 Hi, my name is Kathleen Dunn. I'm from the National Library of Medicine and I'll be leaving the webinar today. I have 302 at Eastern Time on my clock, so we're going to go ahead and get started. For those of you who have joined the call or are on the call, this webinar is being recorded and the recording will be placed on the ARL website sometime after the webinar. Myself and my colleagues who are panelists today are not able to see the slides. They're going to be moved forward for us by ARL staff, so you might see a little coming and going as we do that. And I'm Kathleen Dunn, the moderator for this session. And I'll be joined by my colleagues, Ashley Stevens from NARA, Lindsay France, also here for the National Library of Medicine and Carlos Martinez from the Library of Congress. So, let's go ahead and get started. What we'd like to do today is talk to you about employment opportunities in federal libraries. And each of us is going to be presenting from our own experiences, so there are some things that are common to all of us and some things that are unique to our own situations and our own hiring experiences, whether as a hiring manager or as someone who was being hired. We're going to talk to you about how you find out about opportunities or jobs to apply for in federal libraries, look at the application process, and talk about the interviewing. So I get to go first and tell you a little bit about hiring here at the National Library of Medicine. My position here is the Associate Fellowship Coordinator, but that's actually not where I'm going to be talking to you from today. I'm going to be talking to you primarily from an experience that I'm still in the midst of. The National Library of Medicine hired 16 recent library science graduates to work in the areas listed on the slide there, from acquisitions to education and training. In one of our divisions, actually two of our divisions, so we hired across multiple divisions, and we did it through a hiring mechanism called Pathways for Recent Graduates. So in this mechanism, we looked at people who had graduated after December 27, 2010, who had a degree in library science and were U.S. citizens. And that was the sole requirement for making it into our pool to look at the recent grads for these positions. So I'm going to talk about that process and my experience with that and what I know from that and from other hiring experiences. So where you would find and apply for a federal job? The federal jobs you apply for through USAJobs.gov and another option is Careers in Federal Libraries' Google Group. I'm going to talk to you also about how to apply for positions and how to prepare for interviews. So USAJobs.gov, that is the place that you go to to apply for federal jobs. You can go there now before you see a job that you want to apply for and create an account. You can upload documents from a resume either in Word or PDF and transcripts, which you may need to have to be able to submit to indicate that you have meet an educational requirement. And you can create alerts that will be emailed to you, and that's the saved searches that's highlighted there in the box taken from USAJobs.gov, in which you can do a search for librarian or archivist, save that search and have those email results sent to you. If you didn't want to do all that work up front, but you still wanted to see what are some of the opportunities on USAJobs.gov, one option that I think is a really great one to look into is Careers in Federal Libraries' Google Group. This is a group run by librarians and they essentially do a version of a whole lot of different saved searches based not on job series, but also on skill sets that librarians might fit. So you can see some of the jobs that are listed from that screen capture there. GIS specialist, data analyst, research analyst, student positions, their supervisory librarian positions. You can go directly to the website to look at it, and you can also subscribe by email to receive these jobs in your email account. And they also post other federal employment opportunities of interest. So you can see they're advertising this webinar here today on the fourth, third one down webinar, federal jobs, November 18th. I will say that federal jobs often are posted for a very short period of time, sometimes as little as five days, and that does not mean that there's an internal candidate. What it can mean is that to meet Office of Personnel Management hiring guidelines, it needs to be done in a short period of time, and they'll only allow us to post for five days. It sometimes has to get permission to post for a longer period of time. So one thing that the National Library of Medicine chooses to do is we will pre-announce jobs that are going to be posted. So we'll send out a pre-announcement that in five days or ten days you're going to see an announcement for a job that will be open for only five days. And one of the places that we will post that information is to Careers in Federal Libraries Google Group. It won't be up on USA Jobs until it's live. We'll also post to other listservs. So sometimes you'll see a pre-announce that you want to pay attention to. I know my colleagues will talk to you about where else you can look, or where else they saw the job notices. So now the next step I think that's important to understand is looking at the job ad itself. So looking at, I did a screen capture from the next slide of a job at the Smithsonian. And the job ad is going to tell you everything that you need to know about applying for the position, and each one may be different. So you really need to think about if it says something on this one, I may say something different on something else. So this one says, who may apply? It's open to all US citizens and federal employees can apply under a different announcement number. The bottom red arrow says they're expecting a lot of applicants. So they'll look at the closing date and the date that the first 100 applications are received, whichever comes first. So you may want to be fast in being prepared with your resume to submit. One thing that is important to look at for the first arrow is, I mentioned there's a separate job announcement for federal employees. So if you look at the next slide, thank you. There's such a thing called DE or MP, and it's more government acronyms for DE as delegated examining authority. That means that's the way that anyone in the public can apply. MP is merit promotion and federal employees only can apply. So for this position announcement that was for a technical information specialist, web project coordinator. There were two announcements for the job. One was for under merit promotion, that was federal employees. And one was for all public or US citizens. So one thing you want to know is when you apply for a job, make sure that you're applying for one that fits your category. If you're US citizen who has not previously been employed by the federal government, you're going to want to apply for one where it says all US citizens can apply. And not for the one for merit promotion. So I'm talking a little bit about eligibility, applying for where you're eligible to apply. The other thing that you'll need to do when you're applying is answer questions about your eligibility to determine your eligibility. So you're going to submit your resume, but one of the things that you'll also be asked to do is answer questions. So for this position, a museum specialist position at the Smithsonian, these were two of the questions