Saturday 15 January 2011

Why won't employers give new LIS graduates a chance?


I have just returned from my graduation ceremony at the University of Sheffield, and now officially hold an MA in Librarianship (see the following obligatory graduation garb photograph)!


I had a fantastic time being in Sheffield again and catching up with my friends and tutors. The main theme of our conversation was obviously what we were all doing now, and, sadly, despite being intelligent, creative, enthusiastic, open-minded, knowledgeable and experienced, very few had managed to find a professional post, or, indeed, even a paraprofessional one. We all know that the job market in any sector is shockingly poor at the moment, but, in the LIS sector, not only are there very few vacancies, but hardly any of them are being made open to newly-qualified librarians.  If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you will know that I have been extremely fortunate in finding a professional position; however, I had many applications rejected outright, and did not even bother applying for some positions, due to the insistence that candidates must have “post-qualification professional experience.” This little phrase headed up so many job descriptions and person specifications, shutting the door in my face.  Sometimes, I read through the full description of the role and person specification, and, realising that I could meet all of the criteria, apart from the post-qualification professional experience, through my previous work experience, particularly during my graduate traineeship, experience from my extra-curricular LIS activities, and the knowledge I had gained during my MA, decided to apply anyway. I thought that someone reading my application might think that I was worth interviewing, that I could bring something to the role despite not having held a librarian position before. But none of them called me to interview. None of them gave me a chance. And that is the problem; many employers seem totally unwilling to give new LIS graduates a chance. 

I can understand that some positions do require that professional experience; more senior roles with a large amount of managerial responsibility, or very specialist knowledge or experience, for example.  But none of the roles for which I tried to apply were at that level; they were all similar positions to the one that I eventually secured. My current employers put out an extremely demanding person specification for the role; there were about twenty-seven criteria, requiring a large amount and variety of skills, knowledge and experience. However, nowhere was there a statement that I needed to have post-qualification professional experience; so here was my chance. I met all of the criteria, from experience, knowledge and skills gained during my MA, my previous work experience and my involvement in the CILIP Career Development Group and LIS New Professionals Network.  At the interview, they asked questions that allowed me to demonstrate my suitability for the role, even without professional experience. For example, I was asked about teaching information literacy, but they did not simply want to know what teaching experience I had; they also wanted to know about what ideas I had for teaching. I do have some experience of participating in teaching from my graduate traineeship, but the way they phrased the question allowed me to give a long and enthusiastic answer about not only my experience, but also the elements of best practice that I had identified when researching information literacy teaching for a piece of coursework for my MA, meaning that I was able to give an answer as full and as good as a candidate who had been teaching information literacy in a professional role previously. Their willingness to give me a chance allowed me to demonstrate to them that I could handle this role.

Obviously, new LIS graduates do have a part to play in all of this; they need to keep applying for roles even when they are sick and tired of the whole soul-destroying process, they need to keep emphasising in applications how they can “fill in the gaps” left by a lack of post-qualification professional experience (for example, at Sheffield we studied a year-long LIS Management module, meaning that, even if we have not managed people at work before, we know a lot about it and are more than capable of putting what we have learnt into practice), and they need to keep up with what is happening in the LIS world. It is not enough to expect that a LIS Masters and a graduate traineeship or other work experience will be sufficient to get that first professional job. But my friends from the Sheffield course are doing all of these things, and they are really good candidates for jobs. Yet employers are just not interested, which I find baffling and frustrating.

New LIS graduates can bring so much to libraries and organisations. They are enthusiastic, and full of ideas for improving and promoting services. They are dedicated to the profession; when I and my friends started the MA, we were in a recession and, even though the job market was not in such a sorry state as it is now, we were well aware that there may not be jobs for us at the end of the course. Current students have started the MA knowing exactly how bad things are, and I’m sure that there will be a full cohort for September 2011, even with the state of the job market and the looming cuts to public libraries and HE institutions.  Things are bad, yet we have stuck with the LIS profession. New LIS graduates are intelligent, and are fast learners – many of us went into the MA from totally unrelated academic backgrounds, and had to very quickly learn how to carry out social science research for our dissertations.  They are willing and able to learn quickly on the job too.

