The major purpose of attending a professional school is to secure professional employment. Placement must be an integral part of your SIS experience. It is not something that you do after you have finished your course work and passed the comprehensive examination or completed your thesis. Adopt a placement orientation at the beginning--be aware that placement is a continuing process and not an isolated, terminal event. You need to act now if placement is to be successful later.
Spend enough time with your advisor to determine the best educational preparation for your chosen career path. Note that you may ask any faculty member for guidance. You are not limited to your advisor. Examine position announcements for the type of position that you would like to fill. Identify specific requirements and desired skills that you will need when you seek employment. Identify ways of insuring that you will have gained these competencies before you graduate.
You might choose to be a generalist, filling gaps until you know a little bit of everything. You might choose to be a specialist, preparing for a narrowly defined position. Consider the costs and opportunities associated with being a generalist or being a specialist. If you select the specialist path, develop a more general backup position just in case. For example, not everyone can be a music librarian at a major Mid-West research library.
Remember that you will need to make yourself unique. What
skills, experiences, and knowledge will make you stand out as a
candidate? Course selection, including independent study, is an
important way to do this. Work experience is another good way.
Work with faculty and area information professionals to gain as much information as possible about your chosen career with particular emphasis on how it is changing and what skills and knowledge are likely to be important in the future.
If you are uncertain about what you would like to do, use every opportunity to learn more about the assets and liabilities of various possibilities. Don't be afraid to change your emphasis if you find something better.
Be visible in and out of class. You will learn more, and the visible student is easier to recommend. Subscribe to appropriate discussion lists for your interest area and participate. Thoughtful comment will gradually build a positive reputation.
Focus the various course assignments so that you can develop some special background in an area of interest. By focusing on a type of information agency, subject, or activity, you can create a series of opportunities to develop special skills and knowledge not otherwise found in the curriculum. Imagine yourself taking a portfolio of your work to a prospective employer as evidence of what you can do. What would be in your folder? What should be in the folder? What do you need to do now so that you folder is full of the right stuff later?
Visit as many information agencies and talk to as many information professionals as you can. This will help you to develop realistic expectations, to make some contacts that could be valuable later on, and to learn more about those competencies needed if you are to be an effective candidate. Contacts and networking with local information professionals can be invaluable.
Don't be afraid to take courses outside of the School where they might make a difference. The University offers a variety of cognate courses, and some of these might be just what you need.
Use the independent study courses to develop specialized skills and knowledge otherwise unavailable. These courses can be used to develop special experiences to meet your needs in cartographic librarianship, music librarianship, or whatever, as well as giving you and a selected faculty member an opportunity to become better acquainted.
If at all possible, work in a local information agency while in school. Not only will the financial support help you to keep your head above water, but the experience will help to create realistic expectations about information work, to develop needed skills, and to give you something concrete-- a context--for the sometimes more general and theoretical approach of our professional education. Work experience should also give you an employer reference, which is much more valuable than one from a faculty member. Typically, faculty members can speak about your success as a student. Employers can speak about your success as an employee.
If it is not possible to work in a local information agency, register for a practicum experience. A practicum in a well-managed library or information agency can provide a particularly effective and fruitful learning experience, especially for the student with limited pre-professional information work experience.
In many cases, placement is the result of contacts. What are you doing while at SIS to develop contacts that may be helpful in providing you with information about positions, and serve as a reference? For example, have you joined appropriate professional associations [and not just the SIS student chapters, but the parent organizations] and do you attend their meetings? Have you attended a national or a state association annual conference? Do you attend events where you might meet and network with SIS alumni? Do information agencies in your home community know that you are at SIS and will soon be looking for professional employment? Have family, friends, former roommates, etc. been told of your professional preparation and your appreciation for any help that they might give you in identifying likely positions?
The following time table is intended to encourage you to plan and construct an individual schedule for your placement activities.
Begin to define specific career objectives. Identify elective courses likely to be helpful. Begin to be visible to faculty. Consider employment and practicum opportunities for the near future. Regularly read appropriate position announcements.
Continue to develop a reputation for reliability and high quality work. Since faculty are often asked about candidate communication skills, make an effort to write and speak well in your class work. Solidify decisions about a particular career path so you can make good decisions about electives, including independent study courses, and work experience. Make certain that you will have a good mix of references who know you well enough to be good references. Begin to develop a draft resume and cover letter.
Revise and complete resume. Confirm references. Revise and complete cover letter. Regularly review position announcements and begin the application process. Identify geographic areas where you would like to locate, and write to information agencies in that area, enclosing a copy of your resume. Many positions in medium and smaller sized information agencies do not appear in the national media. Tell as many people as possible that you are seriously looking for a position and ask them to help. If traveling, visit information agencies and let them know that you are interested.
Effective placement requires as much time and effort as a course, but the payoff is much greater. Do NOT wait until everything else is done. It often takes a semester or longer to be placed. If you do not begin until you have finished your degree, you may be in Knoxville much longer than you would like. Now is the time to begin!
Last major revision: April 2008
