BIALL 2013 Doing more with less – Tips on being more effective

The below being my potted notes from the Susie Kay session at BIALL2013 Conference…

Will gradually put all my notes up from the various sessions I attended. Susie was going at a fair pace so this is the general gist, it’s not everything.

Susie noted people commonly have more demands to fulfil using less resources so the session was about strategies for dealing with that.

What are we short of?

People tend to say they’re short of e.g. time, staff, space, money. Therefore finding ‘extra’ working days would help. Session intended to suggest ways people could reclaim 10 / 15 mins daily making up to several days ‘extra’ time over the year.

Fundamental Questions

We need to ask ourselves

What is our job role meant to do?

How much of what we do is peripheral to the core of that?

The Moscow Rules

Think about the Moscow Rules, which break things down into

Must do

Should do

Could do

There are key activities that are necessary to achieve any task including planning and prioritising.

As Others See Us

Think about your own workplace –

What is their view of you  / your team?

How much impact do they think you have?

Whose Goals Are Important?

Important to distinguish between being prepared and being swamped by others. 

If you allow yourself to get swamped by others you lose ability to complete your own goals. Fail to complete your own goals and you lose your reputation for being able to get things done.

Important we recognise the value we add in terms of confidence, reputation management, earning respect and demanding respect.

We are there to help others, but we are also professionals in our own right and not at the beck and call of everyone else.

Important to safeguard reputation because it is built up over a long timeperiod.

Professionalism

Relationship with Time

Time is finite – we all have 24 hours, 60 minutes per hour. In that time we need to eat, sleep, do family, do social activities.  A fraction of it only is available for work, thus work hours need to be carefully constructed for maximum effect. We cannot manage time, but we can utilise time more effectively.

Procrastination and Distractions

Two major problems are procrastinaton and distraction. 

These can be reduced and eliminated.

The tendency to procrastinate is caused by various issues – feeling of overload, in ability to decide what to do next out of the pile, unable to find time to complete a task, start bits of tasks but never complete any.

Multitasking is a fallacy. It is neither possible nor a good idea. When multitasking people don’t achieve anything very well as they tend to lose concentration.

How to avoid this?

Having a today’s priorities list, eating the frog first (the nasty task) so that everything else is  easy in comparison, eating the elephant one slice at a time, the desire to get to the end, the desire to feel satisfied.

Our inboxes are the delivery system for other peoples priorities.  Show your inbox who is the boss. Check it at your convenience. Empty it every day. Create folders to store information that needs kept, other wise either do or delete. Do the worst things in it.

Space and Contingency

People forget to plan and priotise in the rush to just do.

Important to put contingency into the diary, free space, and not shift it. That way if you really do need it for something it’s there.

If people lack capacity then their overall lists lengthen and delivery weakens and they get reputation for being unreliable.

Default mechanism of people is to say yes. Important to practice saying no as well. Push back when it’s someone else’s problem.

Organisation Preferences

Different people have different ways of working. Some create lists, others are post-it addicts. These things can become mere decoration if they’re not used to base actions from.

Helps a lot of people to use mind mapping when figuring out commitments. Lots of advice on and examples on internet. Can be hand drawn or using software, no right or wrong way to go about, helps add value.

Mindfulness

People allow themselves to become distracted, always thinking about what’s ‘next’. Important to know difference between being mind full and mindful.

Mindfulness is becoming still, creating focus to aid better concentration, stopping the noise in our heads.

Important to ditch the clutter to get more organised. Don’t just put things down, put them away in their correct place so they’re easy to find next time.

Finding the good and Recognising Bad Signs

No job is all stress, so figure out what triggers your stress reactions, see the patterns and develop strategies to offset.

Important to look after yourself because no one else does it. Build in breaks, lunch, quiet time, understand your own body patterns and map how you work to it.

If things get overwhelming then stand still, let the feeling subside around you or try donothingfor2minutes. Important to hit the pause button on the day if you need it, relax, then get on again.

At end of the week

Create a done list.

Don’t worry about what wasn’t done.

Reward yourself.

Important not to feel alone, mentoring and peer support both beneficial.

Most people need to work for a living, but work can also be wonderful.

A Picture Post - Carnegie Reading Time Of Year

It seems to me I'm writing lots of very long text-laden blog posts at the moment (mini-series on issues relating to job hunting).

So I want to break it up a bit inbetween these with some short and lighter things that are more image-focused.  

Carnegie seems a good place to start...

