 Hello and welcome to the San Jose State University iSchools LIS Careers podcast. My name is Kim Doherty and I'm delighted to welcome a friend and colleague, Beth Mazer. Beth is the president of this incredibly cool business called History Associates Incorporated located in Rockland, Maryland. Just a bit about History Associates and I'm cheating here, I'm reading this off of Beth's LinkedIn profile. History Associates is the leading historical consulting firm providing clients across the U.S. and around the world with a range of services including researching and writing histories, creating educational experiences, preserving and managing historical content, and conducting specialized historical research. As president, Beth leads a professional staff in helping clients to not only capture and organize the growing amount of information available, but also to use that information in strategic, compelling and creative ways. And for those of you who are interested in archives, I would think this would be like the work of your dreams come true. So with that, I'd also like to say that I know Beth loves what she's doing now. But one of the reasons I know Beth is that our paths kept crossing throughout our various career adventures. So she's had an extremely interesting career journey before she landed at History Associates. So I asked her to join us today to tell you about that career journey and how she has moved from one type of library to another throughout her career. So I'm going to ask her a bunch of questions. And with that, I would like to welcome Beth. Thanks so much for having me, Kim. It's my pleasure. And so I'm going to start pummeling you with questions right off the bat here. Can you tell us a bit about your career leading up to your current position? Sure. I know we've had this conversation multiple times just between the two of us as we've been troubleshooting next steps. So I'm happy to do that. I've had a very unorthodox, untraditional career that has been library related. But ironically, I've never worked in a library. I've worked doing research in a library, but I've never had an actual library job per se. I came to DC as a graduate student a long time ago. My first internship was working for a public history firm called PHR Environmental. And I was doing a lot of due diligence and discovery work for ongoing litigation, environmental, a lot of tobacco litigation in those days. So if you've ever seen the movie, Erin Brockvitch, how she kind of just went through troves of data and then pounded the pavement and spoke to people, that was kind of like how I got my start. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So it was really kind of fun. Being in your early 20s, like before 9-11 where you didn't have to go through security, you could pop on whatever plane you wanted. So it was fun. And then I kind of jumped ship and worked on the tobacco litigation with one of my previous clients and then managed 30 or 40 people in the field doing all of the historical research for the tobacco litigation in the 90s. Then I kind of took a step back, did my own consulting, and thought I needed to update my skills. So I went, I said, oh, how can a historian do that? And I got my library degree. So that was, I know it was kind of like in the early 2000s and I did it online. Because it was easier with two small kids to do it online rather than go back and forth to University of Maryland because you never knew what the traffic was going to be like. Seriously, that was like the basis of my decision. And then after I got my library degree, that's when things really started to change for me. I will say I doubled my annual salary. I got a job at a startup.com as their first taxonomist. So, you know, I had our head in the book, The Accidental Taxonomist, she's not kidding. I mean, now I would think a lot of people kind of see that as a career path in library school, but in the early 2000s, it was just in its infancy. The taxonomy boot camp was just starting. So kind of helped build out their taxonomy. And what were you building a taxonomy for? It was a company called Market 10 that changed its name to Job Fox. And it was founded by Rob McGovern, the same gentleman that started career builder back in the day. Wow. So he wanted to, you know, have lightning strike twice. So, you know, a lot of people think it's great to go to a company to get stock options weren't really worth that. You know, the paper they were printed on, but, you know, My stock options actually have worked out really well in my fireplace. I don't even think that it would, you know, cost a kid lying in my case. Yeah. So, you know, there was a good tax write off for you, but, you know, so that was a really interesting thing. You know, here we have the historian slash librarian working in, you know, IT.com land. So it was cool. I think I was the 13th employee. In the company. And that lasted a couple of years. And did you like the startup environment? I really liked how low key it was. You know, you know, jeans and sneakers worked out really, really well. You know, it is true. People come in shorts and they're flip flops and, but you draw, you know, I'm a big believer in a dress for your day approach. So it was what it was. But so, you know, after that, then I got back to history. I went to a competitor of history associates. That was short lived. And what kind of projects did they do? They did similar, you know, these history companies, they're great. I mean, if you want to make your living as a working archivist, it's a very good choice. You know, it's ironic because I went from history factory to LAC group. So it was kind of a similar model in the sense, you know, factory would be outsourcing archives of corporations. You know, a lot of the same stuff that I'm doing now at HAI. We'll say we're a better company, but I'm the president. And I've had experience of both. But, you know, I think I think outsourcing in general. Sometimes people have a very, you know, not so positive connotation of an outsourcing firm, but, you know, library associates is really employing librarians and letting people that want to work in the field, you know, earn a good living with a good benefits package, you know, because in a lot of ways, even though a company is going to decide to outsource these functions, you know, if they outsource it and keep the function just as one line item on their balance sheet, the function still exists within a company. It's just, you know, you're on site at blank company