 Well, welcome everyone to today's presentation strategies for a successful search process of creating and applying for an archival position. Our presenters today are Carly low university archivist Carly. Her work focuses on studying and developing practices that shift collection strategies expand archival audiences and improve the sustainability of archival institutions with the goal of ensuring that archives are relevant to present needs and prepared for future challenges. I think Carly is going to talk to us a little more about the side of the presentation that has to do with applying for an archival position but we'll wait and see. And then our other presenter is Craig Simpson and Craig is the director of special collections and archives at San Jose State University. He is co author of above the shots and oral history of the Kent State shooting Kent State University Press, and a contributing author to Orson Welles and focus texts and context Indiana University press. And Craig has worked in their archival profession for 16 years and been a certified archivist for 11 of those years. And I'm going to turn the presentation right over to Craig so he could get us started. Thank you, Pat. Thanks everyone for. Thank you, Carly for for coming to this and so when when Carly and I were we're trying to decide on a on a webinar when when Pat very kindly invited us to host one. We decided on this particular topic because we were we're each on opposite sides of the University archivist search that started about a year and a half almost two years ago. And myself being the chair of the recruitment committee and Carly of course being ultimately the the final candidate who got the job. And, you know, we thought that the the outcomes that we that we hope to provide in this hour that we're going to be together is to hopefully demystify the process because we know, like, like Pat said, I've been in the profession for for about 16 years now I have applied for many jobs, and I have also been on the other side on on many committees. And, you know, searches, perhaps now more than ever are a very arduous stressful process. And so I think what we what we hope to do is by, you know, providing both sides of this is to just kind of take you through exactly not all of the inside baseball but just kind of some of the basic key steps that happen in creating a position and conducting a search. And that that will be at my end of this talk and then for Carly's and as as Pat indicated, she'll talk about her prop her own individual process and and applying for the position and going through the steps of the interview and so forth. So, as, as you all know, there are all kinds of jobs in the archival profession, and really at the most elemental level, you can boil it down to two kinds there. There are either existing positions that need to be filled, or there are new positions that have been created. When you look at job postings just like this random example on the on the right side of my screen that I snipped from the essay job center last week. Most of the time, it's very hard to tell which is which I mean it's fairly, if you see a dean position probably safe to assume that was an existing position but a lot of other things. It's hard to tell and occasionally a job description may tell you it's a new position, but by and large, by and large you don't know. So, in the case of the university archivist position this was actually a new position that had been created. And I should tell you that a new full time tenure track position. You have to jump through a lot of hoops before it becomes a reality. Although ironically, one thing, one thing that I've learned over the years is that it's actually, it's actually easier to create a new full time tenure track position that it is to take an already existing position that is not tenure track, and then try to turn that into a position. One of the, one of the hard facts of the profession and I think it's true of any profession is that, you know, from from the administrative side. They're really looking at positions and not necessarily people. And that's, that's, that's kind of a harsh reality. And I think it's, it is unfair in a lot of ways, but that is, that is the nature of the beast. And so I think it's important to realize that when you're going in and applying for jobs. So, when you, when you're creating a new full time position you, you have to, it has to go do a couple of big things. Number one is it has to address a need. And you have to show that it's addressing a need in your particular unit in your library on your campus that at the moment is not present. It also has to have the support of key administrators so your dean and the provost are to are to have your key potential stakeholders. Obviously, if there are, if you can get enthusiasm from, from important donors. It's also something because I know that when I mentioned this to donors when I started there was there was a great deal of enthusiasm and support from them for this job. And just bear in mind also it, it has to go through several stages before being posted, you know, budgets for universities at the, at the broad level and libraries at the more specific level. They are bought out very well in advance. So, and I'll take you through the very process that was long, but in some respects it was relatively fast compared to what I've seen with with other positions in the profession. And in the case of SJSU, it helped when I got here to get a sense of the context of the history of the university itself and the university archives in particular as I think many of you know SJSU was founded in 1857. It was over 160 years old. It is a very old, rich historical institution with a lot of a lot of significance and all those indicators suggest