Hello everyone! My name is Margot and I’m one of the graduate iSchool Ambassadors for the Library and Information Science program. I’m wrapping up my last semester of the program which means that, alongside my classes, graduate assistantship at the Music and Performing Arts Library on campus, and work as an iSchool ambassador, I’m also on the hunt for a full-time job!
The bulk of my coursework was focused on gaining experience in reference and instruction, and in an ideal world I’ll end up finding work in an academic or government library that allows me to use these skills. While a lot of my friends in the program are able to target their job hunts to their ideal area of librarianship, I’m focusing more on geography, as I’m trying to close the distance between myself and my fiancé who’s currently attending law school in Pennsylvania. Since I’m looking for positions with a limited geographical scope, the number of open reference/instruction positions I’m finding have been in short supply. The good news is that I did diversify my coursework a bit by taking classes like Bibliographic Metadata and Rare Books and Special Collections Librarianship, so I am expanding my job search outside of the reference realm. That being said, reference work will always have my heart!
With all of that background out of the way, I figured I’d share a bit about how I’m staying on top of my job search:
Application Materials
The first thing that I did when prepping for my job hunt was polish my master resume. This is the document that lists every job I’ve worked since undergrad, along with all of my relevant skills, coursework, conference presentations, etc. Obviously, I don’t submit my entire master resume with my applications (the document is a couple of pages long!). Instead, I use it as a starting point to pick and choose which skills are relevant to the job I’m applying for. I love this approach- whenever I find a posting that I’m considering applying for, I make a copy of my master resume and highlight all of the experience that is relevant to the position. I then delete the rest and voila, I have a shiny new resume that’s perfectly catered for my application! Having the master resume is great too, because if there’s anything I don’t include on the resume that I use for the specific job application, I can make a note to remind myself to mention it during the interview!
Finding Open Positions
The next step was to familiarize myself with the various places that open positions are posted. I am no stranger to sites like INALJ and ALA Job List, which are catered specifically for library jobs, as well as USA Jobs and Higher Ed Jobs, which are more general job boards for government and academic jobs, respectively. I use these to filter by location and job type and, between these four places, I figure that I’m going to find most of the positions that are available! Just to be safe, I’ve also bookmarked the “careers” pages of every academic and government library in the area that I’m looking to check periodically, because sometimes institutions won’t share their job postings on the larger job boards. Application periods can come and go pretty quickly, so I make a point to check all of these sites at least three times a week! All in all, while I am limited geographically with my job search, I feel like I’ve hit a pretty good stride in my job-searching routine.
Next Steps
At this point, I’ve been checking job boards frequently and applying to positions where I see fit. Watching my friends apply for jobs all across the country is exciting, and the limits of my job search definitely get me down at times. The good news is that the courses and experiential learning experiences I’ve had at the iSchool have prepared me extremely well for a career in the field (more on that in another blog post!), so I know that something will work out eventually! Hopefully I’ll have a more exciting update in a future blog post soon!