Thing 21: How to identify your strengths, how to capitalise on your interests, how to write something eyecatching that meets job specs.
Great post! Fortunately I haven’t had to jobhunt in a few years now but I feel prepared. I try and keep both me CV and “further information” essay up-to-date and I have learnt fairly well that I need to sell myself. I am still not overly confident with the selling thing but a then-colleague (who is not a librarian!) tweaked my CV etc. to work much better. It’s mainly about knowing what you’re good at and why you should be proud. And also about why a job might not be the one for you.
Thing 22: Volunteering to get experience
I was lucky because one semester of my degree course was work experience. You had to go and work in a library thatn you chose. This was like volunteering but because it was part of a university course a proper agreement was drawn up, binding both the student and the organisation to certain rules. The organisation could not go and exploit the student. They had to teach the student something. The student had to put some effort in. What’s not to like.
I think this arrangement was the best unpaid work scenario libraries can imagine. They get someone who’s keen, someone who is with them for several months and can take ona project, and someone who wants to be in the profession, therefore not devalueing it.