so there was on that particular foundation. Because it was easier to make the case for this position than it otherwise would have because even though we have this this long rich history, and even though we have had a university archives, and we've had archivists in the past as well too. And when I started, well, I guess maybe the backup a bit because Carly reminded me yesterday we had Brett, Brett Melendi if I'm pronouncing his name right many years ago who, who called himself the, the university archivist and whose collection we now, we now have it's an excellent collection of materials. And then when I started, I had a part time archivist was was her position. She was working, Leilani, who was working 10 hours for special collections and archives and then 10 hours for for the Cirrus of Academy. It's not like they're, it's not like there were no archivists prior to a year and a half ago. But what had been missing was a systematic process that a university archivist creates by virtue of her or his position at an academic institution. And because we have not had that there are huge, huge gaps in our archives we it's, it's large, as one might think it is, but there are huge gaps, just as one random example. I have very little on the athletic departments history of SJSU, which, which Carly knows well from dealing with a disbelieving patron, a couple of weeks ago. We do not as yet have a lot of records compared to what what I have seen at other university archives that in repositories that I have worked at in the past. So, so there were a lot of gaps and so that was another way to justify a need to have a full time dedicated university archivist and in fact, when I interviewed for this position, way back in August of 2017 and when I sat down with our dean at the time. She asked me during during our one on one interview, if I that if I could create a new position, if I got the director job and if I could create a new position, what position would I create and without hesitation I said a university archivist. And so, after I started almost most in November of 2017, I pretty much hit the ground running relatively quickly and proposing this position in early spring I think around February was when the dean asked me to start drafting a proposal for the university archivist position. The model that I used was from my experience at Kent State University in Northeast Ohio that was my very first full time job in this profession from 2004 to 2010. In the first three years I was there, we did not have a university archivist. So, that was a case, just like here at SJSU of creating a new position. It was justified for a lot of the same reasons Kent State, like San Jose State began as a normal school, and San Jose State is older by probably close to about 45 or 50 years, but the roots of it were in were in a normal school. And again, there had been no systematic collecting there had been sort of it had been kind of a patchwork random collecting. We hear a knock at the reading room door we'd open the door nobody would be there but there'd be like 20 boxes laying there. So, we, there was a need to get a university archivist there. And I use that model to to help justify my proposal here and the whole that the key I should say central tenet of my proposal was the need for a campus wide records management program. I originally when Carly and I were going through our slide yesterday I had a slide of that kind of showed the records retention schedule on all of that I took that out because I thought it was kind of getting a little too far down into the weeds but suffice to say although there is that there is a records retention program at SJ issue. And there are records retention schedules there. There's no again. In terms of the life cycle of records there, there are a few key gaps one of them being the eventual transfer of records with archival value to the university archives and it's also important to have a university archivist as the center of gravity in that kind of program and to go around and and essentially inform and educate key departments and individuals or stakeholders in various academic and administrative departments around a campus like SJ issue a fairly large complex organism. And that's really that that was really the underlying number one reason to to justify this position. As far as job descriptions go, in case anyone's wondering who actually writes a job description. And again, you know, I'm only when Carly and I are doing this we're only kind of talking about our own personal experience here so I'm sure other places are different but I want you all to know that you really can't understate the the prominence of university personnel or human resources in any kind of job description so they're the ones that that have to make sure that legally everything is everything is written accurately and that the process is going well too. So, but I will say that even though they had a hand in the job description and the Dean did as well, I was given a lot of freedom to write much of the description so even though, even though like, we've all seen this this kind of top level there's boilerplate of text on top of any, any job descriptions so I did not write this there's already basically kind of a template in place I think the only part I had a hand in was the University Archivist reports to the director of Special Collections and Archives and is responsible for developing and maintaining the archives, the oldest public university campus in California so I didn't really have much of a hand other than that part and a lot of this and this is only one paragraph of I think two or three paragraphs but I did have a lot of say in determining the responsibilities when when you don't have when you haven't had a dedicated university