 Carnegie Time Of Year

Every year recently (I think this is my 4th year, could be wrong) I've been taking part in a CILIP Carnegie Medal Shadowing Reading Group. Which I usually schedule in fairly rigorously to ensure I'll make it through  the shortlist and do everything for in time.

To Carnegie Or Not To Carnegie

This year I'm in transit. I wasn't initially sure I had the time or the will to do Carnegie this year in result.  But I decided to give it a go, because I knew I enjoyed it and found it worthwhile. 

Organisation? You laugh - what's that again?

I'm way off my usual organised schedule approach this year. Nevertheless I've made my way through 6 of the 8 on the shortlist.

The End In Sight

Winner is announced 19th June so I think I'll comfortably make it after all (yay!).

The books illustrated on this post are the six I've read so far.

Overall

Is it worth it?  Yes, it is.  I'll probably do a general post on the whole thing once I've finished, but I certainly think it's the best overall shortlist I've read so far.

A quick survey of the current Scottish jobs market

 Last time I looked at how processes have changed in job applications since the 90s. What follows below is a quick run-down on the state of the job scene in Scotland for library and information jobs in the last few months.  It doesn’t remotely hold itself out to be based on anything other than subjective observation. No great particular order for what follows.

Are There Jobs Going In Scotland?

Yes, there are. A fair amount in fact. I was in fact pleasantly surprised at the amount going and the frequency with which new ones were advertised.  Obvious caveat on this is that what I don’t know is what the proportions are between jobs advertised and sheer numbers of folk seeking and applying for them.  So all I can really say is that there recently have been a range of jobs to apply for out there at least.

What’s the sectoral coverage?

There’s a big variety, again, a really surprising amount of variety in some ways. So a quick basic run-down would include various school library / resource centre posts, lots of university academic library posts (especially in Edinburgh), lots of public library posts (though tending to be paraprofessional level or entry level professional, and often very limited fixed hours or ‘casual’ contracts), some health jobs, some commercial company ones (tend to be Aberdeen), some charity jobs,  the odd National Library of Scotland one, rare legal information ones.

There’s been an utterly astounding level of some very subject specialist jobs though (e.g. two art librarians in Edinburgh), Media Librarian…  Trying to think of what I haven’t seen at all...  Further education / college jobs actually.  I’m assuming that’s to some extent at least down to the major changes going through that sector just now with an awful lot of big mergers allied to the (now traditional just about everywhere) lack of cash.

What’s the geographical coverage?

Again, it’s really quite broad and better than I expected.  Though the extent is better than the depth really.  Overall there’s a lot more jobs in Edinburgh and Aberdeen than anywhere else that I’ve seen, and everywhere else is patchy or slim. In the last week or so for example islands and coastal locations have been very popular with lots of public library assistant jobs in the Highlands.

Geography is an interesting one jobs-wise.  The basic rule on it goes it’s not the distance it’s the accessibility that matters.  It’s the logistics of could you actually get there for the start time and get home again after the end time, how long does all that take, how much of your own time and expense are you prepared to spend on it, what proportion of salary would it actually cost to do it. Is there public transport that is feasible?  If you drive then is there parking there and how long would it take in rush hour?  So it’s not the distance, it’s the logistics.

What level of jobs / hours / salaries are going?

Public library tends to be mostly library assistants, mostly part-time. Though there are some more entry level professional librarian roles and library assistant roles that are full-time. The charity jobs are often fixed-term and may be ‘x’ number of days a week rather than full-time and have tended to be professional level. Health, again, has been mostly fixed-term and some part-time hours.  The academic library jobs tend to be full-time open professional level contracts. The school librarian / LRC Manager ones are often term-time only and may involve more than one school (depends on the local authority policy on and how they’re organised or if it’s a private school). Other sectors, bit of a mix between full-time open contracts and fixed term appointments.

More library assistant roles in public sector, more professional level posts in academic, and there’s been a fair amount of senior roles in academic sector compared to any other sector too. Schools and health bit of a mixture of professional and paraprofessional roles going. Salaries, as you would expect, kind of depends what level of role in what sector and how many hours. So some very basic salaries to some high ones for Scotland and everything inbetween.

Career Prospects

I was reading one particular Job Description the other week and came to the wonderful line near the end of ‘Career prospects – none’.  Most Job Descriptions are not as blatant as this (quite possibly a good thing!). But it did get me thinking about a few things.

I tend to take the view that in the last five years or so most places have been restructured and felt the impacts of straightened financial circumstances. It’s not news to anyone that times are difficult. I would suspect what this means in terms of individuals is that a lot of people’s c.v.’s will no longer go in straight linear upward trajectory and / or expected ways, but might well take more diversions, cul-de-sacs, and changes of direction than would otherwise be expected to be the case.

