Tag Archives: opportunity

Building a career path….with Lego

Posted on by acrystelle
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Courtesy of Phillie Casablanca (CC Attribution 2.0 Generic) - http://www.flickr.com/photos/philliecasablanca/3354734116/

Courtesy of Phillie Casablanca (CC Attribution 2.0 Generic)

Okay, not quite. But using Lego as some kind of analogy will help me to explain one of the biggest challenges I’ve come across as I’ve progressed through my library and information science Masters course. I remember, back in the days of starting out, thinking I had a fairly good idea of my career path. I thought I knew the kinds of building blocks I needed to: -
1. develop my knowledge, and
2. ensure I made an informed decision and/or confirm aspirations for my career path.

Little did I know I was actually thinking of big building blocks, like Duplo. I thought I could put a few Duplo together (areas of professional knowledge) and construct the necessary knowledge and experience together to establish a career.

My career construction now seems a whole lot harder. It’s intricate. It’s like playing with Lego and working out how all the pieces will fit together to build the kind of career I see for myself. I have no doubt some, not all, LIS students and new information professionals will also feel this way at one point or another early on in their career. Here’s why.

Perhaps like me, you’ve entered the LIS course thinking you’ve got it figured out. Why else would you have chosen to do the course unless you had a fairly good idea where you’d like to end up? That’s not to say I wasn’t open to other possibilities but I’m a person who doesn’t make these kinds of decisions lightly, and so I like to have solid justification for investing my time. Maybe you thought, ‘I’m going to work in academic libraries. I want to be a Liaison Librarian’. Sure, okay.

Then this happens…..all this cool stuff comes along. The difficult thing is, there’s so much cool stuff in this profession, so many avenues, so much to learn about. More than once I have felt like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of wonders and the possibilities are endless! Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly grateful for the exposure my lecturers and others in my network have provided me throughout the course. It hit me the first time, probably a couple of years ago. Oh jolly crap. Crappity-crap…..crap.

All that reading you do during the LIS course and beyond, following everything and anything that catches your eye? How on Earth can you process it all, put the pieces together, when you’re pulled in all directions and exposed to a treasure trove of knowledge?!

Suddenly Duplo isn’t what you’re playing with anymore. Bits and pieces of information have become little pieces of Lego. All those articles, blog posts, reports, etc are small increments of information, which make sense on their own, but putting it all together to develop a working knowledge of an area takes time. The LIS course can only fit in so much. To become proficient in an area of professional interest or area relevant to a career direction worthy of exploring, takes much longer than any one subject. It takes more than a simple prescription of readings and assignments. There’s no way a career, a Lego structure, can come together all at once. The structure, the career you (and I) want, will need to be broken down into smaller bits, and themselves needing constructing with smaller pieces of Lego.

I’ve come up with a few suggestions, more like ideas as I don’t know if they work, but nonetheless I’d like to share to those who may be experiencing something similar. I write these tonight as ideas for both myself and anyone else needing them. I also need to write these out to convince myself that all is, and will be, okay. I’ll try these suggestions as well. I’m not just preaching here.

1. Relax, be patient.

Patience is not my forte. I can be patient with many things, but not with acquiring knowledge. I can’t process and build my knowledge fast enough. Relax. Yes, I need to do that. Chill. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

2. Talk to people, get a mentor.

You’re not alone. I strongly suggest participating in professional development and networking events, and getting involved with your chosen professional association or event committees. Being a NewGrads coordinator has assisted with my developing a network of peers and getting in touch with experience professionals. Participating in conversation on Twitter has eased the ‘isolation factor’ and has enabled me to establish a professional voice. I signed up for a peer mentoring scheme in my first year of the course, and to this day, I still catch up with her now and then. My mentor has been fabulous for guidance and bouncing ideas around, I honestly cannot thank her enough.