archivist. There, there is the advantage of administrators who are going to depend on you depend on somebody who has had experience and the profession on what it is that you need so it was very. It was very reassuring and gratifying to have administrators who were asking me what I needed instead of just telling me what that what they thought I needed so. And what we needed of course just in these as you can see was the identifying selecting an acquisition of archival collections collaborating with records creators, and then just kind of going down the list you can see all of the key job responsibilities and the responsibilities are important because, as we'll see later there. They are what the search committee uses as the baseline requirements for the job when we're going through applications. They're also going to be the baseline for how one is evaluated when when one gets the job. And in many ways to. So, as you can see, in addition to just kind of the key records management priorities there was also. There's also mention of instruction and reference and scholarship because it's a tenure track position participating in the life library liaison program as well, which currently does. And a diversity statement I think the if we this was two years ago if it were today I think the diversity statement would even be more emphasized as I think a lot of job. I've been on a committee and and a year and a half but I think the diversity statements have been emphasized even more now than they have. And then the required qualifications so, master's degree and formal coursework and demonstrated knowledge of of trends and and all of these things some of these are specific and a lot of them are kind of broad you know excellent project management skills and interpersonal skills and so forth. I want you all to know to there is a key difference between required qualifications and preferred qualifications so to kind of go back to the to the required. I mentioned this because sometimes sometimes students will apply on one hand there's sometimes when you're on a search committee you see you see applications from from people who they just clearly don't meet. Most of the required qualifications. At the same time, I have also, I've also known individuals who who don't apply for a job because they they think they don't meet the qualifications when they actually do so. So, I just want to say just to really really look over those quickly and and carefully and know the difference between your required qualifications and then the preferred, the preferred is just kind of the, the wish list. So, for example, on our committee. One of my colleagues had had originally assumed that we would put archival certification on the required qualifications because she was outside of the profession and I had to tell her that I'm fine with that being a preferred qualification but it's not really. It's not essential in the profession. I'm a certified archivist, but I have worked for and I have known many archivists who are not certified who are excellent archivist so I didn't want that to be, I didn't want that to be a required qualification and risk limiting the pool, even more than than that perhaps. And otherwise, so a lot of that is is really crucial. And then for timelines searches can take a very long time because number one, you're electing a committee and in this case, there's five library faculty. So it goes to a vote through the all of the library faculty. Also applications are very lengthy and once you get the committee together it takes a long time. I cannot understate how difficult is particularly being a chair trying to arrange a meeting for five different individuals, plus phone and in person candidates, trying to get all that together can take a while. And then as I said before with university personnel oversight there are rules to follow so it's, it's a bureaucracy, and like, like any bureaucracy, it takes time to do. I'm showing you this because this was the original template that we had for the search. And I'm showing it to you just so you can see, number one, exactly how many different checkpoints a search like this has to go through from your approvals to the committee selection to application deadlines and on and on. This is also I'm showing it to you because it was very, very ambitious. So, as you can see, we were fine with the, I think the application deadline I think that was that was Carly can correct me if I'm wrong but I think that was pretty much right there. Because I think we got your, we got your application a couple weeks later. But then we had hoped for the first day, the first day of employment I knew this was very unlikely when when I saw it but it's good to be ambitious just to try to push hard. Yeah, but the first day of employment April 2nd that was the the ideal I think that was pretty much when the job was was offered to Carly or it was not not far before or after that so she started in late July. But this is just to show you again it's, it's a very, it's a very lengthy process and even though ours ours was only about three or four months behind and that was, that was pretty good on the whole that was a pretty speedy process. But when you're when a committee is reviewing applications were again just looking to meet baseline objectives. We're looking to see who meets the baselines. And then, if there's a phone interview that the whole objective of the phone interviews is then to whittle down the field even more to select your top candidates to advance. And then the in person interviews what happens when that's over is the committee then meets to rank the candidates. So, some of the key takeaways I'll I'll leave you with before I turn it over to Carly is your, your cover letter and CV do not get you the job, or