 Hi, everyone. I'm Kim Doherty, career consultant for the iSchool, and I'd like to welcome you to today's LIS Careers webcast, Interplay and Compatibility, using soft skills to ace interviews, get hired, and excel at work. We're fortunate to have two wonderful speakers who will be sharing their expertise with you about the importance of graduating, not only with solid LIS skills, but also with excellent soft skills. So first a little bit about our speakers. Heidi Murphy is currently director of library and recreation services for the city of Pleasanton. She's been involved in the library field for more than 15 years, bringing experience from a wide range of library systems along with her passion for people and people's stories. Heidi has a Bachelor of Arts in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her MLIS from San Jose State University. Heidi also serves on the Executive Committee for the Pacific Library Partnership. Deb Sica, who has both an MFA and MLIS, has been in research, education, and library since 1993. She's been an archivist, an academic, and a public library administrator, for both the Texas Gulf Coast and San Francisco Bay areas. She spent the last decade in public libraries working to transform data, excuse me, dated discordant policy into socially just, fully inclusive practice. Deb has been politically active for over 25 years and continues the fight for equity, diversity, and inclusion in libraries and in life. She currently serves on the Executive Board of GLB-TRT, which is ALA's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Roundtable, is a member of the Freedom to Read Foundation, and is part of Jim Neal's ALA Presidential Advisory Council. She currently serves as the Deputy County Librarian for Alameda County Library. And now just a bit of housekeeping information. This will be a one-hour webcast, and there will be time for Q&A at the end of the session. So if you have questions, just type them into the chat box as they come to you, and then we'll go through them at the end of the presentation. Please don't hesitate to ask questions for two reasons. One, if it's a question you have, then others may be wondering the exact same thing. And two, this is an excellent opportunity to hear directly from successful professionals practicing in your field, and you want to make the most of that opportunity. So I know I'm going to have questions. If you have them as well, please let us know. And then one last note, this webcast is being recorded. It will be posted to the iSchool website within several days, and students will be notified when it's available for viewing. Okay, so I think we're ready to go. I'm going to hand it off now to Deb, who will be our first presenter. Take it away, Deb. All right. Thank you, Kim. That was a great introduction, and we're happy to be presenting here for both Heidi and I's alums. So today we're going to talk about the difference between hard scales and soft scales. And a lot of times you'll hear librarians joke, well, I didn't learn that in library school as they go about their day. So a couple of things that we wanted to make sure that you learn before you left library school is the importance of what soft skills are. And so just in comparison, so that we can kind of frame what soft skills are, hard skills are the things that in your library and toolkit. The Rosie, the Rivet Gun, the tools that you learn during your time getting your degrees, your master's degrees. And they're usually specific. They're things that you can learn or teach. They're quantitatively defined, and they're measurable. So these are the those kinds of skills that you fill your resume with as you start to apply for jobs in library. Things like cataloging or processing, reference, those types of skill sets, which are all very important. And it's the stuff of librarianship. And we need to know all of the inner workings of technology, but it's where we tend to focus most of our energies. And so a little bit on soft skills and some good amount of time spent learning soft skills will help us to do that. So soft skills are your interpersonal toolkit. They're assembled during your upbringing, your experiences and your interactions, the relationships that you build with people. And they're sometimes learned subconsciously and left unexamined, but they're equally important as hard skills. And I also think that the ability to work within a team, being decisive when it's appropriate, communicating with different people that hold relative to your success, hold positions that are relative your success in your libraries, or archives or businesses, is very important part of the work that we do. So also an ability to be independent, to think on your own feet, being reliable and to apply for information situationally. And those are kind of things that we don't ever talk about. And so we wanted to make sure that before you left library school, we talked a little bit about that. So you have your master's degrees once you walk out with that paper, you're spending lots of time preparing your hard skills. But just if you can do kind of an assessment in your mind of what you've done preparing your soft skillset for interviewing. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about the interview process. And then Heidi is going to talk a little bit about how you're going to meet those skills in the future as you actually get that green job of yours. And so if you just take a look at your resume, you'll see that you have no doubt you have plenty of great experiences there. But you'll have to have different things to ace that interview and land your ideal job. So go ahead and we'll talk about soft skills for interviews and personal preparedness. The things that I like to do before I go on an interview, and I've done this for a couple of positions that I've held in my job is do a personal checklist. Just about my self-awareness, a little personal inventory helps. There's all kinds of assessments that we can take. And I'm not talking about the kinds that are stuck in the magazine next to the perfume ads. I'm talking about real disc assessments, Myers-Briggs, Strengths Finders from Gallup. There's a lot of different professional self-assessments. So not the buzzfeed, you know, are you most like Hermione or Harry Potter, although those are fun. But more so, what can build your professional soft skills toolkit? So how do you and ask yourself how you handle difficult conversations? Even when you don't agree with what's going on, do you have diverse communication strategies? And then just think about how you exhibit entrepreneurial spirit. Are you a self-starter? Can you work collaboratively? Can you do both? How do you show initiative? What does that look like in a work environment? So let's see. A lot of times when we go on an interview, and I can tell you from sitting behind, I've been on both sides of an interview. I've been an interviewee and an interviewer several times over in my career. And you will learn the most about the interview process as an interviewer. So if you ever get the opportunity to sit on a panel, it is incredible and it is the most the best way to learn about interviews, because you see one after the other and you see different people engaging the interview panel. So one of the ways that you can prepare for that interview to be successful is ask yourself these questions. Do you understand the specifics of the library, the organization? It's not you're not walking in as a cold call, you know where you're going, you know what they do, take that time to prepare. Also, do you know about their recruitment process? Is there what you know that you've gotten off of different websites or through civil service information? If you're public library, usually the spec information. So to be able to sit in the interview and show the interviewees that you've done this type of research speaks volumes. And it's not necessarily that you need that information at that moment, but you're able to show that you have obtained it, you have vested interest. So you can also just develop your talking points around why you want to be part of a specific library. But the fact that if you illustrate that you've done your homework, it shows not only are you interested, but you know how to prepare and you've taken time and that this hour interview is very important to you. Alright, so interviews are probably the most unnatural stage and formulaic interaction when you walk into it. But once you've done a couple of them, you get to see different ways of doing interviews. You get to see that it's both an assessment on your end and an assessment by the people that you're meeting. And so it's a give and take relationship. So you want to be able to kind of see, think at the same time, is this a good fit for you or and are you a good fit for them? I kind of liken interviews to a big Thanksgiving dinner where you spend a week preparing and maybe buying all of the fixings and the dressing and everything that you need for Thanksgiving. So you get everything that you need ready for your interview. And then you spend the day before kind of plotting out all of the specifics about the Thanksgiving dinner and how your interview could go. You arrive early and you meet with everybody that you've been so looking forward to meeting with. Spend 45 minutes to an hour having a Thanksgiving meal. And then at the end, you're completely and totally exhausted. And so to go through this kind of cycle with an interview is the closest thing I can think of is the preparing and then the actual event is only a short amount of time. And then afterwards feeling like total relief and kind of total exhaustion. So just know going into the interview that that's the process and everybody else that's going to interview for that position that day are all going through the same thing. So knowing that you're in that type of company and knowing what you need to do to self-care, take self-care during that will help you a long way. So then it's very easy to look at interviewing as a big, scary process. But if you break it down to its major elements, it'll take some of that anxiety away. So that anxiety also stops you from shining. And so it's really important soft skill to be able to have a genuine confidence in a conversation that you're going to have in an interview. All right. So I thought we do a little fun, fun thing. You could see the difference in what a hard skill answer would be in an interview and what a soft skill answer might look like. And it's they're very different. And so let's Heidi, would you like to practice a little bit with me? Absolutely. I'd love to. All right. So I need to ask you the question first. Um, sure. All right. Tell us about an experience working with a team. All right. So well, you know, I worked in a team in library school and and most of us, you know, most of our work was like that. Some people pulled their weight when others didn't, you know, it's just nature of the work, right? Am I right? I'm so I am right about that. You know, I have to get stuck doing everything. So I make sure everything was done by the due day. And I or quote unquote, we actual air quotes ended up creating a small catalog of rocks found in Lake Tahoe. Was it useful? Not really, but it was just a beta. And so it really didn't go anywhere from there. But you know, I really, I really picked up a lot of the pieces that from other people that dropped the ball. So I'm really responsible. So that's one option. I wouldn't recommend that though. And I'm actually that's one of the option that's all put together from answers that I have heard before on interviews. And so that's it may sound really crazy right now. But I've heard lots of lots of first time