that are being asked of applicants that will determine whether or not they're eligible. The people who make these determinations are the human resources staff. So you have two opportunities when applying for positions in the federal government. You have an opportunity to be persuasive for the human resources staff and then be persuasive for the hiring manager. So actually if you could go back to the previous slide, you can see the question is you have to answer are you an expert knowledge in four collections management functions, three, two, or you don't have expert level knowledge of collections management. So one thing to know about when you're answering these questions is it is not a time to be modest about your accomplishments. You might think that an expert is somebody who speaks at national conferences and has a lot of publications. Actually an expert could just be if someone on a colleague wants to know, has an answer or wants to ask a question about collections management and they turn to you, they've turned to you because you're an expert in that area and you can give them an answer. So do not sell yourself short. Your self-assessment is one way that the human resources staff makes a determination about whether or not you make a list that goes to the hiring manager. The hiring manager does not see everyone who applied for the position. The first cut is made with human resources. So now if we could go to the next slide, yes. You'll see where I underlined and read your responses to the assessment questionnaire, determine if you are qualified for this job and this job, I switched it now. It's education specialist at the Department of Interior. But you still have to answer questions that will determine if you're qualified. And then a human resources will look at your own self-assessment and assign you to a quality category, best qualified, well qualified or qualified. They may not refer all qualified candidates to the hiring manager. Just because you're qualified does not mean that human resources will send your name and your resume to the hiring manager. You may need to be best qualified in order to make it to the hiring manager. So what you want to do is put a really strong resume together coupled with an honest but fair to yourself assessment of your own skills and abilities. And they will take a look at your answers to the questions and look, compare it to your resume. So the next slide we're going to focus on is the resume. And your federal resume is a little bit different than you might use for industry or for an academic environment. Five pages or more is not untypical and many can run to 15 or 20 pages. Because the first person or people that you want to persuade about your eligibility and qualifications for the job are human resources staff who are not necessarily subject matter experts. So you want to use words from the job ads in your resume. And you don't want to paraphrase. If they want experience with someone who's worked in a biomedical library, do not substitute Health Sciences Library. A subject matter expert would understand perhaps that they're the same thing or similar, but someone with human resources won't. And so you want to stick closely to what the wording is from the job ad and reflect that in your own resume. You also want to move away from a list of job duties. You want to focus on your opportunity to market yourself and focus on accomplishments. I do not have a stake in the book that I'm recommending there, which is a federal resume guidebook, strategies for writing a winning federal resume. It's one that I use when I look at other staff's resumes when I give advice, and it's a really good one. It's a little bit old. Some of the recommendations in there don't match the current process, but I think there's some good takeaways from that book that you can use. So when you're preparing a resume, you want to reflect first on current and previous positions and answer some or most of these questions to get at a list of what your accomplishments might look like and not just a list of what you've done. Then you want to reframe what you have from your current resume and from the answers to those questions in the previous slide to include key characteristics to make up an accomplishment. So you want to quantify what you've done using numbers or percentage. You want to present your work highlights using specifics. You want to demonstrate how good you are through others' comments. Someone else commented that you were really strong or good in a particular area, and you want to convey the significance of your work. So then you want to begin a rewrite and use strong action words. The book Federal Resume Guidebook has a list of 100 powerful words for resume writing, and they present them in these are the 13 categories that they present them in. So if you're the only one who does something, or the primary person, or the lead, and you want to demonstrate that you've taken initiative or resourcefulness, what kind of team member you are. And this kind of process, the reflecting, reframing, and rewriting can lead to stronger resume statements like the one on the next page with the example of before where you might say answered reference questions at busy reference desk and assisted with the redesigned library website, where you get one that adds in quantification with numbers, alludes to positive feedback, and successful outcomes for the people that you were working with. The same with the team. You want to indicate perhaps that you were a team member on an interdisciplinary team, again quantifying the number of staff who were on it, an increase if you have that in the use of the site as compared to the previous year. It's longer, it is longer statements, it's more maybe sentence like, but again, keep in mind the first people that you want to be impressed by your resume and be persuasive to are the human resource and staff who need maybe a little more detail and hear more about your accomplishments to move you on to the next stage. You have the option to either use Resume Builder, which is in USAjobs.gov or put a PDF of your resume. You might want to be prepared for both. You can see or back to that museum specialist job from the Smithsonian, they do not accept uploaded resumes or CVs. You have to submit your resume via the Resume Builder within USAjobs. So you might have your resume in Microsoft Word and copy and paste it into Resume Builder. I will say on the back end, as a hiring manager, it does print out and not look great. I mean, it looks actually pretty bad, but if that's the way they want to see it, I actually had a colleague tell me the other day he was told it was the worst resume someone had seen seeing his job in Resume Builder. But again, you have two hurdles. One is with the human resources staff and then moving on to the hiring manager and you really need to get past the human resources first. So if that's their requirement, that's the one that you need to be prepared to follow. And then lastly, well, I should say cover letter. Not so much in the federal government. I came to the National Library of Medicine after a career in academic health science libraries and the cover letter I would say there was pretty significant and one that I paid a lot of attention to. Also spoke to me as your ability to write. But the cover letter is not used in the determination to whether or not you were qualified for the position. It has not paid any attention to in human resources. It could be of interest at the