Monday, October 22, 2007

Top Ten Tips for Nailing your Academic Interview

Ah, the academic interview: a grueling day-long marathon of showcasing yourself and your accomplishments to people you've likely never met before. I've had three academic interviews in the past five years, two of them successful, so I like to think I know what I'm talking about here. These Top Ten Tips are things that I've done or see others do that have made a positive impact. If you're prepared, the interview process can be an enjoyable, rather than nerve-racking, experience. Even if you're not offered the job, this is your chance to make a lasting impression on a group of your peers.

1. Prepare answers to questions that you know you'll get asked. Some important ones include, "What are your strengths relative to this job?" "What are your weaknesses relative to this job?" "Why do you want this job?" and "Give an example of how you've handled a challenging situation." Write out and rehearse the answers so that you'll be able to answer questions quickly and confidently.

2. Don't worry about describing your weaknesses in front of search committee members.
Employers will want to see not only how you fit the job, but how the job fits you. Demonstrate how the position will help you overcome weaknesses and advance your career. Be open and honest about what you would do, if you were hired, to meet the challenge.

3. Prepare a Power Point presentation, reason 1: You are likely one of three (or sometimes more) candidates presenting on the same topic. A visual presentation will help create a more lasting impression. Also, here at Auraria, we post the candidates' presentations to our staff-only intranet so that anyone who couldn't attend the live presentations can get a taste of each candidate's experience and ideas.

4. Prepare a Power Point presentation, reason 2: The library-wide presentation is the way for you to get a lot of bang for your buck, so to speak. Search committees rely heavily on input from all areas of the library, and while it's crucial for you to make a good impression on the people that you spend the most time with, the "popular vote" is important as well. If you don't prepare a slide show, or even a handout, it may make people question if you're taking the interview seriously.

5. Prepare a Power Point presentation, reason 3: Even if you're a confident public speaker presenting on something that you've had a lot of experience with, you may choke in a new environment in front of new faces. Your slides will be familiar to you, though, and keep you moving forward.

6. Prepare questions for your interviewers. What are the most important initiatives in the library currently? When you meet with smaller groups, ask individuals what research interests are. Are they people that you could see yourself collaborating with?

7. Research your interviewers. You'll likely get a list of names of people who are on your search committee; Google them or conduct author searches in library science databases, if you have access to those resources. If you don't have a list of names, visit the library's staff directory on their web page and Google/database search the names of the people you'd be working with.

8. Research the library itself.
Where is it located--in a big city, or on a suburban campus, etc.? Whom does it serve? What are the patrons like? Visit the building if you can. Can you see yourself working there? If you're coming in from out of town, try to sneak over to building the day before to look around. You won't be experiencing it for the first time on the morning of your interview that way.

9. Create a personal/professional web page before the interview. This doesn't need to be anything fancy, just a bit about yourself and your professional interests so that people can get a sense of who you are. Include a fun (but appropriate) picture so that folks can put a face to a name and get a sense of your personality. Members of the search committee may Google your name; give them something great to find. Link to important projects you've done.

10. Send thank you notes. One job candidate on whose search committee I served sent everyone that she'd talked to over the course of the day a personalized thank you note. She got the job. Academic libraries spend a considerable amount on drawing qualified candidates in; this shows how much you appreciate the opportunity you've been given, especially if they're flying you in.

Monday, October 15, 2007

October eWAC meeting

Here are a couple of things that I wanted to report to you and/or wanted your feedback on:

1. What's holding up the server move?

A couple of things: testing how the New Books List will work in the new non-carbon environment and testing our feedback forms (which use PHP) in the new environment. I'm working on these as fast as I can, and I'm hoping that the time it takes me to do this will see a decline in the number of classes we're teaching to minimize any disruption and give us some wiggle room to make the transition.

This move, when it happens, will go down as follows: move LEAP, the online linking form, the ADI, the class calendar, and the new books list to the new environment and test them, leaving the current web page setup in place for users. A day or two later, when all is confirmed stable, we'll need to load any data that's been entered into these applications on the live server (so that classes scheduled, tutorials taken, etc., aren't lost in the shuffle). Then, our carbon environment will be turned off, and I will need to restore everyone's Dreamweaver/Contribute connections.