candidates coming to interviews with those types of responses. So let's read you this rewind a little bit and I'll ask Heidi, and she can kind of illustrate what it could look like. So Heidi, could you tell us about an experience working with the team? Absolutely. The opportunity to work with people allows for team members to balance their skills and service and really work toward a collaborative outcome. While I was in library school, I had the opportunity to work within a team on several occasions. While sometimes we started off slowly, we eventually learned to work together and were able to create small and informative projects. One example was we created a catalog highlighting rock formations unique to the Tahoe area. The experience really for me was more about our collective impact and learning to work together than the final product. But this really enhanced the value of the coursework for me. Oh, that's a good answer, Heidi. And you can see the difference that the content of the question is exact same. You know, worked as a team, did a small catalog of rocks from Tahoe, but the way that Heidi framed it was much more eloquent and emphasized certain soft skills and that sends volumes of message over to the interviewees and interviewers. Let's do this one more time. Let's go with you. All right, Deb, why would you like to work for the City of Pleasanton or the Alameda County Libraries? Oh, well, you know, you guys do good work and you're really close to my house and you pay pretty, you know, you're decent, decent pay, you know, and I'm ready to stop clerking and I know a good amount of info. I've gone to library school and I can bring that to work. So let's try to use some soft skills to get a better answer. I'll ask Heidi. Heidi, why would you like to work for the City of Pleasanton or the Alameda County Libraries? I'm a card-carrying patron at the library and I'm really familiar with the range of services provided here. I even bring my kids to story time. On your website, you've discussed your socially just mission of providing library services to all in an equitable way. I believe in this mission as well. I spent the past year volunteering as a court advocate for foster youth and I've loved helping young people find their voice to get on a path to a better life. I want to work and my lifelong career to bring this same fulfillment for me. I want my work to be something that connects with my personal and professional beliefs and your library does that and I would love to be part of that enduring mission. That feels a world's away and much better of an answer and so just to seeing those two differences is really important. So I'll pass it over to Heidi. Heidi's going to talk a little bit about once you actually get the job. So you ace the interview. Now you've got the job. How do soft skills apply in the workplace? These soft skills are really the building blocks for you. They're what connect you to your colleagues and to the community you serve. Those technical skills help you to do the work but it's really those relationships with the patrons who come into the library, the relationships with your colleagues, the relationships that you build within your organization and within the community where you work that make your work successful, that make your work meaningful and that build culture. So what are some of these soft skills? I used to think that professionalism was just this mystical transformation that happened when people put on a suit and tie and went to work in the morning. Over time I learned really that professionalism is how you carry yourself in alignment with your personal goals and in alignment with the organizational values in all situations even when no one's watching. Professionalism is an ethic that you carry with you everywhere you go. One of the things Deb talked about earlier was doing research on the areas, doing research on the organizations where you're interviewing and that's so important because it's really hard if your personal values and the organizational values don't line up. So it's really really important when you're interviewing to really interview places where you want to work and where their organizational values match yours because that's where you can find true professionalism. So for you to think about professionalism how do you define it for yourself? There are several questions to think about to maybe journal about. What are your personal standards of professionalism? What are the organizational standards either where you're working or where you're anticipating working? Do they line up? If you're already working there and they don't line up you should probably think about looking for another job. If you're not working there yet you should really look to make sure that they do line up and then once you're in that job how does your work represent your organization? How does your work product represent the organization? How do your words and actions represent your organization? And then there's a soft skill of understanding perceptions. Are you aware of community perceptions? Are you aware of staff perceptions? And are there things that you could do to create better perceptions? We had an example of this recently when I started here in Pleasanton I started a book club with the executive team and we had a blast with this book club and we had so much fun we started meeting earlier and earlier in the day each month so we originally started at five and then we moved it to four and then we were meeting at three and our boss at one of our meetings just said hey I know you guys are doing good work but how does it look to the community and the entire executive team is sitting at three o'clock in the afternoon talking about a book outside the organization and so even though that what we were doing wasn't a bad thing the perception to the community needed to be considered in