3. Target your reading and exploration or define little research projects.

I have a long list of areas of interest. In my experience, it’s all become jumbled up and I’ve ended up maybe confusing myself. It’s a good thing to read widely, but I’d suggest focusing on one area of interest for about 3 – 6 months or so and see what you come up with. Create a notebook in Evernote to save items worth keeping. Review it regularly. Or perhaps you’d like to set yourself a mini research project? Determine a couple of research questions and seek out information relating to the area to help develop your knowledge. This doesn’t mean to disregard resources and articles, etc in other areas, but just focus on one or two for a bit. I’m trying to focus on research data management and innovation at the moment. Innovation is taking over as my interest gains momentum. It also happens to be an area I’d like to explore in a research project next semester, so it makes sense for me to invest some time here.

4. Reflect, take time out.

….but there’s so much to learn! I know. My goodness, don’t I know it. I’m at the base of a salad fork right now, three pathways I can see myself taking. But I cannot stress this enough – take time out to reflect. Create a career journal. Write often. My career journal has had frequent visits from me lately. I’ve gained value from exploring my interests, finding out where they might be coming from. I’ve tried to understand some motivations behind my interest in innovation, for example. Even if you don’t eventually pursue a path, exploring some underlying reasons why you were interested in an area may indicate a common thread of the type of work you’re really seeking in your career.

5. Feel the fear and do it anyway

My (awesome) manager kindly lent me a book of the same title. Basically, life is a series of learning experiences. If an opportunity comes up and you think there are some lessons to be learnt, go for it. It’s all experience. No matter what, you need to have faith that you will handle whatever that comes your way. We all have our own pathways. (I need to tell myself that quite regularly.)

Anyone else, new or experienced information professionals, wish to share their thoughts, experiences and ideas about how to build knowledge and experience towards a career we want?

Your Personal Brand & PLN

Posted on by acrystelle
5

CPD23 Thing 3 considered personal branding. Prior to my LIS studies I was ignorant of this idea of creating and building my professional self as a brand. And it does make sense, especially in a working climate where people are not likely to stay with one organisation their entire career. We’re entities in ourselves. A thoughtful and strategic approach to building a personal brand is required to market ourselves appropriately to the opportunities we wish to seize and the goals we wish to achieve.

I have a degree in business (marketing), so I tend to think about and apply the term ‘brand’ in this sense. Let’s dust off the old marketing textbooks….here’s some definitions.

Brand – “a perception resulting from experiences with, and information about, a company or a line of products” (Duncan, 2005, p. 6).

An alternative….

Brand – “a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors” (Kotler et al, 2004, p. 407)

A related concept…..

Brand identity – “the design of the public face or distinctive visual appearance of an organisation or brand” (Duncan, 2005, p. 329).

Okay, so these definitions are heavy on marketing from an organisational and/or consumer-driven perspective but we can see some key elements.

  • Perception – your personal brand is how others see you. How others experience your contributions to discussions, projects, etc form your reputation.
  • Public face – your presence (online and offline) and the professional you display publicly. A blog name, blog design, domain, twitter username, avatar, logo, all make up your online ‘public face’.
  • Differentiation – your character traits, skills, knowledge, experience and interests identify you as a professional and make you different from others.

To me, a personal brand is determined by three things: -

  1. Identity
  2. Reputation
  3. Professional relationships.

Thanks to social media knowing no boundaries, personal learning networks are often formed with members having not met each other in real life. When building a personal learning network – establishing and strengthening relationships – you’d obviously like other people to feel comfortable to form a connection with you. First encounters are often with personal brands. People who you follow, who follow you, people you converse, share and collaborate with form a connection with your brand. You’d like people to be confident with you and respective of your contributions to the personal learning network.

Developing a personal brand is an ongoing process of aligning how others see you with what you’d like to convey. So far, for my online presence, I’ve paid thorough attention to: -

  • Choosing my domain and blog names
  • Twitter username
  • Twitter and Linkedin avatars
  • Look of my blog and choice of photo in the header
  • Look of personal business cards
  • Biographies – for blog and speaking events
  • Content discussed and posted on Twitter and blog.