I should not by themselves get you the job what they do is they get you the interview. So I would suggest, I don't want to turn this into cover letter and resume writing 101 but I would suggest what they cover letter. The objective is to ask for an interview, because it is the interview, ultimately, that gets you the job. And also, the recruitment committee at least ours does not hire the candidate. What we do is we make a recommendation through the rankings 123 or however many final candidates that you have, and then it goes to the dean, and then the provost. From my experience, and on any committees I've been on sent as a state and previously there's never been a case where where our recommendation was overturned I have heard that happen. But, but I think most of the time, they go with the committee's recommendation. And you know, some searches are successful and others are not. And I would just say, if, you know, if a person does not get a job when when I first interviewed I didn't get a job. I took it very personally and it's hard. It's hard to take things objectively, right. But I would just say there are many, many factors in play. It doesn't mean that that a candidate did poorly necessarily, or it doesn't mean that that committee didn't like you or that there was an internal candidate. There might be the case of an internal candidate but when I applied at Kent State. I was an external candidate and I did not know I was up against an internal candidate and I got that job. Had I known there was an internal candidate I may not have even applied first. Sometimes money can be taken away too. So there are many, many complicated reasons so I'll defer to Carly in terms of how to how to approach all of that. Because ultimately our search was a success. And now that I've told you all the rules Carly can tell you how she broke them. Take it away. Great. Great. Hi everyone. I'm really excited to talk to you all and share what I did that worked for me. I was in a very different situation. I was not in the middle of a pandemic for one. We were doing in person interviews and, you know, now so many interviews are happening remotely so you know some of what I'm going to say today will apply to your reality and I'll try to focus on the things that I think would apply to your reality but some of it might not because things are changing rapidly. But I'll talk about the job search from the perspective of someone who not too long ago was on the verge of graduating. I was getting my MLIS and I was determined to get a job as soon as possible after graduating. The first thing that I thought I did right was to start early. Many months before possibly even the semester before I knew I was going to be applying for positions. I was looking for the places that I could find job posting so I was subscribing to listservs. I was talking to other archivists who had jobs that I thought were interesting about and how what their journey was to getting their jobs were the steps that they took. And I found out about sites like archives gig and other places where I could find jobs and also internships. And whenever I would find a job that you know made me perk up my antenna and I would think like that's the kind of job that I want to have when I graduate. I would read through the required and preferred qualifications and just start noting okay what are the things that I think I'll have by the time I graduate and what are the things that I'm going to need if I'm going to get that dream job at the end. And I actually had a huge Google doc with a list of like this is what I have this is what I need. And yes, those are other other parts of the strategies is having an idea a clear a clear vision for the kind of job you want you might not get your dream job. But having a goal in mind and knowing how your skills apply to that goal. That helped me to strategize. I was still in school choosing which classes I was going to take based on on the jobs I hope to have at the end, speaking to supervisors at my internships about projects I wanted to take on. Again based on on skills I knew I wanted to develop in time for my job search. And then once I was ready to start applying for jobs. I created a spreadsheet that allowed me to organize the information that I was getting from the job postings and what I do is look at know what's the job, where is it. And how good of a fit is it for my skills. And then I had another column about how good of a fit it was for my interests. And then I'd note the application deadline which speaking of breaking rules I managed to miss the sgsu application deadline but I went for it anyway and thank goodness I did. Yeah, but yeah it's a good idea to find and know the application deadline so you don't miss that. And then what the application requires. Some of them you need to have a research plan. Some of them is especially if it's a tenure track position you'll likely need to submit some kind of a research plan some of them require a separate diversity statement. Some of them require a certain number of references. So it's good to have a note of those kinds of details, and then I used my spreadsheet to prioritize what jobs I would be applying for. So if there were several jobs with deadline that was fast approaching. I would prioritize the ones that I thought I was a good fit for and that work and closer to my vision for the kind of job I wanted and maybe, maybe there were other dream jobs that I knew I wasn't a good fit for I wasn't going to spend as much time applying for those if I, if I knew there were some deadlines coming that related to jobs I was more more likely to get. There are, you know, many different ways to approach that that prioritization but that was how I how I looked at it and I had all of my information