I don’t see anything wrong in any of that.  I’d call it being pragmatic and realistic. I think folk have to be fairly flexible and adaptable and it’s good to decide what you are willing to compromise on and what you aren’t early on. But I do suspect it’s easier to sell the wish for a change of direction currently than it might have been several years ago.

Changing Sectors

Obviously it still needs backed up with reasonable prospect that you can also fulfil it mind, which is the less easy part! Changing sectors has been one of those eternally debated issues within the profession. I don’t think the answer on it has changed any. It’s possible to do it, but it isn’t easy to do it, and you have to be able to demonstrate why you should be employed to do it, what experience you have that is relevant and what else you can bring to it someone else could not, or someone else with more closely aligned experience will get it.

But I don’t think there’s enough jobs going that just waiting for one very specific dream job to come along is hugely realistic. It never was in Scotland. If you can wait year upon year for it then all well and good, if not, well, maybe look a bit wider, see what else is interesting and do’able and make of it what you can.

Conclusion

There are jobs going, and in a variety of sectors at a variety of levels. But there’s not huge amounts doing any one particular thing or in any one place mostly. So all in all be prepared to be flexible and diversify and think through what is essential and what can be compromised is probably good advice.

Next time, I shall muse on the content of Job Descriptions and Person Specifications and the common elements. This appears to be becoming a mini-series (yikes!!!) (grins)

What’s changed in job hunting since the 90s

This is a bit of a list of things that have occurred to me over the past month or so as I indulged in job hunting. As a full-time worker who then became a part-time worker elsewhere instead last month (nice job and lovely people, but not long-term sustainable) I’m still job hunting for a full-time job.

No major order to any of this below, but it’s mostly about process logistics. Next week I’ll do one on other aspects.

If you don’t have regular internet access you’re pretty sunk

Just about everything process-wise from advertisement to submission to hearing back is online. Anything involving the sending or receiving of paper is rare, though it happens occasionally. Be prepared to spend an awful lot of quality time with your computer. 

Anyone who has to do everything elsewhere in libraries etc, or hasn’t the right level of computer skills, has my complete sympathy simply because they don’t have the same flexibility.  At least the old tradition of awaiting The Arrival Of The Post twice daily, the use of pen, stamps, and posting things is 90% removed these days. That part is good.

There is Exact Date Tyranny – The System Rules

A lot of the big online portals used by lots of similar organizations are so set as to require DD/MM/YYYY format for just about everything in life.  Without it you cannot move forward or progress to the next part of the application. 

You can be asked for this precision level for anything from the precise dates you started and ended every job you’ve ever had to the exact date you joined every professional body you are a member of. 

At the end you will get to declare that everything you’ve entered is accurate to the best of your knowledge.  Certain things you will know and have to hand, others can be found out by diligently asking the right people, but some things will inevitably end up at a best guess if you’ve had a long career and the records aren’t there and the organizations no longer exist…

You will have Usernames and Passwords running out both ears

Lots of online application systems means the registration process for each of them and a bulging system set up to remember them all and which ones goes with which website. Personally I like KeePass to keep track of usernames and passwords but there’s lots of options. Job Alerts do run rampage in your InBox though, an in-coming tide of which a few things will actually be useful (see below).

Job Alerts Cannot Easily Be Framed for Specificity

Many (not all by any means) recruitment websites and ones carrying job adverts enable you to set up email alerts. I have 8 zillion that ping into my InBox of an early morning.

If you are searching for things like information and library jobs beware, all of reality just about is going to be caught because all it requires is the word to appear anywhere in the advert (‘for more information contact’, ‘may be required to work in heritage, libraries, parks and other council properties’).  If you don’t use very generic words however you simply don’t see lots of jobs that are actually information roles but just don’t have that in the job title so wouldn't appear if you restricted the alert to job title.  Jobs in the information profession are called such completely variable things these days.

So whether you set up 8 zillion job alerts or just search manually is probably a matter of preference. Some things you have to search manually as you can’t set up alerts for the sites anyway.

Job Alerts Can However Give Entertainment

The sheer amount of totally unsuited jobs that can come up can be magnificent. I particularly liked Sous Chef.

Jurisdiction Matters

One of my favourite things about job alerts is the fact that lots of them are continentally challenged.  Lots of them won’t allow you to enter a more specific geographical location than ‘Scotland’ (erm – big country in feasible commuting and expense terms, trust me), some will allow more specific locations (e.g. West of Scotland).  However with many of them what you can get pinging into your InBox is a job in a city or town that is certainly in Scotland, only the continent it is in is America or Australia where there happens to be somewhere called the same thing.  So not all alerts manage to match up country and place.