With the decisions I’ve made about my online presence, I’ve aimed to achieve, to some degree: -

  • an accurate reflection of who I am
  • consistency across ‘profiles’ – LinkedIn, Twitter, Blog
  • flexibility (for my different career stages)
  • purpose and meaning

Given I’m still a LIS student and not sure exactly where I’d like to go in my career (though I have an idea and know what skills I’d like to develop), my ‘offline’ professional presence is about aiming to do my best in everything I undertake, take up opportunities to receive advice as well as to provide it, expand my skillset and knowledge base, and applying what I learn to my work. While the decisions I make impacts the kind of ‘presence’ I convey at this stage of my career, I do not make them lightly. It shouldn’t matter whether you know where you want to head or not, how you conduct yourself among your peers contribute to the development of your personal brand.

My ‘two cents worth’ of advice to others is to start small and pay attention to the smallest of details. This is how I’ve approached establishing a personal brand and I think it’s worked well. It all adds up to being your ‘public face’. Make yourself easy to find and connect with by helping others ‘join the dots’ of your online presence and maintain a consistent identity. Keeping an accurate, and by ‘accurate’ I mean ‘honest’ personal brand will enable you and others to identify people with similar (or varied) interests, values and expertise to connect, share and collaborate with. A personal brand is an important consideration in building a personal learning network.

References

Duncan, T (2005) Principles of Advertising and IMC, 2nd ed. McGraw-Hill; USA.

Kotler et al (2004) Marketing, 6th ed. Pearson Education; China.

One, giant leap…

Posted on by acrystelle
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One. Massive. Semester.

Taking a step back from it all now, this last semester was indeed challenging. I’ve tried new things. I’ve learnt A LOT. Yes, it has been one, giant leap for my LIS career.

While only enrolled in one subject (focusing on web content), I also conducted a small research project of my own and produced my first conference paper, to be presented at the New Librarians’ Symposium (NLS5), held in Perth later this year. Not to mention my full-time paid work, organising events for ALIA New Graduates group and writing an article for the association’s ‘InCite’ magazine. Phew!

How did I deal with it? Well, to be honest I just kept truckin’ through it. Yes, deadlines were tough, and yes, I did run out of ‘steam’ towards the end. But I really do believe I kept a fair amount of focus on tasks throughout the entire time. Again, how? You ask. I planned well and was systematic. Simple. Implementation of the ‘Getting Things Done’ methodology assisted with making me stop and think about the next actions required for both my subject and research project. I input these into my task manager app on my phone (which also syncs to my Mac). A weekly review of tasks ahead enabled me to manage my (huge) workload, re-schedule and juggle tasks around as needed. I used project folders (or document wallets), organised on a rack, to hold all my notes, readings, etc pertaining to each. Flexible hours at work were a bonus. Even with my systematic approach, I ran into hiccups and mistakes.

I’d never started or written a blog before.

I’d never written a conference paper before.

I’d never written an article for ALIA’s InCite before.

I’d little background knowledge prior to commencing my Masters subject.

I’d never formally gathered data before for a REAL project/ conference paper.

That’s a few ‘firsts’.

Notice that these ‘firsts’ are primarily focused on writing? Ah ha! Written communication was a skill I identified as needing improvement at the beginning of the year. I’ve taken up every reasonable opportunity to write. As a professional (and perhaps academic in-the-making), I need to write well.

Guaranteed, I make life hard on myself. But if it wasn’t hard, everybody would be doing it! If I want to learn about something, information architecture for example, I’ll go learn as much as possible. That’s just how I am. I’m also privileged to have academic staff (on hand) to make me feel comfortable to discover things for myself. ;)

The most significant ‘take aways’ from what I’ve learnt this semester are: -

  • content management and systems
  • information architecture
  • web content governance
  • developing skills in HTML
  • connectivism and personal learning networks
  • conference writing process

Learning about content management systems and information architecture have coincided with projects I’ve instigated at work in the technical library. This has worked out really well as I believe I’m now informed with the basic, necessary knowledge to proceed.