They are malleable; when I spoke during a session on the new professionals’ view on the future of academic libraries at the SCONUL Conference 2010 (We are the next generation, so do not mess things up), one of the delegates explained that they were interested in recruiting new LIS graduates, but found that none of them had any experience of, or had learnt about on the course, working in the very specialist type of academic library from which the delegate came. We explained that LIS courses cannot cover everything, that new graduates cannot be expected to have gained such specialist experience prior to the course, and that new graduates are very malleable and adaptable; they are willing and able to apply what they do know to new situations, and that, as such, they should be treated as a kind of blank canvas. The delegate went away saying that they should perhaps look at whether their job specifications were too rigid; hopefully this means that one day another position may come up for which new LIS graduates have a chance. 

Many LIS graduates completed the course whilst juggling other commitments; they are excellent time managers and self-organisers. Many can be flexible about relocation and working patterns. Many are willing to take on roles in a different LIS sector to the one in which they have previously worked. They keep up to date with what is happening in the LIS world, and they are keen networkers, using Twitter and LISNPN to make contact with others in the profession. 

In short, I do not believe that a lack of post-qualification professional experience makes new LIS graduates unsuitable for the number of roles which seem to deem them so. I also fail to understand how employers can be so strict with this; how do they expect their candidates to gain this experience – do they expect other employers to take new graduates on, when they will not? Again, I will reiterate how lucky I was, to find an employer who was willing to take me on in a professional role. I will also say that I feel I perform my role well. It was a very steep learning curve on which I am still travelling, but I have applied myself thoroughly to that learning, and I work hard to prove that they did not make a mistake in employing me. There must be many other roles similar to mine in academic libraries across the country, for which new LIS graduates are not being considered, when there is no reason to exclude them. I haven’t been able to answer the question that I posed in the title of this blog post, because I just do not understand what the problem is. What are employers worried about? So I put the question to anyone reading this: why won’t employers give new LIS graduates a chance? If someone can give me an answer, I would be interested to hear it.  

I don’t expect any employers to read this and change their minds about excluding new graduates from their vacancies, but I hope that perhaps I can encourage other new LIS graduates not to give up in their pursuit of that first professional post.

7 comments:

  1. Loved this. It is so difficult at the moment, mostly I think because of the recession. Because there are a severe shortage of job roles, positions that would usually be for graduates are recieving applications from candidates who have several years worth of experience, and of course they're going to beat someone newly qualified.

    The fact of the matter is, the fewer the jobs, the bigger the competition, and how can the newly qualified LIS graduate compete with individuals with years of experience when they've gone for the same jobs as them?

    I recently went for a non professional library job at a redbrick university and when there I was told that nearly 200 people applied for the position. 12 people were interviewed. Out of those 12 people, everybody either had a library qualification, significant experience working within the library sector, or both. And this is for a non-professional library post. The job market is an incredibly depressing place at the moment.

    I don't blame the employers, because of course they will be swayed by experience, BUT, and this is a big but, I don't think experience should be the be all and end all, when enthusiasm and new ideas are just as important (in my opinion).

    It is incredibly hard not to get demoralised as a new graduate, and I myself have on more than one occasion thought, 'was the MA an expensive mistake?'. I loved my library MA, and am so keen to work within libraries, but with every rejection, and every 'I regret to inform you that unfortunately your details have not been selected to go through to the next stage of our client’s recruitment procedure as other candidates more closely match our client’s requirements' (exact quote btw from my last rejection) you can't help but get more and more demoralised.

