I'd still give you my thoughts on this.
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Unfortunately, we've experienced similar situations to this in the past. It is ultimately up to the student to decide, but we have created a participation agreement at sign-in (see View Terms at CCO Express sign-in box at https://www.cco.purdue.edu/Student/) to help us leverage our position. On occasion, we have withdrawn interviewing privileges to students who violated this agreement. As for the employers, we may have a few more restraints on actions that we can undertake given campus politics and our status as a public institution. However, I have had success in contacting the company's university relations manager (if one existed) and informing them of the issue. In two cases, it was a rogue line manager that pursued students already committed to other companies. The URM intervened to help insure that such circumstances did not resurface again with that company.
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You handled it beautifully and from what I read continue to do so. Although you can't stop the student from accepting the 2nd offer he certainly knows that if he does it would be unethical. You can only do so much :-) When it comes right down to it the student never should have accepted the offer to visit. My next step would be to send a formal letter to the 2nd company expressing displeasure in their actions and letting them know you will not allow them to recruit at Wabash if the continue to use such unethical tactics. Hope this helps and good luck!! Issues like these are so unprofessional and unpleasant to handle.
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As a recruiter, I share this perspective. It's a free market, and the best price prevails. It happens all the time. Unless the kid took some sort of sign-on bonus, his decision to make a change is not unethical. He will shoot himself in the foot with the first company, forever, but that is his choice. If he accepted a sign-on bonus from company #1, he should return it. Otherwise, the first company has a choice. They can either offer him more money or lose him. Competition is what it's all about, and recruiters, today, know that. (It's deftly not a reflection on you or your career center). The candidate needs to do what is best for him. Companies always do what is best for them, so it is his prerogative to let company #1 know he got a better offer.
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Maybe a student policy regarding interviewing after accepting an offer needs to be put in place? I hate always writing new rules every time a student screws up, but at the our school, we did exactly that.
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As the war for talent continues to heat up, you will find this situation happening more all the time. I do not agree that this is an unethical situation fpr the employer. If a candidate agrees to come in and meet an employer after accepting an offer from another employer, then he has invited the 2nd employer to consider him. If he is a good candidate, they would be compelled to make him an offer - he is sitting right in front of them. I think the situation is regrettable but it would never have happened if the candidate did not entertain the invitation to meet with the 2nd company. Employers are used to competing with their competitors for talent on a day to day basis - it is the nature of recruiting. I am certain many of your students are in the enviable position of having more than one offer to decide on. I think your distress is coming from the student accepting a second offer that is much better than the first offer - if there is a question of ethics, it lies with your student.
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Hate to suggest but you're pointing the finger at the wrong party. Your student was the unethical party by continuing to interview after accepting an offer. I had this happen while in an MBA career services role. While in your circumstance the company didn't care, in my experience, the company didn't know the student had accepted another offer and I almost lost a top employer.
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This happens all the time within the Federal government...with students/grads accepting an offer with one agency but then later declining and going to work for another (competing) agency. As recruiters, this is something that we understand and just move on to another selection. I didn't realize how it worked for private sector companies.....just wanted to say thanks for letting me see how others work.
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My gut reaction is that yes, you ought to refrain from letting the second company recruit through your system. However do you have anything in writing that would allow you to do just that? Do you have a clause that they sign or agree to when recruiting that states they will participate in ethical recruiting behaviors and if they violate that agreement, they may lose recruiting privileges? Certainly the student can go back to the first company and let them know what happened if he wants to negotiate a better salary, but I also agree he needs to work for the first company for a year or two and then can consider moving on. Your school will hear about it if he decides to go with the second company. Good luck, excellent question to pose to our group as you will get some great debate.
Posted by kkowatch on June 04, 2008 at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)
PUBLIB "Cold Resume" Discussion Thread
An SI student pointed out a really good discussion that was going on on the PUBLIB listserv. I've pasted the thread below. Note that you find a varying range of opinons here -- some for, some against -- which just shows how subjective the job search process can be!
Also, note that this is a question that a current grad student asked on a public listserv. I recommend this method for getting information, networking, and get a variety of answers to questions that are relvant to your own job search. In fact, I just saw an SI student post a message on a listserv earlier this week with a question pertaining to research that they were doing for their summer internship.
ORIGINAL MESSAGE
Good day, all!
This post is mainly for the folks that do hiring/firing (HR, Directors, etc.)
I am a GSLIS student (Simmons College, Boston MA) and am starting to think about my upcoming job search (half way through the program, yeah!). I do NOT want to get into the discussion of if there are jobs or not (I am operating under the assumption that there are jobs and I will be hired for one of them). I was wondering how everyone that does hiring feels about getting "cold" (read unsolicited) resumes in the mail. Do you automatically ditch them? Keep them
on file if they look promising even if you don't have any openings at the moment? I DON'T want to commit any librarian faux paux (I hope I spelled that correctly). However, I have always believed that if one wants to work at a certain company, and your resume is stellar, it is a good idea to send it, so that it is on file and access able when there is an opening.
There are certain libraries that I would love to work at, and would be willing to wait for a job to open up. I would send my resume in a heart beat if it meant I was considered. But if sending my resume "cold" meant I would nix my chances I would wait until a formal job announcement was made.
Thoughts anyone?
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RESPONSES
For myself, I just can't throw away a good resume - at least not for a while. If I receive a viable unsolicitated resume I put it in a file for 6 months (or until I clean out the file).
Good luck! By the way, are you asking this question so you know where you can send your resume? Very clever if you are!
