I've Got Skills

Let’s consider again the three jobs that I wrote about in my last post:  the adult services position in Takoma, WA; the manager of library operations in Oklahoma City; and the assistant public services director in Cleveland, Ohio.  As my professor reminds us, “It's not enough to simply identify the ideal position. You need to have a plan about how to prepare yourself to get there.”  And so let us look systematically at what skills and knowledge these jobs are looking for, what I skills and knowledge I have today and what I should do to prepare for jobs like these.

As these jobs are, I think, part of the same path, they have overlapping required skills and competencies.  They all want someone who is an “excellent communicator” and who can interact in a friendly and productive way with the wider community.  This involvement with the public manifests itself both as a need to have “excellent customer service skills” and being able to build and maintain “strategic relationships.”  They all also call for someone who can both lead staff and work in a collaborative and creative way.  They also all mention the need for someone who is devoted to “continual improvement” both of their own skills and of the system as a whole.  There is also a repeated requirement, particularly with the two higher level jobs, that the person be well organized, a planner and fiscally literate.  The two higher level jobs also want someone who can allocate and manage financial, physical and personnel resources.  I mentioned in my last post that these jobs also want someone with a particular set of computers skills.

One part that was of particular interest to me is that all three job listings seemed to get somewhat poetic and unspecific towards the end.  The Takoma job needs someone that “believe[s] that the library must be the community's first choice for the discovery and exchange of information.”  The manager must have the “ability to create and maintain a library that is an inviting and innovative link to the world.”  These requirements are all trying to express that these organizations are looking for someone with vision, or at least someone who shares their vision, and the person they hire must be able to articulate that vision to the public that supports and utilizes the institution and to the staff that work there.

It is somewhat daunting to turn and look at what of these skills I have today and what I’m still lacking.  Of course, I don’t have the level of experience in a library setting that some of these positions ask for, but I am well qualified in some very important ways. One, I have spent the last three and half years in a position in which I schedule and manage a staff of three to four people.  I also have been part of the budgeting process, am familiar with financial language and accounting practices and have made day to day decisions about where we focus our sometimes limited resources.  I interact with the public daily in a customer service role.  I also am the person that they come to if they have a problem or do not like the actions of my staff or the business’s policies.  While the executive director has the ultimate authority, I have had to deal calmly and collectedly with very irate people and others who have mental or emotional issues.  I have participated actively in developing buy-in from a large and diverse community in order to gather financial support for the non-profit.  I have the computer skills that the postings ask for.  I also am very interested in continuing education and development.  Even while I am in school I have been involved in local lectures, symposiums and webinars, seeking out other opportunities to learn.  I am grateful that my current boss has taught me the value of this kind of self-directed personnel development.

Now to consider the ways in which I can develop those skills and competencies I do not yet have.  While I have management and financial experience, I have little formal training.  I was hired in to a management position very soon after college and have mostly learned from trial and error and from watching my own boss and other managers I respect.  I could use some more systematic and formal knowledge in both those areas.  For example, while I work well with upset customers, I sometimes avoid conflict and clear boundaries with my coworkers.  I could use some tools and more practice in management skills of dealing with employees who are not meeting standards.  And while I have knowledge of non-profit law, finance and practices, I do not have as much specific knowledge of that for libraries.  I order to fill these gaps I plan to do several things, many of them in the near future.  I plan on taking an administration and management class as a part of my degree program.  I also plan to continue to seek out extracurricular learning experiences.  I want to also participate in a practicum as part of my schooling, getting more firsthand knowledge of how a library, particularly an urban library, is run.