that situation and we revised how we were meeting and we always met after five and that was an eye-opening experience for me to really understand that that perception is part of professionalism and then another question to ask is do you do what you say you'll do do you follow through do you meet deadlines and then is what you say truthful helpful and beneficial to the community to your co-workers to the organization are you responsive to people do you respond to people when they get in touch with you do you treat them with respect that's all part of this professionalism package one more example of a time where this professionalism wasn't learned early on and long ago I worked with a person who didn't understand that talking negatively about your workplace even outside the workplace could have negative impacts and this person was was making comments about the way the library's budget was being handled and the leadership of the library in a public place and it was overheard by a former mayor he came back to the city manager to talk about this situation and it was a really tough situation this employee didn't mean to be unprofessional didn't mean to be negative but was young in her career and didn't understand he actually was able to be really responsive to feedback even that was difficult for her to hear at the time and she was able to turn her career around and become a true professional in the organization and so feedback is hugely hugely important in the growth of your career and um you know the ability to give and receive feedback to ask for feedback and to incorporate feedback is hard and it takes knowing your values separate from your work product so being able to receive criticism about your work product and know it's not a reflection of you as a human being is the first step many people make the mistake over time of hearing feedback as a negative reflection of themselves rather than a helpful tool for improvement at work though for feedback to work successfully it takes a leap of faith for you you have to assume the best of the other person and think okay someone's giving me feedback because they care it doesn't always feel like they care but if you can take the time to reflect and think about it incorporate that feedback and use it to improve it truly truly is in the best interest for you and the community and the organization asking for feedback can be hard because it's hard to receive sometimes it feels critical and it can feel mean spirited and again getting feedback is the only way that we know that we're doing the right things for the organization and it opens yourself up to potentially identifying failures in areas where you could do better but those pieces are how we continue to learn and grow and being able to take the feedback you learn in one situation and apply it to another saves you from having to go through that difficult process again the more that you can incorporate early feedback into all you do the better off you are and an even more challenging piece that i've learned over time for teams and for staff members is to have the courage to provide feedback to their colleagues and their superiors and i will tell you as a library director i need feedback we all need feedback and so it's essential in the workplace for the feedback loop to be an actual loop where it's not just one directional but to do this effectively it really has to come from a place of good intent it can't be that you're just complaining about something but you're providing legitimate feedback of some potential remedies and solutions and workarounds and doing it in a very thoughtful and caring way so it can't be callous it can't just be this was horrible but have you thought about x y or z often phrasing feedback as a question can be helpful especially when you're providing feedback to a superior do this cautiously but but do know that as leaders and organizations we need that feedback and i've worked in organizations that are feedback friendly and organizations that are feedback averse and organizations that have higher morale and more innovation are the ones with the better feedback last note on this one remember that mistakes are human so feedback just helps you you know be a better human but making the same mistake because you've not incorporated feedback is what frustrates your bosses and colleagues so it's really important to actually take that feedback to heart deb hit on this a little bit in our interview questions but equity diversion and inclusion are huge especially in public libraries in all libraries and in life in general but public libraries especially because we're so well used by so many members of the community and so this one is really a lot of self reflection and reaching out to others and learning and being open but do you have a genuine understanding of what equity diversity and inclusion are you don't there's a lot of books there's a lot of classes there's a lot of colleagues you can reach out to and are you able to create personal dissonance to learn more can you step aside and open up your mind to someone else's view and shift your perspective and look at things from that side um we have so many opportunities to interact with people and to serve people and in order to do this we really have to challenge our own biases and acknowledge people and opinions we're different from our own when i started first started in public libraries i was really anxious about serving people that i felt were difficult and difficult for me was how it could be anything someone who was stubborn someone who was pushy someone who was um maybe i thought mentally ill and i i these were people who came to the library every day and i would talk to my colleagues about these interactions and seek feedback how how do you interact with these people how do you turn this interaction to be a positive one um and i started to learn