Thursday, January 04, 2007

Time, Taking your

Hiring an academic librarian is a big deal. Be patient and do not rush the process, no matter how excruciatingly slow it may seem. There is a reason that it takes longer than...
  • growing your hair out
  • filming a season of Survivor
  • confirming a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court
  • delivering due process to prisoners at Gitmo
  • creating a new human life (from foreplay to delivery)
That reason may not be obvious to you, but there must be a reason.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You should take your time hiring the one whose reference says: “Take our Director, please!”, or “Well… he [OR she] was nice, but he [OR she] really did not get a chance to prove himself [OR herself] here, and another environment might be what he [OR she] needs.”

Anonymous said...

I'd say that the first one you definitely want to avoid, but you might want to take some time to find out if the second person really was the victim of a bad fit. A person who didn't work out at one library might be absolutely sensational at another. I've seen it happen.

Anonymous said...

Forming a new human life can wreak havoc on the figure. Might pay off to familiarize yourself with Pro Shaper in case you need it in the future.

Unknown said...

Excellent advice. When I was applying for my first round of library jobs I sent out loads of CVs... and then spent six months convinced I was pathetic because no one would get back to me. Finally, after I had given up hope or forgotten about many of the jobs I applied for, I started getting phone calls. Hang in there.

Anonymous said...

Usually it takes longer to hire an academic librarian than the total time of conception to birth. Usually it is ten months or a good year.

Nothing moves fast in academia.

Anonymous said...

In 1978, being notified that my first 2-year contract in a tenure-track university library position would not be renewed, I applied for the first two positions I saw in my subject specialty, both in distant states. By the time the university library sent me a polite note that they had received my application and were considering it very carefully, the public library had interviewed me by phone and offered me a job. I took it, and I'm still here.

Anonymous said...

My favorite experience ever was interviewing at a midsized academic library, hitting it off, then not hearing a peep for 2 months. Finally I emailed the search committee chair and she told me that the HR Dept was upset they hadn't interviewed anyone else so they had invited another candidate to interview. That interview wouldn't happen for another 2 months. I got a job elsewhere in the interim.

Anonymous said...

As a veteran of more than one search committee, this is all too true. The most memorable was one where the decision making process took so long, that every single candidate had accepted another job in the interim, and we had to start over from scratch.