So, for anyone looking for a new or alternative career, I would suggest that you choose a path of activities that you enjoy, which makes good use of your expertise, and allows you to learn something new so you can continue to grow professionally.

When selling your unique capabilities, talk about them in terms of benefits to your customer or potential employer.  Our professional foundations open doors throughout our knowledge-based economy; all you have to do is walk through them and take on the challenge of the path (potentially) less traveled.  One thing is for certain, in SLA you will find colleagues with many “non-traditional” careers who take full advantage of their library and information science skills every day – from market research, social networking consulting, search engine optimization, to information architecture, and so on.  SLA can also help you build new skills and competencies to make your non-traditional career path dreams come true.

When I was a newly minted librarian, I was given the advice to take the initiative and make things happen in order to find ways to be valuable to my organization. As a new librarian to the tenure track, I heard about a grant for converting traditional courses to online learning environments.  This may sound like old hat, but it was 1997 and the most technologically advanced people were using dial-up modems from their homes.  I had never taught a course before, but I knew html, and I was fascinated by the possibilities of the web.  I talked a couple of colleagues into writing the grant with me, and we got it!

So, I recommend the same to you: take the initiative and make things happen.  As you think about this advice, know that you don’t have to be completely trained or have all the facts – you really only need to have the guts to fail. Stay current in our profession (read blogs and journals, attend SLA Annual Conference, etc.) and take the opportunity to get actively involved to continue growing your skills and knowledge.  As a candidate for President-elect, member retention through active engagement and involvement is important to me.   Look at volunteer opportunities within SLA to see if we can help build your toolkit of skills, knowledge and abilities in a safe and supportive professional environment – from event planning to bookkeeping and a whole lot more.  We exist to help each other grow and develop to make our professional dreams come true.  Reach out to an SLA colleague that is working in an area that interests you and chat with them about what they do, how they got there and what additional advice they might provide to someone wanting to follow the same path.  There are many ways up the mountain of a career in library science, but it is always a good idea to talk to someone who has already traveled on a path that interests you.

Always pursue your passion. If you follow it, your career may or may not end up non-traditional, but I guarantee you will love what you do.  If you’d like to talk more about careers in library and information science, or if you’d like some feedback on your resume, I’d love to connect with you at leslie.reynolds@colorado.edu, Twitter (@leslier), or on LinkedIn.  I look forward to hearing from you.

The post Advice for Both Newly Minted & More Seasoned Professionals Who are Interested in Non-traditional Career Paths – Leslie Reynolds, Candidate for President-Elect appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

It is amazing to see how many non-traditional roles and careers special librarians pursue: from competitive intelligence and knowledge management to big data and user-experience.  This is part of what drew me to SLA – the openness to new roles and challenges with access to a broad support network when those opportunities arose.  Given this diversified professional activity, it is hard to come up with one-size fits all advice but there are a few overarching guiding principles that have helped me throughout my career:  (Newly-minted Ninja Librarians who attended this session at the conference may recognize these!)

Cultivate Confidence: I am not naturally a confident person.  Neither is one of the most professional women I’ve always admired – my mom.  She went from single mom and graduate student to professor and later associate provost at a Midwestern university.  In my mind she always earned people’s respect and put them at ease.  Yet as I began my own foray into the professional world, she shared a secret with me – much of the time she had to self-talk her way into a confident frame of mind.  “Fake it till you feel it,” was a piece of advice she would repeat often.  And you know something?  It works.

So the next time you are met with a challenge, list the evidence (your skills and experience) that prove your readiness for the challenge. Having confidence means knowing what you can do well while also acknowledging that you’re still learning and growing.

Don’t be Afraid to Fail: Stories that focus primarily on successes and what went right often feel, well, intimidating.  Don’t get me wrong – it helps to learn what methods are most likely to lead to success.  Yet sometimes it can be just as instructive to hear about where things went wrong and how someone’s strategy changed as a result.  British actor Hugh Laurie once described something he learned from his father: “Winning doesn’t really teach you anything.  You win.  End of story.  But the losing and how you deal with it and what you take from it.  That’s the interesting bit.” Failure is not the end of the world.  Even Thomas Jefferson and Steve Jobs accepted that failure is a part of success.