in one place. And then I could keep track of when I had applied to jobs when I heard back from jobs, how many people rejected me before I got an actual actual interviews those that kind of information. And once you're actually applying. It's really important I'm sure you've heard this from other people and you'll probably hear it many more times. Really important to tailor your application materials to the position that you're applying for the way that I did this was I created a master CV that just had every single thing on it that could, you know, could possibly ever be relevant to my job search. But then when it came to getting that CV ready for a particular job application. I tried to be really cognizant about making sure that all the information that I wanted the hiring committee to see was easy to find. So I would just delete from that master CV. I would delete extraneous bullet points about projects I done extraneous positions that didn't directly relate to the position I was applying for. Because what I really wanted the hiring committee to see was a presentation of myself as you know here's these are the things that you said you wanted for this position and here's all of the ways that I fulfill those those qualifications so that there would be, you know, no way of missing that information is the idea. And then as I went through, you know, writing CVs and cover letters that spoke directly to the job to the particular job I was applying for, I of course saved every single draft of those applications because as my job search went on, I then had kind of a body of, I guess that was my good good record keeping practices, a body of information to draw on and there were, you know, CVs that I could reuse for a similar for a similar job or whole paragraphs from cover letters that would apply to to the the new job application. To prepare for interviews. A key thing that I did was to reread the job posting and try to put myself in the shoes of the interviewers and imagine, you know what kind of questions they might ask me. At each point in the job description in the required qualifications and the preferred qualifications I took notes for myself about an anecdote from my own experience that would highlight my my skills in that area. That was just so that I was ready to tell a story that again made it made it clear about how my own experiences fit the position. Another key key thing that I did was to prepare my job talk well in advance as part of the position at San Jose State I had to give a, I think it was a 20 25 minute talk about my vision for the records management program. And I had that talk I had the first draft of that talk, ready. I believe a week in advance, it was I had it ready. I didn't have as much time to repair it as I would have liked to because after the phone interview the invitation to come to campus. It was a very short time frame, but I believe it what I had it done a week in advance and I presented it to some of the archivists I'd been interning with. And that, you know, gave me a good chance to practice in front of a live audience. It also gave me a good chance to get feedback but what's key to getting feedback is you have to have enough time to incorporate it. So practicing in front of a live audience the day before your presentation, and you get a lot of feedback that it's not a good idea to change your presentation, the day, you know, the day before you give it especially if it's substantial feedback in my case, it was hugely substantial feedback they had people who I presented to you talked about how it was important that I tell more of my own and a personal story and interweave that throughout the presentation I was very focused on the like, here's all the things I learned in school about archives and they were and you know my, practice audience was saying that's good like put all that information in there but related to kind of who you are and who you're going to be as an archivist and as a colleague and it's more than just that that job talk is more than just a chance to show that I know what I'm talking about but to really demonstrate more about who I am. They also, I mean I had I had planned to kind of have my notes on note cards and they were like don't throw throw those note cards out. They gave me some other ways to, to use the, the tools on on PowerPoint to kind of keep my notes and be able to talk in a more smooth way and and connect more with give more eye contact people I was talking to. There were lots of there's, that's just a little bit of it but it was a completely different and a much better presentation by the time I'd incorporated that feedback, and if I'd done my practice a day even two days before I went to, to campus to give the talk I would not, I would not have been ready and it wouldn't have been as good of a talk. So that is to say just as much time as possible that you can give yourself to practice get feedback and incorporate that feedback. And then on the day of whether that's phone interview remote interview and in person interview, you want to be well the phone interview is in a full day. But you want to be ready to, you know, exhibit your best, your best self. It's an opportunity again not just to show your skills but also who you're going to be in that in that position what what aspects of yourself you're bringing to that position, and it can be exhausting because you're on, you know, in that interview day you're on all day. So thinking about everything from, you know, if you're in person what shoes you're wearing, because you're probably going to be walking around campus. In my case, I worked really hard on my professional having my professional wardrobe ready and forgotten to check the weather and it was raining. You have an umbrella Craig very