and your paycheck comes from, you know, LAC group. So, but you're still a working librarian or archivist. So I'm a big proponent of outsourcing because I think it keeps, you know, people employed and it shows that the function is still integral to whatever organization. Well, I would think as, for example, someone who worked for history associates or who worked for LAC and for those of you who aren't aware of LAC, it's a recruiting and outsourcing firm in located in Southern California, but they work all over the world. And what they do is they work with clients who have a need for some sort of information expertise and then say, if you are the person who has that expertise, if you want to, you become an employee of LAC and they place you in these different jobs and in these different projects. And one of the things, and I'm assuming that history associates has a similar model and from my perspective and a career perspective, one of the benefits of this is that, as Beth says, you're a line item that function is still within the organization and you're doing it. But if it goes away, you've, you've lost that client or you're no longer working with that client, but you are still associated with history associates and other jobs and other projects will come to them that you can be working on. So in some ways to me, I think it's a not just flexible, but also more resilient way to build a career. I think it's great for entry, you know, entry level folks. I will say one of the differentiators for history associates where I currently am is that we're, I would say a real niche consulting firm, right? So we're going project work. We haven't really done a ton of outsourcing where our projects come from is, you know, a large corporation, you know, wants to do something with their archives. So they contract with us to do it. A lot of times our recommendation would be for them to hire a full-time archivist at, at the end. I think fact, you know, factory does the, the outsourcing. I think that there's definitely a market for that, but we've had enough project-based work and government contracts, especially in the archival field. And I have several other practice areas that may be of interest to students in, in library school at the moment as well. You know, I've got a music, like a music, like people that are interested in museum studies. I've got an interpretive planning group called XIP. We've done a lot of really cool work with the World War II Museum, the Statue of Liberty Museum. We just did a large project with the Dallas Holocaust Museum and the Sazerac House in New Orleans. So really cool. Those all sound like fun. Yeah. So they have a, they have a great time and I've got a couple of sort of certified interpretive planners, which is, you know, new for me because I've never really worked with those folks before, but I run- What is a certified interpretive planner? It's a really good question. You know, I think they go, they go to like a national park site and meet with the stakeholders or, you know, it could be any, any site really to come up with the, what's the messaging they're trying to get across? How do they want the visitors? You know, what do they want to see? What should their takeaways be? How should they message before they start building even their exhibits out? OK. So it's almost a branding kind of, branding and user experience and all of those things all rolled into one. I think that's pretty apt. OK. So, OK, then let me clarify what I was saying. Then I was wrong. In your case with History Associates, you're a team. You're the company. You and your staff are the company. You guys go in on the project as consultants and do that project. Right. I would say at heart we're a consulting firm, whereas, you know, previous companies we were talking about are more employment- Recruiting and employment. Recruiting and staffing. And they've got, you know, longer term government contracts, you know, a lot more entry to mid-level than I would say what I've got on my staff here at History Associates. Got it. I've got, you know, we've got several entry level. We've got six contingent hires out for archivists right now because we're waiting for a really large project that keeps getting pushed to the right. So, you know, traditional print archivists can still find a home, although I would strongly recommend to anybody interested in archival career to really get as much coursework or practical experience in digital archiving as they possibly can because the trend of purely analog archivists' jobs, I think, are going to really dry up into the point that, you know, it might be just volunteer positions at a historical society. You know, I think it's going to be harder and harder to just be a true analog print-based archivist for much longer, especially as most of the records are being increasingly born digital. That's interesting. And that's good for students to know, too, because that is a different skill set. And that's when they can easily pick up in most grad programs, but it's important for them to know that they need to do that. So that's thank you for making that point. As you've gone through your jobs, and I want to come back to your current position, but I just have a question for you because, as I mentioned, Beth and I have known each other through a number of career pivots, as you've gone through your career changes, what would you say your takeaways or lessons learned about what type of work best suits you have been? You know, it's interesting. I have always loved the history and just getting my hands ready doing the research, finding the needle in the haystack. But, you know, as I got more experience and kept changing jobs, I would say I really enjoy the client relationship management, the business development, the management. Because, as you well know, as you get more experience, you price yourself out of a lot of those roles that you had early in your career. So never in a million years did I think I would get back to history. Just history is something that's not where the big bucks are. But I will say I think taking a risk and taking a chance and going outside traditional roles is a really good thing to do. Taking the position with a company called PPC after LIC Group was a great move for me. I went in as their director of taxonomy and knowledge management, dealing with Fortune 500 companies building taxonomies. But, you know, Riorg and I got put into project management for a large government contract at National Archives. But it was a