CILIP New Professionals Day

Yesterday I attended my first CILIP New Professionals Day.  It was a brilliant day with lots of interesting people to meet, some thought-provoking speakers and workshops and it has really got me excited about the future.  Here are the main things took away from the sessions I attended.

You already have a brand! Here are 5 ways to influence it …

Ned Potter (@theREALwikiman)

A brand is how others perceive you.  Branding is the act of attempting to influence your brand.  Focus your efforts to infuence your brand by considering what your ideal employer is likely to care about – don’t try to do everything!  If you blog, blog posts that give advice are popular.  I really like the idea of aiming it at yourself a year ago.  Oh, and most importantly, a piece of advice that kept coming up and I frequently give (and am getting better at following), don’t panic!

Game on: Cataloguing and classification in the 21^st century

Deborah Lee (@DebbyLeeCat) and Jennie-Claire Perry (@evil_jen)

When you get something tough thrown at you take it as a challenge.  It can lead to new skills, new resources for your library and/or you becoming someone’s new favourite person – good for both you and your library.  Although this wasn’t the main point of this session, it’s what really stuck with me.

Just the job: working in careers information

Megan Wiley (@wiley9000)

This is an area I hadn’t even considered before yesterday, but I’d now definitely consider a job in a careers service.  The advantages and disadvantages seem similar to working in any small library within a larger organisation.  There’s lots of variety, something that really appeals to me, but you’re not always valued by colleagues in the rest of the organisation and not all careers services employ qualified librarians, so you really need to prove your worth.

A career in corporate libraries: The pitfalls and the profits

Penny Bailey (@penbailey2) and Lisa Sabbage (@lisasabbage)

Again, a career with lots of variety in the job, but a need to prove your worth to your employers.  You need to be genuinly interested in the company and gain some subject knowledge.  There’s less hierarchy than in the academic sector, which means less chance of promotion, but you can move laterally into a managerial level position in the academic sector.

How to assemble your New Professional’s Toolkit

Bethan Ruddock (@bethanar)

Have a plan: work out how the skills you have compare to the skills you need for your next/ideal job and find ways to fill the gap.

Have a voice: “the best thing you can do is do your job well”.

Social Media now and into you future career

Phil Bradley (@Philbradley)

If you search for something on a search engine often more results are social media than traditional websites.  Things are changing on the internet and search engines are now integrating with social media.  Facebook wants to be the internet.  I agree that social media and user generated content are valuable information resources and that we, as librarians, need to realise that.  However, I don’t agree that we all need to try out every single new social network.  Why can’t we use the social networks we’ve got to read other’s reviews of new social networks?  Then we can try out the ones we think sound best.