point that you're being hired and the hiring manager might want to see it. I will say when we advertised here at National Library of Medicine for we're looking for a lot of recent graduates, we did encourage and ask for a cover letter and it made a difference for the hiring manager to see but didn't make a difference for the human resources person. So I want to talk a little bit about preparing for interviews. These are the questions that we asked our candidates in the screening interview to answer. So there they are. We're almost done interviewing so I'm just going to give them away. And the first one, next slide. So why are we asking the question, why are you interested in this position? How much do you care about us and about applying for our job? We kind of know that you would like a job. But we'd like to think that you specifically want to work with us and we want to also, we use it also as a way to determine did you research us in advance? Do you know anything about us? What kind of contributor will you be when you get here? If you only were able to say well I heard the National Library of Medicine is really big and so you'll have a lot of opportunities for me. It didn't really tell me what you want to contribute to us. That's probably pretty obvious and it's an obvious question. But it's one that not everyone was really well prepared to answer. So the next slide. What can you tell us about you? And these were two questions that we asked and basically they're strengths and weaknesses that we were asking what would your supervisor say about you? What are you telling about yourself and how well can you reflect on what your strengths and weaknesses are and how you can present yourself? So we're looking at your skills and talking about yourself and again and your role as a contributor. And then the next one. These were questions we asked about how you would handle a difficult situation or receive criticism. And why we're asking is no one comes perfect to whatever they're doing. There's always an opportunity to improve. It's actually something that our director says if someone makes an error he'll tell them you've left yourself a lot of room for improvement. And we all do. We want to know though how do you get better? How do you learn? And if you're making a mistake how would you handle it if we needed to tell you about it? If it makes you really upset to receive that criticism it means that we're not going to have an opportunity to grow with you. So the last bit and that's a lot of advice but I really say this one most strongly is I would ask for help if you're interested in applying for a position. You're welcome to email me and I'm quite serious about that. That's my main job. It's what I do all the time. I would actually even now as someone who's pretty experienced in parts of the federal hiring process I would not apply for a job without having a colleague review my resume with the position that I'm applying for in hand. I would say if this is a position I'm applying for would you look at my resume? And I would expect a pretty strong critique from that person back in ways to improve it. I really would not do it without assistance. So if you don't want to ask me ask somebody else but do plan on asking for assistance it can be a daunting process. It's a great opportunity to work for the federal government but you do, you can need help. And for people who have successfully done so I'm gonna turn to my colleague Ashley Stevens who will talk to you about her process in getting a position with the National Archives and Records Administration. Ashley? Hi, hi everyone. My name is Ashley Stevens. I work at the National Archives at Philadelphia and today I'm gonna talk to you about my personal experience going from student to National Archives employee. Now a little bit about myself, I'm originally from Brunswick, Georgia. I realized that I wanted to become an archivist when I was 23 after I had obtained my bachelor's in history. I hold an MA in public history and an MLIS from the University of South Carolina and I have both of those degrees in a concentration in archives. Now during the course of my professional career I've lived in a variety of places. I've lived in Columbia, South Carolina, Seattle, Washington, Death Valley, California and now Philadelphia. Next slide. Now so the next couple of slides are gonna talk about more broadly some points that I think are relevant to graduate students out there, well to students out there looking for a job or thinking about looking for a job and my first piece of advice is choose wisely. I say that because shortly after entering graduate school I knew that I wanted to work for the National Archives. So the choose wisely comes in as it relates to my internship. Now in most graduate school programs you have an internship requirement. I would highly encourage you to actually think about this internship and where you wanna work and the type of work you wanna do. For me I knew that I wanted to work for the National Archives. I want to use my internship as an opportunity to become familiar with the type of work that NARA does. And in my case I contacted the Archives Director at the National Archives at Seattle because I wanted to intern there partly because I had never been to the West Coast but I also wanted to get the NARA experience and in my two and a half months there I did some processing work, reference work and professional development. Next slide. Another point is be willing to explore indirect routes to what type of institution the type of work that you wanna do. Now I was in a joint degree program that lasted three years and in my final year of graduate school which was 2010 to 2011 that's when I started my job search and I encourage you to start your job search early. And the result was I started a year in advance but when I graduated in May of 2011 I didn't have a job. But I got an unexpected job offer, well a callback regarding a position from an unlikely source. I got that through the Great Basin Institute which is a nonprofit organization that works with the National Park Service and helping them get contracted work. Now I found this job through a blog called Archives Gig and I found the job there and I applied in March of 2011. I was notified in May of 2011 that I wasn't accepted. And so I graduated, I didn't have a job but then in late July 2011 I got called for an interview because the person they originally hired fell through. Next slide. So what was the process like? Well I had a phone interview with the GBI HR Manager and the museum curator at Death Valley National Park. He's the museum curator and the archives director and one question I remember from the interview was the why do you wanna work with us? And in that interview I explained to him that I wanted to work for the federal government and get an opportunity to work with government records. And as long, he asked additional questions but I remember that one sticking out. And so I got the job and I started in August 2011 and I moved to California. Now with that experience I went into it knowing that this is my opportunity to kind of really take advantage of this experience and I use that as an opportunity to get resume help from actual government employees. Some of these were, some of the advice I solicited were from hiring managers, from people who had actually reviewed applicants, from people who were applying themselves and I actually had a hiring manager, a government employee that was a hiring manager actually