software development project. OK, when can a historian librarian manage like a 15 million software development project? OK, so again, fake it till you make it, right? Like one of these days, somebody's just going to call me out for the fraud that I think I am, right? So, you know, I got my PMP, which was honestly the hardest test ever. And that's a certificate of management professional. Got it. And when I tell you, like really hard, it's a racket. But for government contracting, you know, some people will take more than one try to pass the test. I'm just telling you it's OK because eventually, it may pass. I've got two people here that are taking it in a couple of weeks. So I keep telling them, you have to take this exam. Like you've never dealt with an actual human. Just look at it as 2D and answer it as 2D. Because if you answer it with what you should really do in real life, you will flunk the test. So that's just one of those tests. But, you know, so now I have my PMP because the government contracting office at NARA required it. So, again, you get to the point where you double your salary. So I think you have to be willing to learn different things and just take a risk because you just never know what's coming next. And if I had not, I mean, my career has been eclectic. I've done a lot of different things at some point. They were logical moves. Others seemed totally out of left field. But what I've learned, especially living in DC, is that, or wherever you are, the library community is very small. The world in general is very small because, as you can see, as you continue to link to people on LinkedIn, you're like, oh, so and so and so and so and so. So the best advice I can give to anybody, I mean, I know we always have bad days. Sometimes the weeks are worse than others. But never burn a bridge with anybody. Keep your professionalism at all costs. Never burn a bridge because you will never know how somebody that you ran into at your first job or your internship at grad school may be on the board of directors at another company that's running a search to get you hired. And I kid you not, one of the people on the board of directors of history associates I worked with when I was just out of grad school in 1992. And he's one of the people that suggested my name for this job. Wow. Yeah, I would so reaffirm what you have just said. It is a much smaller profession than any of us realize. No matter what aspect of it we're in, there are these amazing crossovers that you can't imagine what happened. You can't imagine that someone you met 10 years ago or someone you had a casual conversation with 15 years ago is going to be influencing career outcomes. But that is absolutely the case. That's a great point. I usually say build bridges. Don't burn them. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And I think the importance of building your network at all points in your career, especially in the early stages and even if you're afraid to reach out to people, you'll find that you're going to have no better community that will answer your questions in a library community. And people love to be asked about what they do. Right, I agree. Cool. All right, so tell us about what you do in your current position. Well, aside from being the boss of everyone, no, I'm not going to lie, everybody. It's really fun to be the boss, especially if you really enjoy the management and the admin side of things. The recruiting process was crazy. But what I do in this job, which I've been in about 11 months, it's an almost 40-year-old company that does high-end historical consulting. We've already touched on that. But what I do is I report directly to my board of directors. And I am responsible for hitting financial targets, working with my directors, my HR, IT, to make sure everything is moving along the way that it should. People are always variable, so I deal a lot with HR, still doing a lot of business development. And how do you do your business development? Interesting, this company did not have formal business development workflows, policies, and procedures. So I've begun to put that in place. I took an archivist who really enjoyed the client relationship management. And she is now my manager of business development for the company, because she can speak to a very granular level about archiving. And she's learned, I've tried to de-silo the organization. I mean, we're only about 45 people, so you think that it wouldn't be as siloed as it is, but you're going to find that in every organization. So we're trying to get rid of the silos, have everybody learn how, because everybody is a business developer if you're representing a company. Because the minute you touch a client, you're selling history associates. So I think we have to give BD training to everybody, but we have to learn how to upsell and cross-sell once you're in a client. It's hard enough to get an initial engagement, but you want them not to be one and done. You want them to be clients for life. So explain those two terms, upsell and cross-sell. OK, so in terms of upselling, say a client calls and they've got a very small photograph collection. And they're coming up on their 25th anniversary and they want to do something with it. So sure, we can catalog and archive these photographs, metadata tag them, digitize them, whatever. But have you thought about how you want to celebrate your 25th anniversary at such a milestone? Would you like, have you done a book on your company? Have you done messaging or tied branding programs to your upcoming anniversary? So upselling is having a client buy more than they originally intended to. Got it. And cross-selling would be? Cross-selling would be, OK, I've got three other practice areas besides archives. What else can we sell them in exhibit? Can do they have any big piece of our business is litigation research? So oh, it's a chemical company? Can you introduce us to your in-house counsel? And I wouldn't be afraid to ask for testimonials and or referrals once you've dealt with a client, too. I think a lot of people are afraid to. I think this is really important for anybody who's listening, any of our students, who are considering looking at independent information work. Because what Beth just described is the way all of us build our information business practices. It's upselling and cross-selling because, to Beth's point, what you're trying to do is build a relationship with a client where it's an ongoing source of revenue and engagement rather than just