Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Interviews, Preparing for

Librarians should always prepare for job interviews by stalking their interviewers on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools.  Nothing says, "I have mad research skills!" like sharing your intimate knowledge of a complete stranger's personal life.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely. You should *always* facebook-friend the librarians on your search committee. It's delightfully creepy.
And yes, this did actually happen recently, and no, he did not get the job. While the facebook faux pas was not the reason for his lack of new employment, it certainly did not help.

Anonymous said...

Scary

ChiLibrarian said...

...And casually mention that you live just down the street and would be happy to carpool!

Anonymous said...

Interviewers also do this to interviewees. There's nothing like having a total stranger ask you about your wedding plans out of the blue.

shushie said...

A coworker once admitted to looking up an interviewee who had a myspace profile with pot leaves as the background wallpaper. Guess who didn't get the job of new children's librarian?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, there seems to be a double-standard here. I know that the people on the committee that interviewed me for my current job stalked my MySpace page - they said as much. Thankfully, there was nothing bad on it. However, the person I was replacing (who was in the position as an "interim" because she did not have the STATE-MANDATED education requirements for the job) also "found" my personal blog and tried to get me disqualified because I swore on my PERSONAL blog. I still got the job, but had to shut down my beloved site and start a new "underground" blog. So, yeah, I have ZERO sympathy for this.