sit down with me with my resume and go line by line, job description by dot, job description to rework my resume. Next slide. Another thing, another point is be realistic. I say that because I accepted the position but I knew that it was a contract position so it had a definitive end date and that end date was July 2012. So knowing that I only had a job for a year, I used it to not only get resume help but also I kick started my job search about four months into my one year contract position. This time around however I was able to apply with government jobs with my new and improved resume that I had been working on for a couple of months. So job ends 2012 and in August of 2012 I got a call about a position at the National Archives at Philadelphia and during the course of my interview the one thing that was mentioned by the director was the fact that I had experience working with the National Archives previously as an intern and then also my National Park Service experience because I had experience working with federal government records and so that was definitely a bonus when it came to the interview and talking about my experiences. Next slide. So now this is a diagram. This was my experience of the process. More than likely has changed and it goes from agency to agency but some of the points definitely overlap with the previous presentation. So I submitted my resume and it does go through like the HR person and again this is someone that may or may not have a background in archives so they're looking for those keywords and making sure that you have the relevant experience. At that point then it's from my experience there is two options. You can get referred or not referred. Either way you would, I got an email and when I was referred I got an email saying that my application package had been forwarded or if I wasn't referred for some of the government positions I applied for I got an email. The big thing I wanna highlight in this process is that as someone who's applied to government and non-government jobs I like the transparency of the government in terms of the process, knowing where you are in the process. That isn't always as clear in the non-government setting. Usually you might submit your application package and get an email, an emailed response and then it may be months and then months later after you've given up hope then it's oh you weren't selected. So that's one thing I really wanna highlight. So after you're referred then it goes from my experience it then goes to the archives director who will actually make contact you for the interview. Next slide. So again some of these points were previously mentioned but again I just wanna drill to you that federal resumes can be long. I think oftentimes we approach resumes and the job search thinking that my resume needs to be one to two pages, maybe three in the federal government they can be much longer. For example, my resume outside of the government is three pages, my resume in the government is seven pages. And as mentioned earlier cover letters, in my experience cover letters weren't necessary. I don't ever remember actually like writing one or actually being asked to write one and submit one. So in my experience cover letters weren't necessary. I would also recommend putting any experience that may be useful as mentioned in the previous presentation there are those when you're being asked those questions and you have to rank yourself as an expert. The reason why I say put any experience that may be useful is that I came across job application questions where they were asking like have you used like Microsoft Word? Are you an expert in that? And I'm thinking yes, I'm an expert but I can't really, there's not a line in my resume that says that I'm familiar with that. So I put some experience like that showing that I had certain skills in my resume. Now I also said I also recommend creating a Word doc. I would change that though to say create a Word doc and a USAjobs.gov resume builder because as was mentioned earlier you wanna make sure that you read the job announcement because they may be very specific of what they ask for. In my experience I created the Word doc and for most of the jobs I applied for I submitted the Word doc. I may have had one or two that ask for the resume builder. I just found that with the Word doc and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, I found that with the Word doc I could put more information whereas the resume builder it had certain like character limits. So if you're still describing the job that you did sometimes resume builder I found would cut me off before I was finished describing all of the things that I'd done and all of my accomplishments. Another thing is make sure use the buzz words or key phrases from the job announcements. Like it was mentioned earlier it's being vetted by an HR manager before it eventually lands in the hands of the person who the hiring manager, the person that may or may not be your direct supervisor. And another encouragement is that veteran's preference is an obstacle for non-vets but it's not insurmountable. It's all about getting that experience, putting those key phrases in there and just asking for help and getting help on your resume. I found that doing a combination of those things allowed me to get referred to positions that I may not have if I didn't ask for help and didn't get that. Next slide. All right, so the interview process for me it occurred after I received notification that I was referred, that my application had been referred. And for my interview with the National Archives at Philadelphia, that was about two years ago and I kind of vague on remembering like what happened but for me I remember it being kind of a standard interview asking about my experiences and my skills. And I do remember being asked like certain, given a scenario and like how I would respond to that. And I would also encourage you to know why you want to work there. That's something that I'm seeing among job applicants is that they just want a job but they haven't stopped to think about or articulate why they want to work at that job, at that particular job. So just remember that. And I found that during my process that phone interviews are commonplace. I know that outside of the government they tend to want you to be on site or give some type of presentation. So that's one of the, I think the great things about the government is being able to like meet that need for someone who can't pick up and actually do a face-to-face interview. Next slide and I believe that's my last slide. Thank you guys. So now I'd like to introduce my colleague Lindsey Frantz who is now at the History of Medicine Division here at the National Library of Medicine, Lindsey. Hello, my name is Lindsey Frantz and I am a Technical Information at the National Library of Medicine and I graduated from the University of Maryland in 2013 with my MLIS. Next slide, please. As I said, I graduated from University of Maryland and at that point I had been applying for jobs for six months. I used USA Jobs, I need a library job.com and indeed.com. At that point I wasn't having any luck so I started to think outside the box and applied for a records management consultant position at a bank which allowed me to continue to gain experience within my field but I went and ended up working in the place I never thought I would. So for the first seven months at the bank I organized their files, cleaned up and updated their retention schedule. Around