people's names and learn a little bit more about them and all of a sudden these people who were challenged before were now people with a story that i could connect to and that is a whole library team we participated in improv training and it's a really cool idea because the idea of improv is you're open to whatever someone says to you you validate it and then you find a common ground to continue to build on and that along with leveraging your team go a long way to opening the door to equity inclusion and diversity leveraging your team is i would say the biggest soft skill out there knowing how to work with your team members um building a support network is crucial but it can be challenging so even from from the rock team the rock cataloging example um you know the first example where the one person did it all it can be hard i'm sure you've had a team that you dreaded working with where people didn't meet their commitments there were personality conflicts um you carried the load for everybody there was the person who talked all the time and didn't listen there's a lot of team dynamics that can be challenging but teams themselves don't need to be painful and it really starts again just as dad outlined for us it starts with your own self-awareness do your own personal inventory what is your work style what are your preferences what are your limitations and ask your teammates about their work styles their preferences their limitations and so you all of a sudden open this up okay this person likes to brainstorm this person likes time to quietly reflect on things before they have an answer and so how do you shape your team so that everyone can work well in their own style can you put together an agenda for meetings for the people who want to think about things can you have some brainstorming time for the people who like to just rip and build off of other people's ideas it's really by building the strengths and weaknesses um together in a team you can leverage the entire team and move projects forward the base of all of this of course is that you have to assume the best of everyone in that group you have to take a leap of faith again and assume that the person on the other side of the table is there for the right reasons doing the right thing and really being empathetic not assuming the best i think is crucial in your work as well assume the best of people unless they prove you wrong and then as public librarians and academic librarians any librarians we all thrive on partnerships and collaborations and i when i think about our public library in the community there's so many people groups organizations other departments working toward common goals it's really important to look up and to see what other people are doing and how we can relate to those other people even if we're outside the library so what's the big picture in our community what other organizations have similar mission vision values goals um what commonalities do we have with our larger city or county organization with local nonprofits with schools with the business community and then how do we build networks and partnerships with these groups and really the first step is to reach out to build a relationship so you can build partnerships by building relationship taking the first step picking up the phone inviting someone on the other side to a cup of coffee and talking about what you do and asking them what they do and looking to build those bridges in the city of pleasant in our currently in the process of combining our library and community services departments which is the a huge collaborative effort and so we're really looking at how do our two services overlap and how do we leverage those areas to do more for the community to enhance service to limit efficiency and to really build more connections with the community we found some really fun and interesting connection points that we never would have imagined through building these relationships but for example we have a cemetery that we run and the cemetery is an active cemetery still but there's also a whole history in that cemetery so between the library's genealogy genealogical program the museum who has the history and the community services team who oversees the cemetery we're looking at developing a historical tour of the cemetery we have summer camps all over the city summer camps that fill up in the first five minutes of their life for people to sign up for and we're going to move summer reading out to every single one of those programs this year I'm sure a lot of you have heard about the student success initiative at statewide now where public libraries and school districts are working together to make student IDs work as library cards so students can carry one card and access resources from both these are all examples of looking at the big picture and looking for partners and the partners aren't always in the places where you'd expect them so really looking up looking out and exploring is truly the way to be focused on your community also when you look up you look out you start to see new things which leads to a lot of creativity and innovation it's a soft skill and often accompanied by a lot of hard skills to execute on these ideas but I would urge you all to think about when you get into your new positions you're going to want to try a lot of the things you've learned on all new ideas new things to you but to really be thoughtful innovation can be a sensitive subject for those who've been in their roles for a long time and so it's important to appreciate the people and the work that's being done in the present and that's been done in the past while you introduce new ideas and move forward so really you know what ideas are you bringing to the table how are you bringing those how are you building buy-in from team members to launch those ideas are you looking outside of the library world for