Getting your first professional post Recruitment and Selection procedures at MMU Fiona Hughes – Library Services Manager at MMU

Recruitment agencies such as Lisjobnet Organisations you would like to work for Set up email alerts

Set up alerts from agencies and organisations

Set up alerts from agencies and organisations

Completing the Application form Job description & person specification Show AL job desc/person spec Talk about essential vs desirable criteria.

Guidelines to candidates – e.g. key shortlisting criteria

Panel can view application form with education and employment history etc and attachments such at scanned certificates and CVs but they probably won’t pay much attention to them. Main bit is the assessment criteria. At MMU have 4 choices – exceeds, meets, partially meets, does not meet/no evidence.

Always include evidence and examples of how you meet the criteria Can you exceed the criteria? E.g. Did you get a 1st or distinction, are you chartered? Proof read for typos, spellings, grammatical errors etc. Communication Skills   You will be able to show evidence of effective communication skills with a variety of contacts, including the use of tact, diplomacy, teamwork and negotiation skills. Exceeds: Gave individual examples for tact/diplomacy, teamwork, negotiation skills. For negotiation skills gave 3 examples – negotiating with students, negotiating with other colleagues, negotiating with academic staff. Qualifications: Need LIS degree, if you also have chartership/fellowship status you exceed the requirement Education: if you have a first or distinction you will exceed the requirement. Attention to detail: Partially met because although good example given there were some minor typos/grammatical errors.

The candidates area scored numerically The candidates area scored numerically. It is possible to not meet a criteria but still get a good score if you have done well in all other questions.

Research the organisation you are applying to Hyper text link University structure Governance Key strengths Vision of the future Back to homepage and link to ‘news’ Look at library website closely of course! Link to THES, do a search for MMU – new VC Malcolm Press, pro vice-chancellor for research and knowledge transfer at the University of Birmingham, will take up the top post at MMU on 1 June. Think how you can align yourself with the organization’s objectives. Also newspapers, CILIP Update, Library Search, LISA…

The interview – Presentation? Do stick to time limit set. Don’t over prepare on this and neglect preparation for interview questions Don’t write a fixed script and read it out or recite it from memory Be conscious of who is on the panel and beware of jargon or being too technical Do practise your presentation on your family/friends Be prepared for questions about your presentation Don’t include something in the presentation if you are not prepared to answer questions on it, e.g. mention Open Access but then not know issues about green vs gold. As part of your research you should know whether the library has an institutional repository

Interview questions Designed to test you meet the criteria – see person spec to find out how criteria are to be tested. What existing services can you contribute to? What ideas do you have to improve the service? Customer Service Excellence is not just about being friendly and helpful Give examples of your experiences to demonstrate your skills E.g. diplomacy etc – could be a difficult situation at the help desk question – did you have a difficult drunk customer when you worked in a pub?

After the interview Write down all the questions you were asked. Request interview feedback even if successful. If there are gaps in your knowledge/experience address them If you got the job – celebrate!