Be Adaptable: Change is a certainty.  While anticipating change has its value, sometimes the best thing we can do is to be open and ready to roll with it.  This isn’t easy, especially at first.  Yet recognizing this and giving yourself a chance to process the discomfort with an objective eye can help.  Adopt a wait-and-see attitude about where it might lead before determining that it is bad.  If possible, look for places where you can take some control and affect your own change.

Our professional growth is organic by nature and often takes us in a direction we didn’t expect.  At times like this, SLA offers two important benefits: 1) Stellar educational opportunities that help us gain the skills needed to meet new challenges and 2) Generous mentors whose support allows us to feel confident and hopeful about where the next leg of our professional journey will lead.  As President-Elect, I’d work to ensure that members of all backgrounds and experience levels could turn to SLA for guidance throughout their careers.

The post Career Advice for Librarians at Any Level – Jill Strand, Candidate for President-Elect appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

We always tell candidates to prepare, prepare, prepare when it comes to an upcoming interview.

However, how do you prepare for questions you’re not even sure you will be asked?

How about if you were asked “What is the capital of Oregon?”

Would this throw you? 

Believe us, questions like this happen! What to do?

Tackle the general questions first.  Preparing ahead of time for common questions will help you build and project confidence throughout the process and will help you recover more quickly if an Oregon-like question pops up along the way.

Here is a list of commonly asked questions TRAK suggests you prepare to answer:

1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Why are you looking for a new position?
3. What interests you about this opening?
4. Why do you want to work for X organization?
5. What major challenges and problems did you face? How did you handle them?
6. What motivates you?
7. Tell me about an achievement of which you are proud?
8. Describe a difficult work situation / project and how you overcame it.
9. What questions do you have for me?

When the Oregon-like question pops up use the following technique to help you formulate an effective response:

• Remember with these types of questions hiring managers are NOT necessarily looking for a specific answer but are testing how quickly you think on your feet! It is a way to see how you handle pressure. The only answers that probably won’t work here are “No” and “I don’t know.”
• Take a moment of silence before you speak to think through your answer. Take a deep breath or a drink of water to give yourself a few moments to gather your thoughts.
• If your first instinct is to answer “No” or “I don’t know” think about sharing what you do know OR how you would go about learning more to answer the question in a positive light.

For example, if you’re asked if you have used Millennium and you haven’t, you can explain that although you haven’t had the chance to work with Millennium in a professional setting you were introduced to it in school and are familiar with similar products.

Using an optimistic tone in your response leaves the hiring manager with the impression that although you haven’t worked with Millennium specifically you have a background that would help you get up to speed quickly if given the opportunity.

A few other tips that we like to emphasis in the interview process are as follows:

• Always research the company you’re interviewing with so you can speak to their mission.  Nothing is worse than hearing that you don’t know what the company does! This is a common complaint we hear from hiring managers so taking the time to link your response to interview question in the context of their mission will help you stand out in the crowd!
• While the question “tell me your top three strengths and weaknesses” isn’t asked as frequently anymore, it is always good to have a fallback answer.  To prepare for this and other commonly asked questions it is a good idea to hold a mock interview with a friend or on your own in front of a mirror. It sounds silly but it works!

Hint: If you are asked about your weaknesses, NEVER answer that you have no improvements to make!  No matter where you are in your career, everyone has something they are working on developing.  Relate your response to an area of professional interest and a skill you are trying to develop to help you accomplish your goal. Then relate how your focus on developing this expertise will be an asset to the organization you hope to join in the long term!

• Finally, be prepared to answer the question: What are your salary requirements? Be sure to consult the job advertisement to understand the salary range for the position and develop a response with this factor in mind.  DON’T bring up this question on your own! Let the hiring manager initiate this line of questioning.