kindly shirt is umbrella, things like that. Just just everything, you know, you think about everything you can do to be ready and maybe you forget something but you're, you're wanting to be comfortable. You're wanting to have if you're doing a remote interview, you know, maybe you need to have water within reach or, you know, thinking about whatever you're going to need to show your best self. And then after the interview, this is where the controversy arises. Craig and I talk very often about thank you notes. So the, the general advice is that after the interview, you write a thing, a thank you note and the idea of that thank you know isn't just to say thank you for interviewing me. It is to express the gratitude for the time because it did take time and energy to, to, you know, create in that that interview day and spend that time with you and get to know you, but you also it's also a chance for you to kind of reflect back something that you heard that day or something you're excited about, as far as working as, as having that position so you might say, oh, you know, it was wonderful to hear about how the university is doing such and such, or, and you know that's that's work I would be interested in participating in something something to that effect that shows that you weren't just there but you were really listening and thinking about the that that position as a as a place that you might be one day. And then my strategy for enduring the time between the interview and the result is just to completely forget that that job ever existed convince yourself you didn't want it anyway. And just move on to you know you've got that spreadsheet you open the spreadsheet again and you just move on to what's the next application. You don't want to get so hot up waiting to hear back about one job that you miss applying to other jobs. And you also want to be prepared I think it's much for me it's much better to prepare for rejection and get a nice surprise than to be convinced that you're going to get rejected and then get told, get told no. Craig already talked about not not taking the nose personally and I think that's really important there's any number of factors that you can never know about why you might have gotten to know one time I submitted this job I spent so long I was so sure I was the right person for this job I spent so long on a cover letter and CV for this job, I submitted it at 10 o'clock at night, and it came back with a know it like eight o'clock the next morning. And I'm pretty sure they had a computer some jobs do you have computers reading applications and I probably just didn't have enough keywords to make it through to a real person but it was, you know, it was devastating because I was so sure that I was going to get the job so it's just better to just, be prepared to move on. I realized I talked about thank you notes and then I blew right past the controversy. So the controversy with thank you notes is the question of whether to email a thank you note or to mail a thank you note. And I chose to put a thank you note in the mail. And the reason I chose that was because I had heard that some people find email thank you notes to be a kind of to flip it too easy and it's and it's more meaningful to have something kind of tangible in your hands. Craig points out that this was a daring move because tell me if I'm misstating your, your, your take on it Craig because there was no guarantee that that thank you note was going to reach him, or the committee before they had to make a decision and they could have been sitting there making a decision, and I would have been the only candidate who they hadn't received a thank you note from. It worked out because the thank you note did reach Craig in time. And it was a very nice thank you note. So, I like to think it was at least some icing icing on the cake as far as how I presented myself, but it could have gone horribly awry and, you know, sometimes mail processing on the campus takes a while, and it might not have reached them. So, I leave that to, you know, to you to decide what what approach is best for you. Thank you for being here. And we are here to answer your questions I saw there were some things popping up in chat already, but I didn't I haven't read them yet. Let's see. I like the last question. I did it was still yeah we'll start so was the thing that think Carly's thank you note was embossed. I mean it was, it was primo. I chose I chose a very nice I was very thoughtful about the card that I was choosing, especially. I so it was a card, and I had in mind that you know, these are like at least Craig was an archivist not everyone on my committee was an archivist. But, or no one else I should say on the committee was an archivist but I knew at least Craig was an archivist and archivists appreciate nice paper. I had that in mind when I was choosing it was very well in terms of style and substance it was a very good thank you know I say in every job I've applied for and you know and my searches are kind of like Carly's experience and probably everyone else's I mean I've been turned down multiple times for jobs, I have always, I have always done it by email. And usually just kind of like my, my take is I send, I send an email to either the chair of the committee or the head of HR whoever is library human resources or whoever's involved, and just kind of express just a brief like paragraph just sort of expressing appreciation that Carly said it's it's both a genuine thank you and it's also you know there's a, it's also an opportunity for you to just remind them that you are interested in the position. And that you exist and you know it's not, it's not, I've never been in a position where it's like the final deal breaker as person didn't say no thank