new ideas and efficiencies um and then really having the courage to fail forward oftentimes when we try something new it doesn't work out perfectly the first time and that's okay that's part of innovation and creativity all the books you read about our best inventors they failed multiple times before they invented every new great thing that we know and use today and so you really need the soft skill to pick yourself up after not getting it just right and reflect on what worked and what didn't work and why and try it again one of the best employees I've ever worked with had a motto and she used to say give me seven tries and I'll get it perfect and she leveraged that and she was able to change and innovate and grow so many amazing programs in the library implement new systems in the library that are still there today and still incredibly successful this whole process can be incredibly challenging and painful so it's really really important that you take care of yourself this really is the biggest soft skill of all especially as you move into more and more demanding roles in the organization it's just really knowing what you need are you a meditator are you an exerciser um are you getting enough sleep do you eat well do you have ways to decompress outside of work everyone has their own formula here um for me it's running I've got to run every day or I have a really hard time sitting all day and getting through meetings so for me it's it's exercising it's sleeping well it's eating well but I have colleagues who meditate they meditate every morning and they come in and they're that's how they center themselves and are available for others public library jobs are incredibly demanding because people need a lot from you you're on all the time they are no longer jobs where you're sitting behind a desk um you know quietly cataloging or looking through book reviews you are actively engaged with people all day long people who need things from you and um demand things from you so it's really important to center yourself and be be available for you and for others if you want to summarize for us I sure would and there's a lot of important points that I'd like to just go back to revisit I think Heidi you had just mentioned that um the importance of being able to create dissonance and I think and and that gives an ability to accept feedback as a gift so if you can put yourself into a couple of uncomfortable positions or you can be a stranger in a strange land as much as possible that's that's definitely a skill that crosses over with your professional and work life so that really was I think really thank you for bringing that to this conversation too um but sure it's it's really important to take time to evaluate the soft skills that you have and you have them you were raised with a bunch of um uh subconscious messaging kind of pick that apart and and what does what does your upbringing bring what special skills um you know I'm an Italian New Yorker I try you know I tend to bring candor and and um sometimes direct honesty and there's a time and a place for it so it's really important that you take time to evaluate you know the gifts that you have um and then also to take those gifts and hone or enhance them so a lot of times even even leadership from top down bottom up or inside out um is really those folks that have taken the time to hone and enhance a couple of really important um qualities uh so I think it's important to hone those and enhance them and if we don't pause to do that it just becomes kind of this tornado experience so I think it's really important to pause and and and do that assessment and um they prove to be very important in all of your levels of success and much more so than your factual knowledge and I know that can be kind of hard to think about but the ability to build relations the ability to um give and receive feedback um the ability to um somebody once told me that you know we judge ourselves and our thoughts and our good intentions and we judge others on their actions and so I think the ability to kind of see try to figure out where people are coming from and having that empathetic ear is also a very important part of all of this so um appreciate your time I think um Kim do we have time for questions uh we do have some time for some questions and and I have about 400 of them but first I I want to point out that you're what you just mentioned we want to be judged by our intentions but we tend to judge other people by their actions that comes from um Stephen Covey's books the yeah and and it's so true and and it absolutely gets to that dissonance that you mentioned of being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and as Heidi said learn their narrative find out what their story is because then they stop being some other person and instead become an individual who has depth and meaning and presence in your life so I that was so cool so can I ask some questions here absolutely okay the first one is is in reference to something that Deb said which is applying information situationally would you clarify what you mean by that sure um there's a time and a place um and so you may be an expert in certain fields and you also you know may know little to nothing about something else and it's important um that you know you know when and where that information to be stow upon people um you need to know your audience and so for instance if you um have a mile long sheet of statistics um and you are talking to a mayor or an elected official there's a time and a place in which to have an elevator speech and a time and a place in which to give you know a tone detailed report with lots of supporting data and so it's there's a judgment call um and that judgment call is usually based upon the other person's time framework attention um and the audience that's receiving your information so one of the one of