Article: Ronald E. Wheeler, Nancy P. Johnson, and Terrance K. Manion, Choosing the Top Candidate: Best Practices in Academic Law Library Hiring, 100 Law Library Journal 117 (2008)
The current issue of Law Library Journal has an article by three librarians at Georgia State University's law library on how a library can conduct a successful job search. I'd recommend this article to job seekers as an opportunity to get an idea of how the hiring library might be proceeding. Since I spent a good part of last year hunting for a new position, I thought I'd offer my thoughts on the article from a job-seeker's perspective. I'm using the same headings as in the original article to comment on those sections of it.
Vacancies as Opportunities
I'd second the authors' advice to really think about what you want in a position. A frustration for me was that a lot of job descriptions seemed (I thought anyway) to be calling for a clone of the person who last had the job. Does the person you hire need to have the exact same resume as the person departing the position? Could a new person grow into the position? Certainly everyone wants the person they hire to have previous experience, but does the person you hire really have to have previous experience to do the duties of this position?
Search Committee
I'd agree with the authors' advice to have as small a search committee as possible. As a practical matter, it is difficult to have a telephone or screening interview with a large group of people. Conference calls are already difficult because you cannot see whom you are talking to. I found it much harder to have a telephone interview with seven or eight people as opposed to three. The follow-up questions seemed awkward (perhaps because no one wanted to seem as if they were monopolizing the interview or taking time away from their colleagues), a few people never participated, and others seemed to be asking only token questions.
Job Descriptions
You need to have a job description. For advertising the position, you can have descriptions that are tailored to different media and audiences, but there ultimately needs to be one complete description that is available to job seekers before they ever decide to apply for the job. Why? So they have an honest idea of what the job entails and they can screen themselves out if needed. If you give only a partial or incomplete job description to applicants, you and they will be awfully disappointed when the full position is made known to them.
The most awkward moment I had at last year's AALL conference was a 30 minute screening interview where the position described to me was one that I never would have applied to if only the job announcement had been complete and detailed about what the library was looking for. Instead they had used a short 3-sentence somewhat generic description that sounded like it was for a reference position. Honestly, I was floored when they described the duties and requirements of the position.
Where and How to Post the Position
For positions in academic law libraries, I'd say that the AALL Job Placement Hotline is mandatory, along with the law-lib listserv. New graduates and those in library school may not see postings that are only on SIS listservs.
Communicating with Applicants
Yes, please let me know when you receive my job application. But be careful about notifying a candidate that you're rejecting them if your job description states that applications will be reviewed beginning on a certain date and that date has not yet been reached. I'm a bit uncertain about the advice to contact an applicant before you start checking their references. As a job seeker, it would have been nice to know that I'd advanced to that level of consideration. On the other hand, my preference would be that you not call me but that you e-mail me to set up a phone call (and let me know what it'll be about).
Phone Interviews of Candidates
I totally agree with the observation that "[t]he conversation often proves awkward and difficult with an entire committee on the line. This would also have been the spot for the article's authors to reiterate their previous advice (in the section on "Checking References," para. 30) that prepared questions should be used as a guide to a conversation, not a script. I realize that some schools feel they need to ask identical questions of all candidates, but I always found these set scripts of questions that were marched through in order to be really awkward.
Making the Job Offer
My comments here are all directed towards how to behave towards the unsuccessful job candidates. First of all, you need to notify all applicants when they've been rejected. An applicant shouldn't learn that they were rejected by reading the "Member Updates" section of an association newsletter or by looking at the hiring library's website and seeing a new person listed amongst all the other librarians.
Second, be a bit formal and send an actual (paper) rejection letter through the U.S. Postal Service using a first-class stamp. E-mail is a wonderful thing, but show some class. Even if you're giving an immediate notification through e-mail, follow up with an actual letter.
Third, don't call the person you're rejecting to give them the bad news. Send a letter (see the paragraph above). Having a brief conversation such as the article's authors recommend is good, but I likely won't be prepared or ready to handle it immediately after I learn that I've been rejected. Send the rejection letter, then a week or two later, e-mail me to let me know that you're open to offering feedback and would like some feedback about the interview process.