you, but it's just rather, I think the best candidates. She sent it to me. There was a follow up question that well yeah I think you did but you also it was to me but the committee as well was it I think it came to me personally right yeah I think I think I addressed it to you but maybe conveyed, you know, to the committee yeah right So you can in an email also you can you, I would say do the same thing, you can send it to the person. I've seen. I've had. There was one candidate once for a position at another institution who sent like individual emails to every single person. It was a it was a bit of overkill. But to me it's just kind of the, it's just sort of the, the cherry on top for a good job, I would say somebody asked if it'd be overkill I would say pick, pick one or the other. Just bear in mind, you know, that that's kind of a key thing too is when you have your interview, you should probably ask them where they are in the process that's totally acceptable if they say, if they say we're going to make a decision. Soon, next week or whatever you might want to think twice out having a go through, you know, snail mail. But that's just my, that's just a few sets. Yes, it was very fancy. Somebody. Yeah, there are a couple. Sorry, thank you. The questions are coming. Yes. This is a second to read questions. I have a question about the tone of the cover letters before we before that one. Just because we were just on thank you notes, somebody asked if it would be overkill to do. I'm a suit. They said both. So I'm assuming they mean both email and and snail mail. I was thinking that could be the like resolution to like, you know, send an email like I've just put a thank you card in the mail but I wanted to express mail that you know, you know, I think that would be overkill. If you so choose. If you want to be safe, you got to do you you got to do you so. Yes. Yeah, I think that I think that that process work. Okay, what question were you going to. Did you have any currently this question from Monica about. Yeah, hard time about the tone of cover letters. I have, I have things to say about that. So my approach to cover letters. My voice and cover letters is basically, I know you're looking for someone to fill this position and I'm going to tell you all the reasons why I am the perfect person for this position. And when I sent my draft cover letters around to some friends, some of them came back and said that I needed to be more humble in my cover letters, and then I had a really interesting conversation with some with some fellow job seekers about kind of gender dynamics in like whether we think we can to our own horns or not. I eventually I ultimately went with my, here's why I think I'm perfect for this job tone. I, I tend to open my cover letters with a paragraph about all the reasons why whatever institution I'm applying to is exactly the kind of institution I want to work for so some, and I will like read an institution's mission statement to understand what they're saying about themselves, and then talk about how that reflects my own values and professional goals and and experiences. And then I will choose a few key key things from the required or preferred qualifications and kind of tell a few stories about work that I've done that reflects that. And then kind of, again, closing with with my enthusiasm and excitement for bringing my skills to kind of support the values and goals of the institution. That's, that's my approach it seems to have worked so far. Yeah, I would say I would say the cover letter is really almost it's it's just as important as the CV. And it's, it's a tricky skill to cultivate it takes, it took me kind of a long time to get the right tone I would say in terms of the length. I would suggest try to keep a cover letter no more than like a page and a half. And then the cover letters go on and on for like three, four or five pages to me that just kind of muddies the waters and it starts to look a little desperate and remember to your search committees are waiting through a lot of applications. So, you know, even the best writers if you're going on and on. It can be a bit much think of the cover letter is kind of like the coming attractions to a movie or sort of hitting, you're hitting the high points. Okay. And I would say, yeah, I mean I've kind of I personally just sort of hit on. As you said it's a it's, it's, it's tough it's like do you want to. You don't want to sound too arrogant you don't want to sort of underplay so it's sort of like the hashtag humble brag. I just try to kind of hit the, this is what I've done. This is why the position interests me. And, and obviously, you know, I have a temp I should say I had a template for cover letters when I was applying for jobs and then I would tailor that the cover letter to, you know, each particular job and position I want to say Carly wrote Carly wrote an excellent cover letter. It was, and you know, I, when I, when I was proposing this position when in the buildup to, to convening the committee, I had in mind, again, I think I was focused on getting an archivist kind of like what we got at Kent State so the person who we hired for that job had been an archivist at the University of Akron and before for probably almost 20 years. So we originally had in mind, I think somebody with a lot of experience. But I have to say, so, you know, when when I read Carly's cover letter, even though it was obviously early in the process, I was, I, and then you know others on the committee obviously were very impressed by it. Even though this was a candidate obviously who did not have 20 years of experience we thought it was somebody who, who obviously had a lot of the skill set, and the, and, and a lot of the other qualities, kind of key qualities