the best things that I was ever taught by a friend of the library and she had taken me I was early out of my career and she had taken me to a um a civic event where there's a lot of great funder potential and she said you are going to get up there and you are going to talk about how much you love libraries and she said you're going to tell them about the great services and you're going to tell them about your awesome staff don't do that she said that is the worst thing that you can tell this group of people what they want to know is how your work will positively impact their business and so it was a real great lesson in this viewing time and a place for for right information okay that that makes a lot of sense um one of the question that's the questions that comes up from students is okay so I'm in grad school I've heard about it's important to have a good soft skills I'm not so sure that mine are really great what do I do to improve them you know I I still sort of have time while I'm in grad school and before I launch in the world what can I do in grad school that would help me improve my soft skills that's a fantastic question I would offer a couple of recommendations one is volunteer at your local public library volunteer at a local organization where you're interacting with people and be open to feedback let the people know hey I would love your feedback on various things you have soft skills in your day-to-day life so in your interactions whether you're part of a faith organization or a rotary organization or a book club any of those areas allow you the opportunity to hone soft skills and really learn how how how do I relate to the world around me there's this book on emotional intelligence which I think is really beneficial it's a definitely a soft skill that comes into the workplace a lot that's on this slide here I would look to those pieces and again be open to feedback through the whole process how about you Deb yeah I think and first of all I it's short thinking to say what can I do before I get out of graduate school to learn soft skills it is lifelong I learn soft skills every day I learn you know the faults and and the things of my soft skills on going basis so that's important it's a lifelong process I think as we grow and mature our maybe our bag of hard skills it's a little lighter and our bag of soft skills it's a little heavier and I think that's kind of a due course time and experience but there's also a tool called the 360 and that can be a very a great way to get feedback it's 360 meaning all around you so above you below you to the sides of you and it's people that you know and trust and work with that you know will be honest with you and it can often be very shocking to people what others say about them in a 360 so I would recommend trying to do one of those as well but also like Heidi said it's it's the relationships that you have existing in your life are the platforms in which to test soft skills um and I think there's safe places to do that too so that's really important that's that's great and certainly your point Deb about if this doesn't just you don't just learn this in grad school this is every day we're learning this um makes so much sense but part of that to your point is being open to understanding how you are interacting with people and what the impact is of those interactions um are they serving to advance the goals of the organization or the team or whomever or are they putting up obstacles to that kind of advancement so then a question for Heidi and Deb as well if you want to chime in I you guys have talked about something that's really important which is being able to give and receive feedback and constructive criticism and a question would be for both of you how would you phrase when phrase it when you were trying to deliver or wanted to deliver constructive criticism to someone in a way that made it clear to them that it was constructive criticism that you were delivering because you cared about their success because I'm assuming both of you have done that a number of times sure you want me to dive in first don't worry I think it really is dependent on the person so it takes having a relationship with the person and knowing their style in order to be able to really give that feedback in a positive and meaningful way so for me um you know there's some people where I would say I have some feedback for you do you want to schedule a time for that or is now a good time right because some people need to be in the right space to be able to even hear the feedback there's other people where I know that they're completely open to whatever feedback and so it's more like the one-minute manager or walking by and walking by hey next time could you x y or z or um hey I have a quick piece of feedback for you and you just go through it so I think it really depends um on on who the person is and can I offer you feedback is an okay question to ask and I offer you feedback now or would you prefer it later if you know you have to give it sometimes you don't want to give that open-ended answer but you can give the you know would you like this now would you like to do this later yeah that's I tend to ask the prompting question too of and it depends on where you are like you said if you're walking you know through the library you're not going to give that kind of feedback across across the desk or anything but it's I tend to say can I share a couple of things with you or do you have a minute um and try to kind of ask permission to give a gift of feedback and and that kind of frames it a little differently but it really depends on how important the feedback is to the whole so if I have you know a very toxic person on staff and um the emotional leakage is just kind of suffocating people around them um that's going to be kind of a different a different framework for feedback that'll be a