Thing 21: Promoting yourself in job applications and at interview

Shout out to Ned Potter! You are a star!! I found your post so useful and hey you know but it worked! I got the job! I guess I shouldn't give away the ending at the start but yeah I went for a job and I got it and you do the system and it works. Go figure!

Did I identify my strengths? Yes! Go read Susan Cain's Quiet. Very useful and very interesting. I am an introvert but this can be used wisely.

Apply for job? Only two months before I applied for the job a different post came up so I reorganised my CV for the first time since 2006... Shudder! It took quite the while adding on the sections I'd worked in, the committees I'd served on, the qualifications and modules I'd completed. You know the score! But finally it was done and the next day there was a follow-up email to say only certain grades, I was not the requisite grade, should apply. But I thought no matter it's done now and I can update as necessary and it'll never be that hard again. So when I went to apply for this job well it was all there for me and I just had to fit it for the job.

I was lucky in that I met most of the criteria and I was in the process of working on the rest. And always state that you know you have more to do. When do we ever stop? You stop learning when you're dead. My granny taught me that.

Ned has a fantastic list of 20 things that you need to answer before you go in and they pretty much all came up in one form or another so go Ned Potter!

Stopping 2/3s through the slide or Thing 19: Catch up week on integrating 'things'

This blog has been rather stop/start but I am pleased with my progess so far. As you may recall at the start I worried whether I would be able to finish it or not and while it's come close, it's going to get there. Since I've started doing the blog I've really become proactive on Twitter (unprotecting my tweets, interacting with more Twitter users) though that is bar the last week. The last week has been a leetle crazy!

I've completely seen the benefits of personal branding and I hope that wherever I have a social media presence that it all looks the same and uses the right language and register. Since I started my new job I'm aware that further professional development in the realm of Special Collections will be essential. Once I become slightly more familiar with the role of Special Collections librarian I look forward to advocating more for both the profession as a whole and how Special Collections librarians use emerging technologies. 

I've found that meditating and reflecting on the various posts over the 23 weeks has been great. While the posts haven't been written on schedule, the cpd23 posts were read on a weekly basis which allowed my mind to ponder the questions before I actually wrote anything down. Sometimes I need to meditate a little more but that's ok too. To anyone who likes to reflect a bit more I would recommend Susan Cain's book Quiet.