Expand Your Career Potential Recap

Last week SLASG hosted a viewing party for the DC/SLA Chapter webinar Expand Your Career Potential. Despite some technical difficulties on both ends, the presentation given by Deb Hunt (current SLA president) and Dave Grossman (SLA-SF chapter member), offered a lot of great advice and tips about acquiring skills to make yourself a better information professional (and one that's more desirable to hiring managers). Not everyone was able to attend our viewing party, but here are some key points from the presentations.

Basic library-related skills you gain by earning an MLS or MIS are usually required for library positions. Because you have an MLS or MIS, hiring managers expect that all applicants have those skills. To stand out in the job market, you need to highlight your skills beyond what you learned in SLIS. These skills discussed in the webinar fall into three basic categories: "beyond reference," business/management, and critical intangible skills. Some of those skill are:

• Beyond Reference skills:
• Research & analysis
• Competitive intelligence
• Results driven problem solving
• Thinking outside the box
  
• Business/Management skills:
•  Marketing & sales
• Mangement & supervisory
•  Project management
• Communications/Public speaking & presentations
• Strategic planning
  
• Critical Intangible skills:
• Effective writing
• Meeting & event planning
• Teaching users not to rely on Google, Wikipedia and other such resources

If you feel you're lacking in any of these skills or other skills you feel are important, it's never to late to strengthen or obtain them. Many of us are lucky enough to have some time left in SLIS to figure out which courses can help reenforce the skills we want to acquire. But it is important (and necessary if you've finished or are in your last semester of the program) to look outside of SLIS to gain these skills.

There are a number of strategies for acquiring or improving your skills. Here are a few suggestions from the webinar:

• Reading professional publications and online articles
• Attending webinars, there are several free ones offered through professional organizations like SLA chapters and from vendor companies. Webinars from vendors might not always be about a product you use, but you might use it someday and having a perfunctory understanding of it could give you an edge in the job market
• Taking classes, in and outside of SLIS
• Attending library and SLIS workshops
• Writing/blogging, on your own or for, I don't know, the SLASG Blog
• Networking in person and online. It's not as hard as it sounds!
• Finding a mentor or colleague to show you or tell you about the ropes
• Volunteering
• Internships. If after you start working you realize there might be another path for you, volunteering and taking internships is a way to quickly learn new skills

The important think about expanding your career potential is to not stop doing it. The information field is particularly dynamic and the importance of continuing education can't be understated. It's never too early to get your skillz on.