little more direct and so I think I calibrate the style with with the feedback content and I think that's really important to do too and that's that's kind of the same going back to make sure that you're delivering the message to the right audience in the right way that makes a lot of sense and then if one of your staff members had constructive criticism for you I think it's very difficult or it can be difficult for someone who's reporting to a supervisor or a manager to know how to frame a suggestion or a concern how would you want that discussion to to happen with you I can start on this one Heidi all right I I appreciate direct and it's stylistically I like to have and and not a harsh and not um and not mean spirited in any sort of way but this is you know I'd rather have somebody come to me and say um you know I've noticed this and this is kind of the outcome of what you're doing Dev um can you take a moment pause and think about it um and I really appreciate kind of that direct style it works for me and so um I've been very blessed to work with some amazing leadership that have been able to kind of give me that but then I've also gotten feedback in a way where it's it's a little coded and it's complicated and makes me pause and think and step back and go hmm what what are they really trying to tell me so I think you know for me I'd love it if somebody can you know give me some specifics it's a brave act to give somebody feedback too so kudos kudos on that but I also like when and Heidi touched upon a little bit too she said when you had given feedback try to offer solutions as well so marry those two things together and providing feedback to me um that's so helpful because it gives me a firmer framework to kind of actually put that feedback into action as well so I get a better understanding okay I would second all of that and I would just add that it has to be done in person don't use email as a tool for feedback thought of being in person because you can see intent a lot better in person and emails when it's potentially contentious can add a whole layer that you didn't intend to put there yeah last question we've had some great questions so far one last question someone has asked which is how would you want soft skills demonstrated in an interview so students or a recent graduate is in an interview they heard your your presentation they know how important soft skills are would you want them to tell you stories of how they handled a similar situation or how they theoretically would handle a situation or or what their values are around a certain topic what would you be looking for I'll kick this one off I think in interviews it's really important to use specific examples I don't have a specific example that's exactly that you can say you know I I've not done that particular thing but I've done this and go through it and here's how it's similar and you can tie your values into your answers I think one of the best tools I ever learned in interviewing was to really identify the three things that make you unique and incorporate those into your answers so people start to see what your true value set is as you answer those questions and so incorporating specific examples and values in your answers allows people to see your soft skills we look in our interviews to really understand what did this person do in that situation what was their role how did they react how did they incorporate feedback those questions you get if you could have done something differently what would it have been and why that's a feedback question right how did you how did you either receive feedback and make a change or provide self-reflective feedback and make a change those are really important and they're they're hidden in every question but your soft skills come through in every single question you answer that's that's great I did what I mean exactly I agree with Heidi the specifics is really important um giving the details of actual things that had happened and in fact a lot of us are looking for that level of detail not what you think you would do but what you've done and that's that's really important but also you may not have done a specific library job and most likely for introductory applications you're not have you won't have that experience and so being able to have a lateral experience or a parallel example illustrating your soft skills that's transformation that you can transform um that type of experience into something that can really feel a great answer for an interview question shows you that you can problem solve and and shows um areas that that you excel with soft skills that's great feedback all right we're we're almost at the end of our hour and so I am going to read something um for everyone which is Heidi and Deb's contact information Heidi's is H M U R P H Y at city of Pleasanton C A dot gov and Heidi's phone number is 925 931 3406 Deb's information is uh hold on just a sec here we go uh d s i c a at ac library dot org and her phone number is 5107451510 and on behalf of both of them I'm going to pass along some information which is that they would love to hear from you guys um they are looking to recruit uh employees and so if you would send them an email just letting them know you're interested they will send you all their information about their respective libraries and their hiring practices and everything you would need to know to to take a look at that so um I I would have to say on behalf of the iSchool and all of the students thank you both so much for taking the time to share your expertise and your insights with the students this has been incredibly helpful and I think really um has framed the idea of soft skills and how they play out through our professions really really beautifully uh I think that wraps up our webcast for today thank you all for participating and with that enjoy the rest of your evenings