that we were that we were looking for. What else. Well, it's actually related there's a couple other questions that I think are related and a good transition from that one was about graduating without having internships, and the other was about kind of talking about a career change. And so I think, I mean, while I was able to, I'll say first I was able to work out internships, I would not have been able to keep up the pace that I was working at for longer than the year that I kept it up but I did, you know, I had a full time job that I was able to transition to a part time job because I was able to get a paid internship. And I just I was sometimes I was three different places in one day and my budget was very tight but yeah I was making it happen. But there also, I did work out some unpaid, which is not ideal, but some unpaid remote work just by bothering library and archive people and offering to do things for free. And so that was one way that I was able to build build experience in less than ideal circumstances, but I would also say, both for a career change or you know graduating without the internships, looking at what are what are your transferable skills just because you worked in an archive like for example, I was I was asked in my interview at San Jose State about my experience being a library liaison, which I have zero experience being a library or I had zero experience being a library liaison. But what I did have was experience working I'd worked in an admissions and development office in a school, and that kind of process of reaching out to people to various constituencies and understanding what their needs were from the department and going back to the department to kind of adjust based on those needs and those kind of lines of communication is something that I was able to speak to that was relatable to a library liaison job. I was transitioning from a career as I had a over a decade of being an elementary school teacher before I started it started library school. And yeah, I don't know what what it looks like to look for these jobs, not have an internship and also not have job experience behind you I can't, I can't speak to that except to, you know, think about even your volunteer experiences, you know, like think about how any experiences you've had I used to work in retail retail work is totally relatable to your reference work. You know, so think about how things that you've done can relate to what it means to be an archivist or librarian. For the resume. I had a section that was my CD has a section that is archives and library experience. And then another section that is other related experience. And that experience that that section includes my work as a teacher though I didn't say everything that I did as a teacher I talked about the things that I did as a teacher that were relatable to, as far as transferable skills to archives. Same with my work in admissions and development. Those that was under the other related experience. So if you read my CV it's not actually a solid timeline. It doesn't, you know, exactly go in order because there's the archives and library section and then the other section. I hope that answers the questions. Yeah, and I would say to follow on the job experience yeah it's really, for me it's really crucial. And again, I've seen, I've seen CVs with with GPAs on them and I would say take your GPA off. Yeah, even if you got a 4.0. It's always just kind of a, I've just known a lot of, I've just seen it sort of interpreted as kind of like a tell for lack of lack of experience, I think the job experience is often really weighted as more important. There are some generalizations here but I think that if you can get a job. I mean I, I try a special collections and archives here in the South Bay. You know, we have both, we have both students who are in the high school have been in the Mara program and students who have are in the history program are kind of the two big ones. Wherever you may be, I would say definitely try to get an internship. You know, I got my master's, my MLIS at Kent State but without ever actually sitting foot on campus until after I started working there so I did my internship at the Ohio State Archives, and I would not have been able to get a full time job. So I worked out that that very crucial internship and also at Marquette when I, my last summer there after I graduated after I got my first master's degree in history, I worked at the archive special collections there, not knowing what I was going to do so I really, I can't stress because of change from when I was in school I'm, I'm betraying my age but just, you know, all of my classes, none of my classes were online so it was except for a couple workshops so all of mine where I had the benefit of getting that kind of in person experience so I would advise and it's hard now with the pandemic but if you can try to do so. Yes, we are this is Pat, and I wanted to say there was a question about the slides being available but I wanted to tell everyone that within a week. This entire presentation will be available on the on demand webcasts on the SJSU webinar site so you'll be able to go through the entire presentation. So if you are about the slides themselves in PDF format, if the speakers feel that that would be helpful. We can give them to you if you want. Okay. What we can do is post them right near your presentation information on that same website. So that would be wonderful. Thank you. Thank you very much both of you. I want to think about, and I know that our students are making notes someone privately sent me a note about how good this would be for an interview prep kind of workshop for them so they're getting a lot of value out of it thank you. Great. Thanks everyone. It was great.