doing a one-off project for them, that you cannot build a business as an independent information professional or the kind of business that Beth is doing, which is an increasingly large footprint of revenue and clients and, quite frankly, impact of the skills that they have to offer. So another question for you, Beth, is I'm guessing if I were an archivist or a student looking at archives work, I would probably want to really work for you. So what are the types of skills that you're looking for in the professionals who work for history associates? I think what I have seen here before I got here was definitely more academically focused. So it was really on your grades and whatnot. But I think we're trying to tweak it here now that you need to be able to have the skills to do the job of an archivist, the job of a contract, a research historian, hire museum studies professionals. I think, again, we're looking for people with the right skills, the experience, can they articulate what an archivist does? Because if our team is going to ask you archival questions and you can't answer the most basic questions, you will not get hired here. OK, that makes sense. Go ahead. I was going to say, and to your point about business development, it sounds like they'd have to have pretty strong people skills as well. I think that, sure, that's a plus. I think it'd be great if you could be client focused. However, you know, as well as I do, there are a lot of introverted people that are in the library and archives field. So I'm not going to put somebody that really just likes to keep their head down and do the work in front of a client. I don't believe in setting people up for failure. But that said, there may be fewer roles for introverts here than there would be that they might be better off at Library of Congress in a cataloging role or a processing role at NARA. But people are going to have to want to work for a for-profit consulting firm that employment's kind of contingent on billability. Billability meaning like we have enough project work to keep you billing at an hourly rate, at least 75% of the year. Have to be able to withstand. Sometimes you're going to be on overhead. And you're going to be asked to do things that maybe aren't archival. But if we don't have a project for you, but we need help doing some research because we're going to go pitch a client in Dallas, we need you to be able to pitch in. So some folks don't have the ability to work at a consulting firm that are worried that they might not be employed if we don't sell $100,000 archive projects during the year. So consulting is going to ebb and flow and be up and down. A lot of people have left history associates to go work at the National Archives to become a government employee. But there are a lot of people that like to mix the business with the function. So those types of people are very successful here. I would think that people who like project work, who like to do something for a while and then pivot to the next new challenge, would just be thriving there. It sounds like so much fun. Yeah. I mean, I would agree with you, Kim. But that said, it's still a consulting firm. And they have to be able to go with ups and downs of whatever project work. I mean, we're going to turn on our marketing and we're rebranding a new website. So I am hopeful that after Q1 2020, we are going to be really humming. I'm like at a 40-year-old company that's now operating like a startup. So I'm having a really good time. That just sounds like so much fun. Do you have people working for you who do remote work? Or is everybody on site there in Maryland? I do have a couple of people that work remotely. However, a handful of them are previous employees that have had reason to move outside of DC that are still able to fly and travel to remote research destinations. I would say our goal is not to hire remote, but we do allow people to work remotely if circumstances change. We just hired somebody, an archivist in California, because we had an LA-based project for a year start. So those types of situations. But I can't guarantee that here. OK. So here's our wrap-up question that I have 20 more questions. But I know that we have to keep this in a certain time limit here. So what career advice would you like to share with our high school students, Beth? I would say don't be 100% rigid in your outlook when you're looking for a job. I only want to do X. I would be open to possibilities. Take an interview with somebody that the job description is only 80% relevant to you, 20% not. I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised by what different employers have to offer. You never know what your path is going to lead. Sometimes it comes full circle in the case of myself, but others, you could end up, the librarian skill set is easily translatable and knowledge management may be a great path for you. Who knows? But I would say be open and just not rigid and just realize that nobody at an entry level is going directly into management and know you've got to pay your dues before you go up the ladder. That's really good advice. And it sort of goes along with advice that I hope students get as they're going through grad school wherever they are, which is that your first job is only your first job. And as I talk to students for a single, what do I need to learn? And I want to make sure I get everything so that when I go after that first job, I'm completely ready. And I sort of feel like the answer is really do the best you can on the first thing that you do. But then you won't know what, like you with your PMP, you won't know what you need to learn until you get there. And at that point, you'll learn it. Right. And as an employer likes you, they're going to be willing to pay for certifications and training. As long as they can ascertain whether or not you're going to be a long-term asset to them, they will go the extra mile for you. That is a really good point, really good point. Well, Beth, thank you so much for talking with us this afternoon. We really appreciate it. And I have a really good time at History Associates. I am thrilled. It's literally that I mean, I know I've had a lot, but it's the best job I've ever had. And I appreciate you having me. And I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm always happy to speak with students. So feel free to shoot me a message through LinkedIn. And it may take me a little while to get back to you, but I will. Great. All right, take care, Beth. Thank you. Bye-bye.