eight months in they asked me to fill in for their imaging manager who was going to leave for maternity leave. So for one month she trained me and for three months after that I scanned the branch files, I initiated use of metadata and once she returned I continued to assist her and took on other assignments. So about a year in, next slide please. I received the notification of the NIH recent graduates position through USA Jobs and I applied in June and in July I received a not referred status and had basically given up hope at that point and then in August my status was updated to referred. So I was shocked to see that but pleasantly surprised and then I received an email to set up a Skype interview that was my first interview and this was a new experience for me. So there were four people involved in this who interviewed me and it was around 30 to 40 minutes and they asked between 10 to 12 questions so that was how the first interview went and then a week and a half later they contacted me to schedule my second interview and that was in person and that involved five people interviewing me within the history of medicine division at this point and that went on for about an hour and also was 10 to 12 questions and then in a week and a half to two weeks later I received a call from Human Resources, they offered me the job and in September I started. Next slide please. So I'm a technical information specialist within their history of medicine division so that means that I assist their systems librarian and we work with the entire division on a variety of technical problems. So for example right now I'm assisting their historical audio visual manager with her film database which requires me to redesign and update it based on what she wants. And as my responsibilities continue to grow they continue to send me to courses and they're really big on continuing education. Next slide please. So skills that I would recommend they're based on my experiences which may be more technical than most are looking for but I think programming can benefit anybody. My MLIS program really provided an excellent base to understanding basic coding. In fact when I started at the bank they actually had me take over their intranet because I gained experience through WordPress but I wouldn't have been able to do any of that without my programming courses. So if your program offers courses in programming I would definitely recommend taking them. Another skill is understanding a variety of integrated library systems. The best way to learn about them is to have a variety of internships. There's always going to be a learning curve when you enter a new institution. So the more systems you work with the better understanding what works best where. In fact actually because of the amount of internships I've had and experience with ILS systems they have me helping them with an environmental scan for their exhibition program to help find a content management system. So you really can just gain invaluable experience just through doing your internships. And lastly Microsoft Access is something I knew nothing about but when I started here I took a bunch of online courses they offer a lot of in classroom learning here and it's really helped me to establish a good understanding of Microsoft Access. Next slide please. So the National Library of Medicine it really is a great place to work. As I continue to say they are really about promoting continuing education. My first month was spent attending courses to learn about NLM in their department. And in fact they just posted in the chat box a link to our Turning the Pages Mongolian Interactive Book of Astrology. So as I say the technology here is unbelievable. It's like nowhere else. So if you click on this link this book actually it's an interactive book it unwinds and you can go through each page and it's almost better than actually having the real one in front of you. And our blog Circulating Now it's a great place to see what's in the collection here. This collection is like no one else. I don't, nobody even really knows what everything's there so as we continue to go through it you can really learn a lot about it through their blog. Next slide please. So my advice to you is to get an internship and then get another one. Experience from internships ties together your classroom learning with all the jobs and your variety allows individuals, a variety in internships allows you to bring ideas bring new ideas to your job. So my connections as an ARL CEP fellowship at NLM led to my internship within their rare books and early manuscripts department and I really believe that proven talent gets higher if an employer knows that you're capable of doing a good job then they're more likely to hire somebody that they know is capable. That's it, thank you. Great, thanks Lindsay and we're off to our last presenter Carlos Martinez at the Library of Congress. We'll talk about his experience in internships, federal contracts and getting a federal job. Hello, this is Carlos Martinez and I want to talk to you about my experiential journey in four federal agencies. I kind of want to highlight the paid internship programs that I am aware of. I know that this is aimed at diversity and leadership programs at ARL. So the first one is the Hispanic Association of College and University's HACU national internship program and there's a link there. It's www.hacu.net forward slash HNIP. They are actually actively seeking people to apply to internships currently that are library science majors. There's never enough people to apply that have a background in library science. So if you're interested in doing the internship in a federal library or archive, you can definitely apply now. So I wouldn't hesitate to apply. And the other one is the Washington Center at the Federal Diversity Initiative program and their link's there. And both programs provide opportunities for paid federal internships in the DC area and outside. And they also do provide housing. So if you're not within the area, they do also provide you with a way to secure housing with the program. Next slide. So my HACU internship experiences were first at the National Archives in the summer of 2012. And that definitely at NARA was probably the first experience I had in archiving. I didn't really expect to enter archiving. I was a law librarian. So I worked for the Center for Legislative Archives and I repurposed legacy data and I shadowed reference archivists and independently provided reference services. But that was a very short 10 week session. So I was looking to continue my internship and I was just on the verge of graduating. So I postponed graduation to do another internship at the Library of Congress and the Office of Strategic Initiatives, it's OSI. And that is a 15 week session and the fall of the spring is usually a 15 week session. And I was working with the East Serial for E-Deposit project. And that actually required me to learn a little bit more about SSH clients and learning how to write SQL queries and things that weren't necessarily in my program. I had taken a programming for web applications course and a database management course in my coursework but I hadn't actually used an SSH client like Putty or to do active VM. So those were definitely the two experiences that put me in front of employers that allowed me to get the job that I have today. Next slide. So I started my federal employment with a temporary not to exceed non-competitive appointment. So since I was a