Ultimately, the interview is an opportunity to highlight all you have to offer to a prospective employer. Your resume got you in the door … the hiring manager is already interested! Be confident in yourself and the work you put into preparing for the interview.  Smile, be positive, and SELL yourself!

Good Luck! Knock ‘em dead!

Maura & Raechel

The post Preparing for Tough Interview Questions: Tips from TRAK Records & Library appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

During the last decade—and in some cases stretching out over another prior decade or so—corporate and organizational leaders have come to recognize the benefits of high-quality information and knowledge management. It has been a phenomenal realization, this sea change in the way organizational leaders think.   It affects nearly every exchange that takes place in every unit of every organization (indeed, some make the case that this move toward better information sharing is taking place in society at large). So it is no huge surprise that with all the talk about “big data” and “drowning in information,” companies and organizations are looking for new leaders to address their information, knowledge management (KM), and strategic learning needs.

And it’s the perfect job for you.

As your company’s special librarian (or research associate, information center manager, strategic knowledge professional, or whatever you’re called), how many times have you been asked to talk about knowledge management (KM) with a colleague? With a project manager? Or with a program officer? Or a company executive?

What about when you were asked to take on a knowledge management (or “collaboration” or “records” or “data management”) assignment (“We have a little KM initiative going and we need your help”)?

How did you respond?

The news for us—as SLA members—is that KM is now part of our working lives. It wasn’t always, and for many years our company’s leaders just didn’t think much about KM.

Perhaps we didn’t pay much attention either. Maybe we were too busy running our libraries?

It all began to change a few years ago, and we all found ourselves moving toward KM. For one thing, KM began to gain attention among leaders in the management community. And as managers began to connect the electronic capture of KM elements with knowledge sharing, performance, and strategic learning, the advantages of KM began to fall into place (and, importantly, to be recognized as corporate advantages). These advantages, in turn, began to make even more sense when senior managers began to recognize the futility of speaking about “managing” knowledge and put their interest in knowledge development and knowledge sharing in more practical terms.

By the late 1990s, we were speaking about knowledge services, the management and service-delivery methodology—a way to work—that combines information management, KM, and strategic learning into an over-arching operational function. As a management methodology, knowledge services recognizes that the most critical asset of any group or environment is what its people know, and this knowledge—this intellectual capital—is the organization’s most competitive asset. Moving to knowledge services provides the organization with the tools its people need for ensuring that the company’s intellectual assets are captured, organized, analyzed, interpreted, and customized for maximum return.

Sound familiar? Of course it does: we do all these things, and we’re the experts for each task in that list above. There’s no question about it: the single employee in the organization best qualified to manage and lead the KM/knowledge services effort is the company’s special librarian.  Special librarians know about information, knowledge, and strategic learning. We know about knowledge development and knowledge sharing (what we like to call “KD/KS”)—it’s what we special librarians have been doing throughout our history. And for us individually, throughout our careers.

And our work now has a new flavor. It matches what organizations and companies are looking for when they talk about the need for a “strong” KM/knowledge services function in the organization. And it becomes clearer to us every day that we special librarians are the best people in the organization to work as knowledge managers and knowledge services professionals.

And if we’re not yet as highly specialized in KM and knowledge services as we want to be (or as our managers and clients would like us to be), we have the resources for developing our expertise, thanks to SLA.  All we have to do is take advantage of Click U’s offerings of courses to support us in our work.

Learn More

More information about KM, knowledge services, and knowledge strategy is available from SLA, beginning with the SLA 2013 Annual Conference in San Diego. KMKS101 (Fundamentals of Knowledge Management and Knowledge Services) will be offered on Saturday, June 8, following KMKS102 (The Knowledge Audit: Evaluating Knowledge Capital Use), offered on Friday June 7. The other four courses in the KMKS Certificate Program are available online throughout the year: KMKS103 (Knowledge Strategy: Developing the Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Culture) in August, KMKS105 (Change Management and Change Implementation in the Knowledge Domain) in October, KMKS104 (Networking and Social Media: Technology-Enabled Knowledge Sharing) in February 2014, and KMKS106 (Critical Success Factors: Measuring Knowledge Services) in April 2014.

