This anonymous interview is with a librarian who has been a hiring manager and a member of a hiring or search committee. This person hires the following types of LIS professionals:
assessment librarians, collection development librarians, electronic resources librarians, open access librarians, data curation librarians,
This librarian works at a library with 50-100 staff members in a suburban area in the Western US.
Approximately how many people applied for the last librarian (or other professional level) job at your workplace?
√ 25 or fewer
Approximately what percentage of those would you say were hirable?
√ 26-50 %
And how would you define “hirable”?
met all the minimum qualifications in the ad
How are applications evaluated, and by whom?
Evaluated by chair of committee to see if have minimum qualifications.
Then evaluated by committee for preferred qualifications using a yes or no grid. Then committee gets together and discusses the applicants.
What is the most common reason for disqualifying an applicant without an interview?
Doesn’t meet minimum qualifications.
Do you (or does your library) give candidates feedback about applications or interview performance?
√ No
What is the most important thing for a job hunter to do in order to improve his/her/their hirability?
make sure their application reflects they have all the minimum and most of the preferred qualifications.
I want to hire someone who is
teachable
How many staff members are at your library/organization?
√ 50-100
How many permanent, full time librarian (or other professional level) jobs has your workplace posted in the last year?
√ 7 or more
How many permanent, full time para-professional (or other non-professional level) jobs has your workplace posted in the last year?
√ 5-6
Can you tell us how the number of permanent, full-time librarian positions at your workplace has changed over the past decade?
√ There are more positions
Have any full-time librarian positions been replaced with part-time or hourly workers over the past decade?
√ Yes
Have any full-time librarian positions been replaced with para-professional workers over the past decade?
√ Yes
Does your workplace require experience for entry-level professional positions? If so, is it an official requirement or just what happens in practice?
For entry level, usually not. Though we look kindly on internships and student library worker experience.
Is librarianship a dying profession?
√ No
Why or why not?
It is evolving into new areas like data curation, web/search engine design, clinicalresearch librarian
Do you hire librarians? Take this survey: http://tinyurl.com/hiringlibjobmarketsurvey or take other Hiring Librarians surveys.
For some context, look at the most recent summary of responses.
Hiring Librarians 