Haku intern, there was a position available that allowed me to work for the federal government at the Library of Congress and for 10 months. And like I think Ashley said, you have an expected amount of time to be there so you need to definitely plan ahead for the next step in your career. So I was actually looking for an employment in the following groups, the LAC groups and track records and libraries and ASRC federal and Zimmerman Associates. I found employment, I think 10 days after I left my position at the Library of Congress at the, through the LAC group at the National Agricultural Library or NAIL. And I highly recommend that if you're interested in getting experience in federal libraries but you're not necessarily having the best of luck through USA jobs, these are great conduits to get valuable experience that employers are looking for. So if you have the opportunity, you should definitely search indeed and I need a library job for positions that are in contracting in libraries. Next slide. So what I do typically, and I still do this now, I have several searches in USA jobs set up and one of them is library and it typically brings up a lot of results that I can't really apply for because it's some type of field that's outside. But if you use the 1400 library and archives group series and in your saved search, you'll be able to see more specific results about the careers for libraries and archives. So, and that can be emailed to you monthly or weekly or daily. So that's definitely a way to do that. And another series is the 2210 Information Technology Management and the 0301 Miscellaneous Administration Management Program. This is the day I applied for a position at the Institute for Museums and Libraries. It was a 0301 series. So, next slide, please. Okay, so the Library of Congress does still adheres to the KSAs. Most federal applications require you to fill out a questionnaire, which will demonstrate your knowledge, skills, and abilities. Some are multiple choice, but some require essays. So, the Library of Congress definitely requires an essay for every application that you apply for. So you will select a multiple choice question from, answer from a question. The best demonstrates your experience and then you'll have to write an essay about how your experience supports that. So, the KSAs are definitely a way to prepare for the interview because if you actually write, you know, the right kind of KSAs and you get referred, you will definitely have an interview that's called a structured interview in front of handle three or four people. So, during your interview, you should probably read the KSAs and then prepare for the interview in that perspective. Next slide, please. So, if you have any questions about, you know, the Haku program, or if you have any questions about the Washington Center program, please feel free to email me. I definitely have been in contact with the program coordinator at Haku. So, if you are interested in a internship for the spring or the fall, I can recommend you or send your resume to them. Thanks. Carlos, thank you so much and I want to thank all the presenters. I know that ARL can help moderate now a Q&A session. If anyone has any questions, and I also see there noting in the chat pod that the slides will be made available along with link to the recording. So, they'll be on the ARL website. And Mark Puente, who is an organizer of this webinar, his email address is up on the screen now. If anyone has any questions, feel free to send them in. The ARL staff will let us know what they are and we'll be happy to answer them. There are a couple of questions in the queue already. The first one is from Sam. And he asks, if you are a Pathways intern and are non-competitive conversion eligible, can you apply for an MP or merit promotion position? No, you can't. If you're not yet converted, you can't apply as a federal employee. Okay, the next question is from Chris. And similarly, he asks, when both DE and MP exist, presuming all things are equal, is there a preferred category for the job's fulfillment? No, I mean, I think a hiring manager's goal is to see, they would love to see all qualified candidates. So, it's just a matter of if you're not a federal employee, you have to apply DE or the all public citizens one. If you're a federal employee, you could actually apply on either one, but you could apply for the merit promotion. That's open to you and it's not open to anyone who's not a federal employee. Great, our next question is from Bradley. And he asks, if referrals are common? And I think he's referring to referrals from the HR manager to the director or manager for the position. Sure, the referrals, will they be referring the best qualified candidates? So, the hiring manager will not, they might get human resources to tell them, I'm sorry, let me just say this, I'm speaking from experience from here at National Library of Medicine, so other people's experiences with HR might be different. But my understanding is that HR will send the best qualified, it may be only a fraction of the number of people who applied. Some people who applied might not be eligible just at all, and some might not be eligible or highly qualified as far as human resources are. The hiring manager will not even see those resumes, they could ask for them and they will not be given them. They are, human resources is that first cut. So, I'm sorry, can you repeat the question again, so I make sure I answered it? Sure, he asked if referrals are common. So, they are common, people do get referred, just not everybody who applied would get referred. That was one reason why for the hiring managers at the National Library of Medicine, we were so excited to do pathways for recent graduates for librarians. I can't tell you how excited all of the hiring managers were because they've never had, or they have not recently had that much access to that many resumes. So, we saw 275 resumes because the only requirements for eligibility were a recent graduate, graduated after December 27, 2010, US citizen have a library degree, and that was it, and that allowed us access to so many resumes where as many times they'll only see eight or 10 or 20, 30 might be a lot, and we saw 275, so we had a triage system, we had, everyone had to review the resumes using a set of criteria based on technical, or non-technical competencies, and then once we did that cut, we did 75 screening interviews. We really wanted to be inclusive and to talk to as many talented librarians as possible, and you can tell I'm excited, we were really excited to be able to do that, but that's often not the case. Now, so we got a referral that was 275 applicants. Other people, if there are more criteria for them to rate like questions that had to be answered, like did you know FileMaker Pro by how much, that might really limit who they see. Someone else might have been like, well, I'm a real wizard at access. No, the question was about FileMaker Pro, and that's got to be the one you have the expertise on, so. Can I talk a little bit about the KSAs of the Library of Congress? Yeah, I think that will be really great. Well, the KSAs of the Library of Congress are just a little bit different. And it's a, you have to answer a, you have to pick a specific choice about like if you're a novice or an expert, or what category you specifically apply in. And then you have to demonstrate your experience by telling them how you've done this in your career. So a lot of times what I've found