    I think universities, and especially those with library schools, should have positions available specifically for new graduates, like a post qualification traineeship if you will, in order to gain post qualification experience. Reading University is currently I think, one of the few that offers this. Just a small iota of help from some of the larger institutions that benefit heavily from Library professionals would boost the morale of new graduates an enormous amount.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Absolutely! Of course, it's not like there are a great deal of jobs going round, and recruiters will be under pressure to justify the filling of vacancies. I just find it so frustrating that so much emphasis is placed on a certain type of experience; like you say, enthusiasm and new ideas are just as important (and I'm sure we've all worked somewhere at some point in which there was someone with lots of experience but zero enthusiasm or interest!, and newly-qualifieds can really contribute to a role in that respect I think. And it's not as if new graduates have no experience at all, particularly if they've done graduate traineeships.

    Also agree with you that it would be great to see more trainee roles like the one at Reading.

    Good luck! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. "I recently went for a non professional library job at a redbrick university and when there I was told that nearly 200 people applied for the position. 12 people were interviewed. Out of those 12 people, everybody either had a library qualification, significant experience working within the library sector, or both. And this is for a non-professional library post. The job market is an incredibly depressing place at the moment."

    I think I may have been at this interview, too. They told me I was a, "very strong candidate in a very strong field." They couldn't give me any negative feedback, but had to choose between twelve exceptional candidates. After thirteen interviews and over fifty outright rejections, I have a part-time paraprofessional post at the aforementioned large Redbrick university. 205 people went for that one. The full-time salary is less than my Graduate Trainee role paid, but thankfully money has never motivated me.

    Librarianship in 2011 is most certainly a labour of love. My heart goes out to those wanting to break into the profession, too, because if the Masters grads are getting the paraprofessional post, that really only leaves graduate trainee posts, which are becoming thinner on the ground themselves.

    Bottom line: I'm not giving up, and hopefully when I'm a manager one day, I'll make sure that I'm fairer to new entrants and give them the chance I so desperately craved back in the day. Quite a lot of academic library posts are internal, so it'll be interesting to see if the dreaded phrase 'post-qualification professional experience' comes up.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fantastic post and so true! I've applied for loads of jobs, both professional and paraprofessional, and though none of the job specifications for the professional posts actually stated that post qualification professional experience was required, I've only ever had interviews for the non-professional posts.

    I'm currently temping in an academic library in an admin role, and in the four months since I've been there four librarians in my office have celebrated their 60th birthdays, so perhaps if we can hang on a few years they will all have retired!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nice post Rachel and clearly one that's resonating. As you know, I am a supporter of new professionals but to give the employer's perspective (ie playing devil's advocate), if you get 100+ people applying for a qualified post and your organisation/service/library is going through the mill at that time (e.g. reduced staffing, impending campus closure, growing demands on the service from all angles), you can see why employers are looking for people who can hit the ground running. I'm not saying it's right but I do think I can see why it's the case.

    I agree with Janine who says that there should be posts for new professionals. These are disappearing fast, not least in our institution, and when recently we discussed whether we could create a post like this, regrettably it came down to the decision not to do it - both because it would be extremely time-consuming for staff to support the person in the post (time which just does not exist right now) and, more importantly, because the person would not get the full and rounded experience they deserve. A new professional post requires resources: this means training and that means being out of the office: the office that is trying hard to survive on reduced numbers.

    I think new professionals have much to offer (especially enthusiasm and new ideas) and hope that opportunities increase for you all. Keep on at it and good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Finally read this post Rachel!

    Thank you for bringing it up. I totally agree with everything you've said. I'm sure everyone around me is sick to death of me moaning about not being able to find a job. I'm afraid to say though it's all of the job market that is dire at the moment, I'm applying for admin and customer service jobs as well as the odd librarian/information professional post and literally getting nowhere.

    I totally understand what Janine means as well, sometimes I feel that the MA was a mistake and I should have thrown myself into work as soon as I left university for the first time. But, 99% of the time I don't regret it, it was the best thing I ever did.

    Good luck to everyone looking for jobs! We're all very well prepared and enthusiastic if nothing else.

    Rachel! You are not just lucky, you really deserve the job too:)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thank you Sally :-)

    Thank you all of you for commenting and having this discussion - which needs to be had!

    Good luck in the wilds of libraryland, everyone...

    ReplyDelete