For more information about the KMKS program or individual courses, please contact Click University.

The post Does Your Professional Future Include KM and Knowledge Services? appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

In any profession, collaboration is key. In the information profession, it’s a driver of success and impact.

Working in groups can be fun and productive or the bane of your existence. Learn how information professionals accomplish tasks through collaboration, either within or outside their work place.

When:

2 choices on Tuesday, May 14th:

Session #1 at 17:30 UTC (1:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:30 a.m. Pacific)
Great Britain/United Kingdom is one hour ahead of UTC during summer.

Session #2 at 03:00 UTC (11:00 p.m. Eastern / 8:00 p.m. Pacific)
[Wednesday, 15 May - 13:00 Canberra / 11:00 Perth / 08:30 New Delhi]

Questions to answer:

1. In your experience, what are some skills or tricks of the trade for successful collaboration?
   -First 15 minutes-
2. What online or in-person resources or technologies are key to successfully collaborating on a project?
   -Second 15 minutes-
3. How do you handle difficult, slacking, or reluctant to engage group members?
   -Third 15 minutes-
4. Without disclosing proprietary information, what were the outcomes of the most successful collaboration you’ve had?
   -Last 15 minutes-

In the spirit of organization:

Try to tweet your answers to question 1 during the first 15-minutes of your session, answers to question 2 in the second 15-minutes of your session, and so on. You can take your queue to move on from the @SLAhq handle, which will tweet the appropriate question at the start of each 15-minute interval.

New here?

Check out How to #SLAtalk and the recaps of the first and second sessions.

Following the session:

Stay tuned to the SLA Blog where we’ll post a collection of great answers, as well as the link to all the tweets from the session. Notice your tweet being favorited from @SLAhq? You’ll probably be featured in our round-up.

The post #SLAtalk: Collaboration – Better…Stronger…Faster appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

SLA, in partnership with Financial Times, is aiming to provide examples and insight on how information professionals can boost value, as well as methods to measure that growing value.  To accomplish this task, we’d like your participation.

The results of the study will be compiled in an in-depth report made available to SLA members, as well as discussed by an expert panel at the SLA 2013 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO.

Please take 15 minutes to complete the questionnaire.

Why participate?

• the more thoughtful and complete participation we receive, the more helpful the results will be to your industry
• the study, and the results, will be made available to Financial Times readers, thus highlighting the information profession in front of an important and possibly unfamiliar audience. Let’s show them our best!
• Participants will be entered into a drawing for £250 (approx US $380) voucher

Further, because the project seeks the input of those who rely on the services of information professionals, please pass the study on to your stakeholders and colleagues:

http://bit.ly/12BX26x

By gathering data from both information professionals and non-information professionals, we’ll be able to provide actionable ideas on how to enhance collaboration by focusing on any key differences in perception.

Questions about the study? Contact SLA and we’ll be happy to help.

The post Participate in the SLA-Financial Times Study to Improve Professional Value appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Below are highlights for each of the four questions. For a full listing, check out the TAGS archive set up by Emma Davidson or browse through the tweets in the order that they were shared.

1. What subjects or skills do you wish you were taught or exposed to more in library school?

Q1: Definitely more finance and accounting, as it specifically relates to a library environment. #SLAtalk

— Library Sherpa (@LibrarySherpa) April 9, 2013

Q1: What subjects or skills do you wish you were taught or exposed to in library school?Coding. #slatalk — Megan Wiseman (@LibraryatLaw) April 9, 2013

Q1 – More stuff about project management and usability. Especially in a more universal, less OMG PROGRAMMING kind of way. #slatalk

— Kendra K. Levine (@tranlib) April 9, 2013

I wish my MLS program had devoted more time to the necessity of networking within and without your field #SLAtalk

— Bob Kosovsky (@kos2) April 9, 2013

I wish I had learned more about analyzing information, information visualization, and more coding and programming skills #SLAtalk