The final piece of this puzzle is that our DNS entries (i.e., which URLs will work) will be consolidated so that carbon.cudenver.edu/public/library and library.cudenver.edu will be redirected to library.auraria.edu. We'll leave the redirect up for at least six months, and at that time, we'll have a look at our statistics to see if these two URLs are still being used to get to the site. Our statistics can tell us where links to the two "old" URLs are coming from. (For example, CCD still links to the library with the carbon address, and UCD the library.cudenver.edu address).

2. How long should we leave up the web page survey?
We have 70 results as of this morning, 69 of them students and 1 faculty. I 've asked the bibliographers, who have much more regular contact with faculty than me, to publicize the survey so that we can get faculty feedback. I'm pretty pleased with what they're telling us; I've posted an Excel file of the results so far here:

http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~nmchale/documents/newhomepagesurvey.xls

Names and email addresses have been removed. Of course, you can't please 100% of the people 100% of the time; about five people have said that the best thing about the new site is the link to the old one. Ah, well. At least that shows that we've managed the transition well? I'll put a reminder up on the home page early December to remind everyone that that link is going away.

But, more to the point, how long should we leave the survey up? All semester? If so, should we have the drawing for the student prizes (book store gift certificates) at our November meeting, and then just leave the survey up if anyone wants to fill it out for the heck of it? The benefit of leaving it up all semester is that we'll get through the point of the semester that REALLY gets heavy web site use. Of course, students will have less time to fill out silly surveys then. Your thoughts?

3. 360 Search Launched!
I've asked for library-wide feedback on this, and my plan is to let us all play with it for a while, and then WAC will have a look at the comments that come back (posted in the blog entry made just before this one) and make any decisions that need to be made.

4. Whither the ADI now that we have 360 Search?
This discussion is currently taking place. No final decisions have been made yet, but the consensus seems to be to eventually retire the ADI. Another meeting about this matter is taking place next week; more will follow as it develops.

Anything else? Please post any comments below. Thanks!

Monday, October 08, 2007

360 Search has Launched!

I hereby declare our implementation of 360 Search launched! Please post any comments that you have about the final product here--DO NOT email them to me, or they will be lost forever! :)

Here are some details of final work that was/is being done, as well as some items for you all to comment upon:

1. I've taken Quick Search box on the homepage out of beta, and I've cleaned up the code a bit so that it performs better. Skyline is also included now. Also, I changed the default search for Quick Search from title to keyword. Let me know if you think that makes a difference and whether the difference is for better or worse. The likely outcome will be more results, so I guess the question is, is it too many results?

2. A couple of changes were made to the Top Twelve databases (the ones searched by the Quick Search box) due to concurrent usage limitations. Biographies Plus Illustrated (Wilson) has been replaced with the Biography and Genealogy Master Index (but with unsatisfactory results today). Web of Science--with profuse apologies to Elaine--has been replaced by ScienceDirect. Any other suggestions for a biography resource? Should we just leave it out?

3. The link on home page to the full 360 interface (where one can choose a subject) is called "Advanced Search." I have the feeling, though, that I'm forgetting what suggested wording was, so please refresh my memory if you recall something different.

4. The peer review check box will be removed on Thursday, October 11th. As I mentioned in a previous email, the technology is not there yet to make this an effective enough feature; the metadata that 360 Search draws on is not yet standardized. I have yet to see it actually work, and I would rather the students trust their own judgement than a faulty feature.

5. I'll be working with the reference staff on ways to integrate customized search boxes onto subject guides--see this copy of the Education Guide--and elsewhere on the library web site.

6. There are other behind-the-scenes cleanups for me to make, but for the most part, they will not affect end user use of the product.

7. What have I forgotten? Remind me! :)

The floor is now open for your comments, critiques, questions, suggestions--post away! This can be about anything: the search interface, the subject groupings, which databases are included in which subjects, product performance, etc.