Guidance Information

Normal is job advert, Job Specification, Person Specification, Application form / process.  Sometimes it’s all very clear, succinct, and lovely. A lot of the time it isn’t.  I recall wading through a 17 page job description (no, that is not a typo and I am not joking) to finally get to the bit near the end which said driving licence was essential.

My plea here would go put the essential and desirable things really near the top under an obvious heading, and don’t expect folk to be able to match a job description that is far longer than the application form. Make the guidance documentation  and form something that encourages applications, not discourages.

Applications that involve ten separate attachments, some of which require you to sign them physically, and some are PDF and some are Word, or are electronic but don’t give you an email address to return it all to, are destined to confuse potential candidates. It happens fairly regularly.

You have to prove your Eligibility to Work in the UK

There will be a bit of the application form that will enquire precisely what you your status is re eligibility to work in the UK. These days there are long delightful lists of documents you can be required to produce at interview, everything from passports onwards.

There is a Mini Industry in Providing Academic Transcripts and Replacement Certificates

Most job applications require complete breakdowns of what you studied, where, at what level, when awarded, what grade. Some are more stringent than others in the amount of information they ask for. But you can be asked to list all the main components you studied. This can cause problems when some of it is a very long time ago and you can’t quite remember all the required information or find the relevant bits of paper.

If you start trying to replace them from the various places you will quickly discover it is now an industry and a way the institution now makes money. It can also take time. So my advice would be keep all your certificates in one place and keep them together. 

The most baffling thing I have been asked so far is to list all the school qualifications I failed, not just the ones I passed, and at what grade. But it’s wise to have all your Certificates because you can be asked to produce them for interview etc.

It Can be Difficult to Tailor Applications

For some of the major portals most common fixed parts of an application (personal details, qualifications, job history, professional memberships, references, equal opportunities monitoring) are held in your account so each time you apply for a job a lot of information is already entered and the major creative part of it is doing the ‘why you should be considered for this specific job’ section.  But each time you change one of the fixed areas for a specific job it can cascade the change into everything else.

So if you decide you want to apply for things in different areas highlighting different parts of your experience, and that some qualifications are relevant for one area, but you’d rather drop them out of the other… you can’t always.  Nice as it really is not to have to endlessly enter the same information into the same system, I suspect that makes it difficult for anyone with portfolio lives where they’ve done different things.

Keeping Everything In One Place

I tend to keep everything related to each application in a Word folder by date due and post then change the title after submission to put it into the  date submitted section so what’s due in next is always at the top, and I add it all in as I see the jobs appear.  It also has all the other things I’m going to need like upteen versions of c.v.’s and lists of components of everything I’ve done re various qualifications. I also keep a masterlist of what I’ve applied for when.

It’s all very basic as systems go, but it suffices. I just prefer to do it this way so it’s all on the laptop and I'm not spending much time on it.

Interpreting Closing Dates

Not all job adverts have a closing date on them.  The majority do.  Within that some of them also specify a time – usually noon, 5pm, or 11.59pm. In that most submissions are electronic to electronic systems I tend to assume that if it just stipulates a date then anytime on that date will suffice. But it is an assumption.

Some Things Don’t Change  - Submission Acknowledgments

Now I last job-hunted in the mid 90s. An awful lot of things were posted away and nothing would ever be heard back. In the online application world you get asked for email, phone, mobile, address etc. Lots of contact mechanisms. But the rule hasn’t changed.  If you’re submitting through a jobs portal it’ll usually be configured to automatically send you a receipt so at least you know it got there.  If you’re submitting to a small and / or traditional organization it’s a lot more likely you email it in and get no acknowledgment of receipt.

How Long It Takes To Hear Back Is Like Soothsaying A Piece Of String

This applies to those organizations that do respond and tell you the result of the consideration of your application. Not all do by any means.  How long it takes with the super speedy ones can be a few days, but this is highly unusual, what is a lot more likely is edging towards two months if at all. This means you can still hear back from places that you’d mentally consigned to the application graveyard ages ago. There is no logical way of thinking ‘well I submitted around x date, therefore…’.  Each organization is different.

A Reject Has Its Up Sides

Compared to having no idea what happened or if it’s dead or alive as an application at least with a reject you get certainty. Reject = at least you know, move on.