— Megan Rush (@inforush) April 9, 2013

Q1: Wish I had been exposed to more marketing, business, and competitive intelligence skills #slatalk

— Kim Schultz (@klyall) April 9, 2013

2. What was your favorite class or project from your MLIS program, and how have you applied what you learned?

Q2 – Best class was definitely Social Informatics. Really made the point that systems are for people and we can’t ignore that. #slatalk — Kendra K. Levine (@tranlib) April 9, 2013

Q2 Government Information was one of the most useful courses. Have used it in all my jobs so far. #slatalk — Tara Murray (@diylibrarian) April 9, 2013

Best LIS project: Designing db to track ref question metrics, resources used, etc. Good basics for doing similar project in ZenDesk #slatalk — Jill Strand (@jillinfopro) April 9, 2013

Q2: Ref. Interviewing- Knowing that when asked,” Do you have the NY Times?” the user really wants to know “Who’s the CEO of IBM?”#SLAtalk — Stanford Friedman (@StanfordF) April 9, 2013

3. What formal supplemental education, if any, did you pursue after your MLIS program?

#slatalk Q4.You can start with these: 17 Free Live Webinars for Librarians in April lnkd.in/AXbfi8

— Tom Rink (@coplibrarian) April 9, 2013

Q3 one of the best prof dev activities for me is the conferences etc. that my users attend. Hear what questions they ask each other #slatalk

— Tara Murray (@diylibrarian) April 9, 2013

Q3. Going for my CAS in Data Science at @ischoolsu in the fall. Other than that, buckets of CEs #slatalk

— Elaine (@ElaineLibrarian) April 9, 2013

Mostly have taken vendor and tech courses: drupal, InMagic, ESRI ArcGIS. Aside from that, constant conferences, webinars, etc#SLATalk

— Ischool Research (@IschoolResearch) April 9, 2013

Q3 -Lots of asking questions of my users. Buying them coffee and asking, “What’s the deal!” “I’m here to help!” #slatalk

— Kendra K. Levine (@tranlib) April 9, 2013

#slatalk Q3 I did a formal course about e-learning – combination of face-to-face teaching and online work. Very useful.

— Clare Aitken (@LibClare) April 9, 2013

@slahq Q2: Information Ethics at Pitt. Can’t tell you how often that comes into play in today’s electronic world, as #SLAtalk

— Amy Watson (@librarianamy) April 9, 2013

Q3: After MA,I did a chartered management institute course in line management & a Teaching in Lifelong Sector course.Each 10months #slatalk

— Sarah Wolfenden (@SarahWolfenden) April 9, 2013

4. What recommendation would you give a library school student?

Q4: The future is important, but students need to know library past in order to put it all into context to be successful, IMO. #SLAtalk

— Library Sherpa (@LibrarySherpa) April 9, 2013

Q4. Become active in professional associations and NOT just the student chapters. Working in a library even as a volunteer also. #slatalk

— Elaine (@ElaineLibrarian) April 9, 2013

I tell students to JOIN SLA w student discount! Meet so many great people and u learn about job types u wouldnt even imagine! #slatalk

— Brandy King (@KnowldgeLinking) April 9, 2013

Q4 Apply for any job that interests you. DO NOT rule yourself out (that’s HR’s job). #SLAtalk

— Joan Thomas (@msjoanthomas) April 9, 2013

Q4. Learn about data — how to organize, analyze, and disseminate: useful in any field. #SLAtalk

— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) April 9, 2013

The post What Would You Tell Your Past MLIS-Student Self? #SLAtalk Roundup! appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

When:

2 choices on Tuesday, April 9th:
Session #1 at 18:30
GMT (1:30 pm Eastern / 10:30 am Pacific)
Session #2 at 00:00 GMT (7:00 pm Eastern / 4:00 pm
Pacific)

Questions
to Answer:

1. What
   subjects or skills do you wish you were taught or exposed to in library school?
   -Session
   #1: 18:30 – 18:45 GMT
   -Session
   #2: 00:00 – 00:15 GMT
2. What
   was your favorite class or project in LIS school? How have you applied what you
   learned to your career?
   -Session
   #1: 18:45 – 19:00 GMT
   -Session
   #2: 00:15 – 00:30 GMT
3. What
   formal supplemental education, if any, did you pursue after library school?
   -Session #1: 19:00 – 19:15 GMT
   -Session #2: 00:30 – 00:45 GMT
4. What
   recommendations would you give a library school student?
   -Session #1: 19:15 – 19:30 GMT
   -Session #2: 00:45 – 01:00 GMT

In the Spirit of Organization:

By splitting the questions into 15-minute intervals we
can keep the discussion organized and make it easier for participants to
interact. We’ll help by tweeting the appropriate question from @SLAhq at the
start of each interval, so take that as your queue to move on.

New
to this?

Check out “How
to #SLAtalk” for helpful tips, as well as the recap
of the first installment to see example-tweets from several participants.

Prepare
with some light reading:

“Preparing
Future Professionals through Broad Competency Planning,” from the Jan/Feb ’12 issue of Information
Outlook.

Not an SLA member? To access these articles, join SLA, or contact us to receive temporary access.

Following the session:

Check back into this SLA Blog
post after the #SLAtalk, where we’ll post some of the best ideas that you all
have tweeted. Notice your tweet being favorited from @SLAhq? Your handle
and tweet will be posted here!

The post #SLAtalk: What would you tell your past MLIS-student self? appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Below are some highlights from both sessions from March 5th, which encompass a great career resource.

For a full listing, and other interesting statistics, check out the TAGS archive set up by Emma Davidson. 

1) What’s a successful job hunting method that helped you land you your current job?

@LibrarySherpa: Networking, networking, networking. SLA has been a tremendous resource for me to accomplish this and get results.

2) What’s a profession-specific way you’ve prepared for an interview that worked for you?

@LibraryatLaw: Personal doesn't = unprofessional . . . Remember, if all goes well these people will be coworkers! Have hobbies, a life

@TRAKJulieA: be warm/engaging, w/out oversharing/getting too personal. Walk that line. Answer ?'s fully & completely w/out getting off topic

3) What are key organizational traits you look for during an interview or online job search?

‏@pomponijada: open mindedness, eagerness to innovate, learn and apply new skills

4) How did you empower yourself to move ahead at your job? or what skills did you learn which led to your career growth?

The post Job Hunting and Career Growth Tips from #SLAtalk Participants appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Two sessions will be held so information professionals across the globe can participate at a convenient time.

When:

2 choices on Tuesday, March 5^th
Session #1 at 18:30 GMT (1:30 pm Eastern / 10:30 am Pacific)
Session #2 at 00:00 GMT (7:00 pm Eastern / 4:00 pm Pacific)

Questions to answer:

1. What’s a successful job hunting method that helped you land you your current job?
2. What’s a profession-specific way you’ve prepared for an interview that worked for you?
3. What are key organizational traits you look for during an interview or online job search?
4. How did you empower yourself to move ahead at your job? or what skills did you learn which led to your career growth?

…or ask your own question/share your own idea related to this topic!

Hashtag:

Tag your answers with #SLAtalk and the number of the question you’re answering.  For those wondering, #SLAchat is now used by the fine folks at Sporting Life Arkansas.

Start thinking with some light reading ahead of time:

“Networking for Introverts,”
from the March/April ’12 issue of Information Outlook
“Future Now: Operation Agility,” from the Jan/Feb ’12 issue of Information Outlook
“Dressing Like We Mean It,”
from the March ’11 issue of Information Outlook

Not an SLA member? To access these articles, join SLA, or contact us to receive temporary access.

Following the session:

Check back into this SLA Blog post after the #SLAtalk, where we’ll post some of the best ideas that you all have tweeted. Notice your tweet being favorited from @SLAhq? Your handle and tweet will be posted here!

The post Job Hunting and Career Growth: an #SLAtalk! appeared first on Special Libraries Association.