Looking to next semester, I’ll again be enrolled in one subject which will compliment my newly found interest in information architecture, and presenting my paper on Personal Learning Networks at NLS5. I feel I need a bit of a break, a breather.

Between now and then, I intend to catch up on and finish readings for CCK11, read up about conducting research, and reassess skills development and create a plan for the next six months.

There’s not much I would change about my approach to my workload. I guess the one thing I would like to improve is my attention to detail, and deciding on a method and sticking to it. From something as simple as recording and tracking research articles I’ve read, to reviewing my task list.

The ‘keys’ I’ve learnt these last few months are: -

  1. Know your (productivity) limits.
  2. Be systematic and proactive.
  3. Identify next actions – look at the tasks/steps required, don’t view the whole project as a single task.
  4. Look forward, not backwards – focus on what you can do, not dwell on how you may have screwed up.

One, giant leap. Yes, indeed.

I’ve been challenged.

I’ve struggled.

I’ve learnt.

I’ve achieved.

Headhunted: why I chose to stay put

Posted on by acrystelle
2

A week ago I had an interesting phone call. Surprising? Not really. But…interesting. I turned down my previous role.

This significant experience was overwhelming, flattering, a little awkward and for a moment, confusing.

I have never been in a position before where a previous employer has offered an opportunity to return. This is a lesson I wish to document and reflect upon.

First of all, I don’t think I handled it particularly well. However, I believe I dealt with the situation the best I could at the time. I found it difficult to communicate my reasons for my choice; I wasn’t prepared. The phone call in itself was a sign that I’ve started to  make my mark….and I’ve only been in this industry (and profession) for nine months.

Secondly, let’s delve into why I chose I stay put.

  1. Stability – I wish to stay with an employer for at least a few years to allow enough time to follow through on projects, as well as capture opportunities available to diversify and develop my skills in an increasingly familiar and “safe” environment. I’ve been with my current employer for only five months. I don’t want to be switching to and fro between employers.
  2. Culture fit – I believe I fit in with my current employer’s culture better than my previous employer. I’ve well and truly started to develop a sense of belonging to the company and the team I work with.
  3. Potential Opportunities – I believe I will have more opportunities to be involved in continuous improvement projects; there are also less barriers to improving processes and information services and generally, getting things done. I am already committed to a few projects already. I’d like to follow through and see them completed.
  4. Support – Even though my former supervisor clearly supports me, I’ve support also from my current supervisor and colleagues. This is important to me. Especially when I’m in a profession that’s not quite understood by others. People, my internal customers, are beginning to trust me.
  5. People I liaise with every day – I work with some pretty cool people! They’re hard-working, knowledgeable, dedicated and there’s a sense of ‘taking care of each other’ and acknowledging others’ hard work. For example, a colleague of mine is working on a massive project at the moment and has been working mighty long hours. There hasn’t been a lot I can do to help but one day I brought in Milky Ways for his chocolate drawer.

Have I taken a gamble? I sure have. Certainly because I’m currently on contract with seven months to go. There’s no guarantee I’ll have a role at the end of it.

Have I made the right decision? I believe I have.

Why? Because all that’s at stake is worth me finding out my future with my current employer.

The hardest part of this situation was not deciding what to do, but how I could communicate my reasons to a man with an absolute heart of gold. I really do hope I haven’t burnt my bridges with someone who has become somewhat an informal mentor to me in the aviation industry. On my last day, he almost brought me to tears with the praise he had for me. No one had ever shown as much respect and gratitude for my work.

I had disappointed him, though he said he understood my reasons. I did enjoy working in my previous workplace, there’s a “family” atmosphere I was welcomed into, but it just makes sense to stay where I am at this stage.

If you’ve been in a similar situation before, how did you deal with it? I’d really like to hear others’ experiences. Do you have any advice?