helpful is to have other librarians look at my answers and evaluate them and see that they meet the requirements for the KSAs before I submit them. So like, like you said, definitely asking for help and making sure that they actually meet the requirements for what the job is asking for. So our next question is directed to Ashley, and Tiffany is asking, who did you ask for help in reviewing your resume for mistakes? The person, so when I was in Death Valley, I actually reached out, so Death Valley has two museum curators, and one of the museum curators at Scotty's Castle, I actually reached out to her, and she had experience hiring, and she was the one that I sat down with and went over my resume. And she was really helpful and she was really nice. One thing I would definitely stress to people is that it doesn't hurt to ask. The worst the person is gonna say is no. So our next question is, do you know why some agencies use outside HR contractors and some use USA jobs or hire within? Do you know if there tends to be a difference in pay scales between agencies and direct hires? I can answer to that. Okay, great. The EPA is a primary example of a library that only contracts out to, the whole EPA library is contracted out. So if you are a library employee, you want, if you wanna apply for a job at the EPA, you should look for ASRC federal. And you should definitely apply for any job that is through ASRC federal because that is the EPA library. So if you, I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? Sure. Do you know why some agencies use outside HR contractors and some use USA jobs or hire within? Do you know if there tends to be a difference in pay scales between agencies and direct hires? Okay. Well, I think that contractors or contractor employees tend to make a little bit, tend to have a little bit more leeway in terms of compensation. But other than that, no. There's no difference. Well, I could speak to... Sorry, this is Caffold Dunn. I would just, it sounds like you were asking about HR contractors versus USA jobs. And the only thing I could speak of is for National Library of Medicine. There is, NIH has a central HR system, so I can't speak to other agencies if they outsource their HR. I know if you applied for a job with us, you go through USA jobs and then it gets bumped into an NIH system. So that might be the systems that you're talking about if we're talking about HR contractors. If you're talking about contract employees versus librarians versus federal employees, I think a lot of agencies just have a mix. I'll say at NLM, National Library of Medicine, we have 799 federal employees and almost the same number in contractors. And that has a lot to do with various regulations about outsourcing to private industry. And typically a contract or employee's salary is higher than that of a federal employee, but the difference that the benefits and different reasons to go with either option. That's right. That's exactly what I would say. Good. So our next question is from Eliana and she asks, could you give more details about what kind of classes to take? I've just started my second year and would like more suggestions. Definitely take programming if you have it in your program. If you have programming for like web applications or if you have database management, take those classes because those are the types of classes that will really help you in your career. I took database management and it really helped me with a background and access and then a background and SQL. So I'm able to write SQL queries and I'm also able to create a database and access. So the Library of Congress uses an access database a lot. So if you're able to write or create a database and access, it's definitely a valuable skill to have. I think at Lindsay, I think I probably speak a lot to that because she's doing the systems experience. Yeah, I second Carlos on that because the programming is huge and a lot of employers are surprised when you come in and you actually know the coding and University of Maryland, they offered so many courses where we created phone applications, websites, anything you possibly wanted. So most MLAs programs are starting to incorporate that into the curriculum as mandatory. So I would also encourage that you continue with programming and just like the Microsoft Access database, if they don't offer it there, there's always online tutorials you can do. I was pretty much self-taught and I took courses here. So I would definitely recommend getting into Microsoft Access also. If you do have the opportunity to take a programming for web applications course and a database management course at the same time, that's exactly what I did. You should definitely do that because you can actually link those two programs together. You can write like a PHP program to link to a single database. And that shows your skills. If you're able to demonstrate that in your resume to show that you've been able to do that in your coursework, it's definitely a skill that an employer will look for. Yvonne is asking, can you recommend the best way to highlight class projects or presentations completed which closely relate to the job description on your resume? I would say that at least the federal resume guidebook and I've seen people successfully do this and resumes is you might have a current job or something under your education experience, just list accomplishments and provide a little writeup of the project that you did. And I think that's a really strong inclusion to have on your resume. And it can, if it's project work, it's gonna be relatable to a hiring manager. They're like, oh, you did that, we have that, or we want that. And really, you can be longer in a federal resume. You can go ahead and go for those longer statements. So Nevin is asking on the FileMaker Pro question, would it be okay to say you're an expert at it even if you haven't used it in a professional setting? He has it on his PC and uses it for personal purposes but he wants to know if he's qualified as an expert. The qualification is your own assessment of yourself. So if someone's asked you about it, that can make you an expert. Go ahead, don't rate yourself low, kind of go on the upswing. If someone questions you about it and wants to know, well, how have you used it and what do you do with it? And you're able to answer those questions then put yourself down as an expert. Margaret is asking, what is the best way to follow up with the hiring manager after an interview? I would say an email is totally fine. We certainly, I certainly noted when we got them. I will say for our process with Pathways, it was a lot because we had 75 screening interviews we were doing, so they, I've had a folder and they definitely were there and they got circulated. I am a fan of the blog askamanager.org, I think it's the dot and it's a good way to follow up, consider it as a thank you, but you could also see it more as a follow up note. I've seen some candidates really expertly clarify a question that they thought maybe they didn't do so well on or bring something to someone's attention. I wouldn't put in a lot of links or things like that, like here's the link to my portfolio, it's just a lot. If we wanted to look it up, we would have looked it up. Sarah is asking, are there age limits to Pathways program and is the Pathways an ongoing program? Pathways is part of an executive order from President Obama to kind of find a way for people to come on board. So people refer to internships as one