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Working at a smaller library (20 FTE staff), there are limited opportunities for hiring professional staff, so while I would not trash it unread, it is unlikely that a cold resume would be considered in a future job search. A vanilla resume, while being read, would probably not be saved. An unsolicited resume most likely to catch my attention is one addressed directly to me, with a cover letter explaining the reason for the cold resume and what unique skills you could bring to my attention. That would interest me enough to at least call you if I am favorable and might lead me
to keep an ear to the ground for possible opportunities. A cold resume for an intro level position, not so much.
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Our official position (stated on our employment opportunities webpage)is that we only accept resumes/applications for currently open positions. That said, I know some of us do keep really good ones for a while in case we have an opening at some point. Whether a library keeps resumes may also depend on how their hiring is done. Some places require all hiring be done through the city or county HR department, and their requirements will likely be stricter on these things. Here all department/branch managers are responsible for hiring when a position opens in their department or branch, so it really ends up being a personal decision as to whether we want to try to keep up with a resume we may never use. If there is a library you are really interested in working for, you might give them a call to see what their policy is. You may even be able to talk to the person who makes hiring decisions and get a chance to make a good impression before even sending your resume.
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At times a "cold" c.v. has made me say, "I don't have a job here, but I have heard of jobs at _____." It depends on the quality of the c.v. and the cover letter. I don't think they hurt, in most cases. "Ya never know."
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I keep them on file for one year, and refer to them when jobs open up. I respect the fact that the candidates are actively looking. The cover letter is extremely important to me -- especially with cold resumes.
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It might help to research the specific employment policies of libraries you are interested in. Many libraries hire through their jurisdiction's HR office. Library staff do not see resumes or applications untill there is an opening. In those cases a letter to the Library Director stating that you are interested in employment opportunities with their library and asking about their proceedures and what qualifications they particularly look for might accomplish the goal of becoming a "known" quantity.
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I don't mind getting unsolicited resumes from librarians, but if there are no current openings, the documents may sit in a box for months or years. In many respects, the cover letter addressing an applicant's interest in a specific, advertised position is among the key elements to a successful application. I ask myself what she/he has to say about the specific job and how well that letter is written before giving careful scrutiny to the resume itself. Some of the miscellaneous cover letters I have received with "Greetings" and "To whom it may concern" followed by bland offerings of services haven't inspired much attention.
Instead of carpet bombing libraries with unsolicited resumes and generic cover letters, I would urge that you spend your time before graduating from Simmons in 2009 by establishing a "presence" on the web 2.0 world. Do you have an entry in Facebook? Do you have a personal blog or website with your vita and professional activities noted? I would expect that you will encounter such information at Simmons or with such basic learning sites as http://learning2slnsw.blogspot.com/
where you will be given tips on how to create your own blog, become active in Facebook networking and on discussion lists among colleagues who are actively in the field discussing issues. Your present query to PUBLIB is a good start.
That being said, I should confess that I did commence job searches back in 1973 as I was planning to graduate from SUNY Geneseo with an MLS with a blitz of resume's and cover letters to many dozens of libraries. One of them did finally land be a job at Cleveland Public Library. Desperate as I was for a job, I was willing to go anywhere. If you have a narrow preference in terms of location, your search may take some time. If you are willing to relocate and go where you are needed/wanted, it probably won't take so long. But in this day and age, a web presence is probably essential to success on the job hunt.
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I read the resumes I receive, and if it appeals to me and I anticipate an opening (in say six months or less) I'll hold on to it. I'll also pass it along to my local colleagues.
In some cases here on Long Island, you would be required to take a civil service exam to qualify for a full time position. In libraries like ours, which is an Association library, there are no civil service exam requirements.
I think you need to get a sense of the corporate culture of particular libraries you have an interest in. Some places have a hierarchical structure and specific procedures for filling job openings, others are more flexible in approach and procedure. Sending a cold resume is one way of finding out.
...and that's MY opinion
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My advice is not to send a "cold resume". I get two or three a month, and they all get tossed or deleted. This is probably a product of being in a place many consider a desirable place to live. That same geographic desirability means that when a position is posted, I get swamped with applications. The policy of our county government, of which the library is a department, is applications are only accepted when there is a position posting.
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I agree with Ed. Sending a cold resume sends a signal that you are not very savvy about the job search process and are sending resumes willy nilly to quite a few libraries. Makes me think the sender is desperate, not very discerning, or both. Our official policy is that no one is considered for a job unless it is currently posted and an application is on file for it. I toss them immediately. We expect and usually receive resumes and cover letters related to specific openings.
I encourage you to network in the region or regions where you'd like to work. Find out who is likely to be hiring soon for one or more jobs. Find out how the hiring process works. Is it strictly library based, or does it include interaction with a city or county government and possibly a civil service exam. Visit the libraries if possible and ask the librarians on duty questions about how it works there.
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You can join the PUBLIB listserv at http://lists.webjunction.org/mailman/listinfo/publib
Posted by kkowatch on June 04, 2008 at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)
SAA Mentorship Program
Another message I pulled from a listserv -- if you are an alumnus who just happens to be a reader, this would be a great way to get involved with SAA and to keep in touch with the new edge of archiving.
If you are a SI - ARM student, now you know that this resource exists!
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I am serving as the SAA mentoring program coordinator for the Membership Committee. The program matches a new archivist with an archivist who has been in the field for a while and is willing to serve as a resource person to offer advice and share work experiences. The time commitment is very manageable, and it is usually e-mailing or speaking over the phone once a month or more often depending on the mentor and protegé. Sometimes there is a possibility of meeting in person if both persons live or work in the same area, but this is entirely up to