Format issues can be a terror

Instinct might seem to say you should spend more time on the content than the formatting of the application.  However it is certainly true that sometimes the application form will be so badly formatted that the insertion of any word in many sections is going to cause absolute chaos to the legibility (and thus possibly reception) of the overall application.

I have been known to spend longer trying to sort the formatting than writing the information.  What this proved to me overall is that I am not a professional secretary (not that I thought I was!!). Sometimes you end up submitting a dog’s breakfast in look simply because you’re out of time deadline-wise and you can’t get it to do it properly.

In Transit (grins)

This blog has been closer to an advert for The Waste Land than content this year.

So I shall suffice to say there’s been plenty happening, but it hasn’t felt appropriate for open web discourse, plus there’s not really been time for blogging anyway.

My firm having gone into administration and ceased trading last month, I’ve been busy hastily changing job, and filling in half a million application forms.

So –  lots of things currently in transit, and I’ll gradually get back to whatever the new normal becomes blog-wise.

Do have a wee bit of a backlog of things to blog about built up though, so I really should make a start before it gets bigger!

Considering our Ps and Qs

The Price of Incivility

There is a thoughtful article entitled ‘The Price of Incivility’ in the Jan / Feb 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review I’ve just been reading. It occurs to me I don’t think I’ve ever read a serious article on it as a subject that looks at it in terms of business cost as well as the more obvious individual possible consequences.

What I also like is the article doesn’t just talk about the problems that arise from this, but it talks about potential  ways of addressing as well, both at personal and organizational level. Plus it considers how different circumstances can impact, such as being abroad for work as opposed to at your usual desk.

Considering our Ps and Qs

As a subject it’s often seen as fairly marginal, just one of those mildly unfortunate things that happens from time to time (whether realised, noticed, observed, or not). Everyone feels frayed sometimes and we all have slightly different ways of looking at the world and interacting with it.

 Added to this working environments in particular have become a lot more open plan in the last ten years. Individuals as often lone inhabitants of offices are much rarer than they once were, and we communicate in far more methods simultaneously than ever before.

All that being so, it’s a good article to muse upon and actively consider, how we perceive others, and how we are perceived in turn, and whether we can improve it.

Endlessly Debating the Future of the Information Profession/al

The Future is a very old topic

Sometimes it seems like there’s a closed loop.  It feels like (and probably is) fifteen years I’ve been surveying meetings, events, and electronic discourses of all kinds framed in terms of (infer my groan) ‘the future of the information professional’.

It’s one of those red flag subjects on a conference that makes me want to take the programme nowhere near anyone capable of authorising attendance in case they start wondering what on earth we’re doing. Because often you can almost see the invisible words ‘and do we have one’ as the subtitle. If we don’t believe in ourselves why should anyone from any other sphere?

Sometimes things have been debated so often, so endlessly, so without any obvious form of one-answer-strikes-all-down answer that the mere phrase can drain positivity out of most people.

'The End is Nigh' is predicted fairly regularly

The end was going to be ‘the paperless office’ (no laughing at the back), then it was going to be the prevalence of end-user searching of sophisticated electronic products themselves without mediation required (debate continues, but it’s created lots of work in other ways to support end-user ability to do so and the products themselves)… All of that before we even get into the economic climate of recent years or more recent debates on what that means for us as a profession.

Change and influence

When it comes down to it what we all do is evolve as we ourselves and our environments change to ensure that our services are still tailored to meet user need (whoever our user communities may be).

Often this happens fairly seamlessly in tiny changes that maybe aren’t all that noticeable, sometimes in more obvious major transitions and changes.  Mostly we choose the changes, sometimes other circumstances externally choose them for us.

The future is what we create from conditions that are often already (not always, I know) existing, it’s, at best, our chosen purposeful response to them.

True - we don’t individually have control over lots of factors that may impact, but we can influence and / or control some.

Hardy perennials

Debating ‘The Future of the Information Professional’ doesn’t help though.  It’s such a non-specific vague subject how would we even know if someone had the one-line answer. And would it be an answer that applied to everyone equally in any type of information job? Probably not.

I don’t garden. But if it was a flower, as a subject, it would be a very hardy perennial. The question has been asked on a semi-permanent basis from way back before I came into the profession.  I know, I've read bits of it in passing. Very often in terms of gloom. I'm not saying it's not important, or that it's not an interesting conversation (or can be), or that I haven't gone to lots of things on the subject in my time myself... 

It's just that sometimes it appears to be one endless looping discussion going nowhere. It's one topic, there are many others to choose from too that are easier to define and thus easier to find paths for.

So perhaps we should just get on with things instead.