way, but Pathways for interns, and there's Pathways for recent grads, and then we just tried it with librarians, so the focus is on recent grads, not age, it's based on how recently you graduated with your degree, and often you'll see it across the government generally for recent grads, so it could be a recent grad with an MBA or a recent grad with another degree, a recent grad with a BA, and so it's not an age thing. Ongoing, it probably depends on the federal agency. A lot of hiring managers here were really excited, they were like, let's do this again next year. I don't know if we'll have quite that many open positions or how many we would consider doing it for, but I think there was high interest, we were just really so excited to see so many resumes, which we don't normally get a chance to see. Right, I think that, I'd like to highlight the Haku program just once more. If you don't, I mean, if you are applying to the Pathways program, that's definitely a way in, but the Haku program definitely puts you in front of an employer, and it allows you to demonstrate your expertise in the field. So if you are interested in getting into a federal library archive, it's definitely advantageous for you to apply for the Haku program or the Washington Center. You don't have to be Hispanic, you don't have to be, I mean, they really just need enough applicants that have the experience and the knowledge to apply to these programs. And I would like to comment, thanks for the person who suggested following an agency on Twitter. NLM has a careers at NLM page where you can sign up for our job announcements, and I actually have signed up myself and we're a big place, and so I've been surprised. It's like, oh, I didn't know that part of our library had an opening. Some of them are not of interest to me, some of them are just, wow, I didn't realize they got approval and it got posted. So that could be a really great way to go about it. And I could also plug, if you're interested in internships, the State Department has a virtual Student Foreign Service, VFFS program, so for virtual internships. They start advertising, well, they'll do a call for projects from agencies in June, and then they'll advertise over the summer for fall and spring semester internships. So they're unpaid, but they are virtual, and they aren't just with the State Department, they have 11 partner agencies, including the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress, and I think we at National Library of Medicine will be submitting some this next go around. So if you're not in a position to do an in-person internship, that might be an attractive way to go. And for those who are looking for non-traditional careers, it may be an opportunity to look at opportunities in agencies that are not looking for traditional, you know, to be in a library, but to use your library skills. Also, if you're looking for an internship in another city, or if you're looking for an internship in the Washington, D.C. area, the Hockey program is definitely the way to go. It will provide you with income, a stipend, and you will have housing, and you also will have the experience and to work for a federal agency. So our next question is, would an internship at the Federal Highway Administration Research Library provide experience that would apply to work at the National Archives at Seattle? It would depend on the type of work that you're doing. Is there any chance that you could elaborate on that? That's the only information we have so far. So we'll go to the next question until she responds. Nevin says, I need one more class to graduate with my MLS. So he's waiting until spring 2015 to finish his degree. Are federal library jobs strict with the MLS requirement, or would it be worth it to apply for a job that requires an MLS even though he has one course short? No, they're very strict, and that's with HR, and that's not with the hiring manager. You know, I just want to chime in here. I think that it would be good for you to apply for a Haku internship to get the experience of working in a federal agency and being in front of an employer that knows your skills and would hire you for maybe a non-competitive, not to exceed federal employee program. Because if you're in front of an employer, that makes all the difference. Bradley is asking, is Haku for different ethnicities such as African-American? Oh, it's for everybody. If you have an MLS or if you're studying library science or archives, you have the opportunity to apply. And the application deadline was November 14th, but you can still apply now. I've contacted the executive director. I formerly was an executive care member, so I definitely know that you can apply for an internship for the spring or the summer. Will Haku allow you to complete an internship after you've graduated? No. If you have graduated, you cannot apply for Haku unless you are an undergrad that has applied for the internship right after you've graduated. Does that make sense? So we have an update on the previous question. Aliana is thinking about a summer internship at the Federal Highway Administration Research Library, but she wants to work at the National Archives at Seattle. And she's interested in seeing how transferable the skills are. From my experience, granted, this was about two years ago, I did mostly processing, so that's actually dealing with the records and creating a finding aid. I did some reference work as it relates to, I shadowed one of the reference staff members and answering a request, and she would actually, like as I became more confident in it, actually giving me a request. And with the reference request, that might actually require you like searching their database, their internal database, and then actually going to go pull that record. So if you have experience that's of a similar vein, I could see how that could transfer over if you wanna work for the National Archives. I just wanna minute what Ashley just said. I worked for the National Archives during 2012, and I was able to provide access to records that were available in the Center for Legislative Archives. So I was able to go to the record and pull it and send it to the requester digitally. So our last question for today is, do you know how successful LAS grads have been at obtaining jobs within intelligence agencies? You know, there is a librarian, yeah, you might try posting to Careers and Federal Libraries' Google group, I'm not recalling her name right now, who moved very successfully with her library skills into I think either the FBI or Defense Intelligence or even if you maybe do a search for Careers and Federal Libraries' panels and groups, the number of librarians who regularly organize them for at ALA and other events. I'm just blanking on her name right now, but has been on a number of panels and would be a good person to be aware of and perhaps get in touch with. Sorry, I don't know her name. That's all the questions we have for today. Oh, great. Thanks so much. We're right on target with finishing at 4.15 Eastern Time. Thank you all so, so much for being with us. And I'd like to thank my colleagues, Ashley, Lindsay and Carlos. And Carlos was under the weather and did the presentation anyway. I'm quite serious. Please feel free to email me. I'll be running up to my desk to see if anybody did. And thank you so much. We really need your talent in Federal Libraries and would welcome seeing your applications. Thanks. Thank you. And thanks for the ARL staff. Thank you so much.