Career recovery: a case study of my personal job search

Abstract:

Chapter 2 examines the consequences of my decision to voluntarily leave my position at Harvard University for family reasons. It analyzes the success and failures of my job search, focusing on both the psychological consequences and personal difficulties associated with a prolonged period of unemployment and a difficult job search. The chapter concludes with a collection of dos and don'ts of contemporary job searching for information professionals.

Key words

unemployment

career goals

interview strategies

job search

skills assessment

It often seems that the greatest changes in our lives come from incidents that at the time seem rather minor. My path to career change and the evolution of my views on career preparation and renewal began during the late fall of 2006. My wife decided to visit her mother in California in early October. At the time I was a librarian at Harvard University, serving as a middle manager in the Preservation Services Division of the Harvard College Library system. My wife was the Director of the Boston University Art Gallery. We were a happy and relatively prosperous, newly married, New England academic couple.

Upon her arrival in California, my wife discovered that her mother's mental and physical health had declined. This set off a process of managing an elder-care family dilemma that would last two years. My wife took on the role of caregiver to her mother. It also led us to leave our home and our jobs in New England in order to manage the heavy and demanding financial and medical requirements of taking care of an elderly and dependent parent. Our experiences are not unique. Many couples in mid-career find that they must take on the burdens, and, may I also add, the blessings, of supporting their parents as they battle dementia or other age-related health problems. For an excellent analysis of the struggles and rewards of families dealing with dementia, I recommend The Forgetting: Alzheimer's: Portrait of an Epidemic by David Shenk (Shenk, 2001). The book eloquently describes how this epidemic in mental health is having profound impacts on our society and on the careers of loved ones compelled to aid their stricken family members.

This is a type of career disruption - career breaks caused by family commitments - that is not often discussed in the literature. Career guides usually concentrate on those who are unemployed or underemployed through downsizing or lay-offs or those poor souls trapped in dull and unrewarding jobs who want to restart their careers. The emphasis of the typical self- help book or article is on getting back on your feet or trying a new line of employment. However, in our age of dual-career marriages and the rise of multi-generational family health commitments, it is becoming common for library professionals to have to restart their careers due to a move across country to be with their spouse or shifting from full-time to part-time work in order to be a caregiver to an ailing parent or child. While the reasons for your unemployment or underemployment may vary, having to restart your career is never easy. And it is especially difficult during times of economic decline.

Job loss can often be broadly characterized as either voluntary or involuntary. You quit your job for personal or professional reasons or you were laid off or downsized. Quite simply, although the illness of my mother-in-law was certainly a commitment imposed upon my wife and I, our job loss could be categorized as a voluntary disruption of one's career due to family commitments. However, before I go on with my analysis of my career change, I should tackle an important philosophical consideration. Earlier I used the word 'must' to describe the sense of responsibility for one's parents' welfare. In fairness there is no legal imperative to take on the role of caregiver for one's parents. It is more an obligation based on love and ethical concerns. But for many it is an obligation they simply cannot ignore. Therefore it is best to consider it a 'voluntary disruption' since it is not imposed from some outside force but comes from the decision-making processes of the individual. In later chapters, I will deal with this question of the decision to end one's job before one has found another position.

Besides familial burdens or personal commitments, sometimes we 'must' leave our jobs because they have become impossible to tolerate. We are burned-out, frustrated, or simply demoralized by a job that no longer meets our needs. And rather than waiting to be fired or demoted we choose to quit. While this may seem like a rash act to some, the emotional and professional damage of staying too long in a negative environment should not be underestimated. As I will detail in later chapters, rather than allowing ourselves to burn out we should always explore new options; ideally those alternatives are to find new career paths, not simply to quit. But for many librarians, sticking with a dull and frustrating job path sometimes seems to be the only option. As one colleague at Harvard University once quipped, 'Sometimes your cushy job becomes a bog. A bog you don't have the strength to escape.' The purpose of my book is to provide practical advice so that informational professionals can avoid being stuck in that bog or rashly quitting librarianship when they simply cannot withstand the frustrations of a burned-out career. Voluntarily leaving a good job for no job at all is sometimes a necessity; voluntarily leaving a bad job for no job at all is a very desperate but sometimes practical choice of last resort.

Off to California

In late spring of 2007, my wife and I decided that since we could not move her mother to Boston, we would move to California. I must say that I approached this relocation with ambivalent feelings. My wife and I were sure it was the right decision but moving cross-country is never easy. For myself, in terms of my career, it seemed both daring and difficult. On the one hand, I would miss my colleagues at Harvard University and the assurance of a steady job and well-respected career. But, on the other hand, it seemed like an exciting adventure. Here was the possibility to use my managerial skills and technical knowledge at a new school. It seemed to present an opportunity for me to join one of the major public or private universities in Southern California.

It all looked so simple when I began the job search process in May and June of 2007, even before our cross-country move. My friends assured me that with 'Harvard' on my résumé, a successful job search was assured. So I wrote a cover letter and drafted a résumé. To show you how ill- prepared I was, this was the first time I had written a cover letter since 1999. It was the first time I had edited my résumé in five years. My job search strategy consisted of little more than checking the postings on the ALA (American Library Association) website. In retrospect, I realize that I was extremely naïve about the magnitude of effort required in looking for jobs in a new region and the need to retool my thinking about what constituted a job search in today's competitive information professional career market. There are many mistakes a veteran worker can make when they are thrown back into the job-hunting pool and I had just made the first one. I had assumed the job-hunting skills of the previous decade would still serve me well. But new times often require new strategies.

Before we had even left Boston in August of 2007, I had already sent out several applications to a few major universities. I had even gone online and filled out applications. Much to my surprise, many schools had adopted a highly automated approach to employment. Later on I will talk in depth about these new application techniques, but what I didn't realize at the time is that these online applications need to be taken as seriously and filled out as carefully as the 'old-fashioned' written ones. I realize now that I frequently did not check and edit my answers. I thought that these applications were simply forms to get onto a human resources manager's message board. Surely, I thought these weren't the official applications! What I would soon discover is that this online method is most assuredly the official method for seeking employment at many public library and university library systems. As I started my job search, I had so much to learn about the new employment environment and, unfortunately, I was about to learn it the hard way.

First you fail and then, guess what, you fail again

Only a few weeks after arriving in California I had my first on-site interview at a major school in the region. I was calm, collected, and prepared. Apparently, I did well in the interview and they found me to be an articulate and somewhat charming individual. Unfortunately, three weeks after the interview I received a polite but firm rejection letter. Having searched for several jobs over the years, this was not my first rejection letter by any means. But my assumption was that I was a good fit for the job. I recently had been a manager at Harvard University, and I felt that I had done really well at the person-to-person sessions of the interview. Whatever the...