Jump to: Jargon translator, Transferable skills

Prepare to leave

There are a lot of logistical and emotional components of job-hunting, applying, interviewing, and changing jobs. That part alone is hard, and it’s plenty to have to do. But also prepare yourself for the inevitable grief of leaving your field, as well as the identity shift that happens when you leave.

Resources:

• Finding your purpose after academia - amazing resource from H. Alpert Abrams
• Vocational awe: the lies we tell ourselves By Fobazi Ettarh
• Quit lit: compendium of posts from people who left academia
• Sabbatical by Becca Quon
• What it took to take the leap by Eira Tansey
• Career change resources by Alexis Logsdon
• What it means to leave by me
• https://medium.com/@michellehandy94/from-phd-to-product-my-messy-journey-into-industry-f1046a22a754

What do you want to do?

• What are you good at?
• What do you want to do more of?
• What do you require?
• Do you want a job or a career? How much heart/soul can you put into your work?

Ask yourself if your career actually needs to have a trajectory.

Sometimes it just doesn’t make any sense. What does “career success” look like for you? If it looks like climbing a ladder, you are probably not reading this right now.

It doesn’t have to be a forever-job. It can be a for-now job.

It can be really easy to search for the dream job/company that you’ll stay at forever! Sometimes, though, you just need a job to get you started, to pivot into another field or get you experience doing X, Y, or Z. Don’t stress yourself out looking for a perfect forever job.

Find a job you could do, that pays you enough to live, and that gets you the experience you need.

Resource: former librarian Alexis Logsdon wrote an incredibly helpful series of posts on planning your career transition.

Learn how to tell your story

Before you start applying for jobs, think about how you’d answer the question “tell us about yourself” in 1-2 minutes at the start of an interview. Tie your past work and interests to the thing that you want to do next. That is the story that you will tell your interviewers, your network on LinkedIn, and most importantly yourself as you’re moving through the job hunt process.

Resource: How to tell your story and enter the UX field from Michele L’Heureux

Gather the goods

What artifacts do you have that can help you tell your story?

• Things you’ve written: articles, blog posts, policies, strategy documents, memos, project plans
• Presentations you’ve given
• Projects you’ve initiated, led, or contributed significantly to
• Any other artifacts that represent your work.

Do your research

Use your strong research skills to learn how things work outside of academia.

Do informational interviews

Ask friends and friends of friends for informational interviews. People are so very generous! A quick half-hour call will give you a lot of insight into what a person’s job and workplace is like, what kinds of things they’re responsible for, and even the words they use to talk about what they do. Soak it up.

See what others are doing

Dust off your LinkedIn account. Start searching for people who are talking about things you’re interested in. Follow them, and follow who they follow. You don’t have to “connect” with them if you don’t want; you can just follow their posts.

Look for jobs

By looking at job ads you can learn what types of words/phrases people are using to describe certain skills. Refine your search as you find new keywords in job postings.

All job ads are aspirational. You won’t have 100% of the qualifications for every job. If you have half the qualifications, apply.

Resources:

• An Academic’s Guide to Getting a Non-Academic Job
• https://medium.com/@michellehandy94/from-phd-to-product-my-messy-journey-into-industry-f1046a22a754
• From me: Job-hunting in tech after leaving librarianship

Figure out your system

Dive in. Your process will emerge.

I recommend starting a spreadsheet to track each role you’re interested in, whether you applied, the employer, a link to the job, your application status, when you applied, and any other notes you want to make (salary? concerns?)

Where to look for jobs

• Best places to start: LinkedIn and Indeed
• Nonprofit jobs: Idealist.org
• Higher ed jobs: Chronicle of Higher Ed Jobs; job sites for institutions in your area
• Public sector/government jobs:
  • Job sites for your municipality, state, and usajobs.gov
  • Public sector job board on LinkedIn is a great weekly roundup of tech/UX jobs in governments
• Words of Mouth is a weekly email newsletter with job postings across the arts, digital jobs at nonprofits, etc. Also includes fellowships. This list is really tailored for GLAM/academic-adjacent folks.

LinkedIn is, unfortunately, a thing

LinkedIn is weirdly very important outside of higher ed, especially in the private sector.

• Fill out your profile - add a brief bio (remember your story) and add more details about your responsibilities/accomplishments in previous/current work and volunteer experience.
• Model your profile based on what others are doing - lurk and find folks whose profiles look good to you and note how they are using LinkedIn. Make any changes to your profile that feel authentic for you.
• Make/strengthen connections - reach out to folks in your existing network and add new people that you know. LinkedIn is extremely creepy and knows who you know. Just add ‘em.
• Ask for help - either as a post, or through messaging folks. Most folks are very eager to add connections, exchange messages, share links to jobs, offer referrals, and share information about their work.
• Weak social ties are crucial for finding jobs - so don’t be afraid to reach out to acquaintances on LinkedIn.

Apply

Gird your loins

The job market, especially in UX and adjacent fields in 2024, is awful 🙂. No matter what field you’re in, though, be prepared to be ghosted at any point in the application process. Don’t take it personally.

Transferable skills

Your skills are transferable!

Here are some transferable skills I identified for myself:

• Talking with people and building relationships
• Managing projects and stakeholders
• Recruiting, hiring, retaining, rewarding, and managing people
• Facilitating meetings and workshops, and presenting to groups of all sizes
• Writing for different audiences, including communicating “professionally”
• Mapping out, clarifying, and streamlining workflows
• Strategic planning
• Understanding how technologies connect and how the internet works
• Putting theory into practice for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility
• Research: survey design, interviews, usability testing, log analysis, data analysis, (light) statistical analysis
• Writing: reports, policies, blog posts, project plans, academic papers
• Instructional design
• Web design, writing for the web, working with legacy processes and systems

Transferable skills for librarians

• Reference/instruction/outreach librarians
  • Complex search strategies, keywords and advanced query construction; bibliographies; information-seeking across multiple complex databases
  • Event management, publicity, and facilitation
  • Curriculum development, instructional design learning assessments, public speaking
  • Digital content development; learning management platforms
  • Working with SMEs (faculty) to create/manage content
• If you’ve used LibGuides, congrats! You have used a content management system with a variety of content types and complex user roles.
  • If you’ve managed LibGuides you have experience with content governance, information architecture, and (likely) web design.
• Data management librarians
  • Any Python, R, data modeling, data governance, or data security work
  • Working with campus partners to help meet federal mandates

Resources:

• Social Sciences & Humanities to UX Research from Amy Santee
• Interview with Pam Drouin, who moved from librarianship to UX

Jargon translator

Here are a few terms that might help in translating your skills for a new context:

ℹ️ I’d really like to expand this section! Please write me with any additions.

Prep your resume

• Great advice from Alison Green on this. Big note: your resume is a marketing document.
• Your resume should be 1-2 pages
• Make it easily skimmable. No big chunks of text. Numbers where possible.
• Where possible, match the language of the job posting with your resume
• Tailor your resume for each job you apply for
• Tailor your cover letter for each job you apply for
• Keep a few different “flavors” of your resume depending on which types of roles you are applying for, then adjust as needed for each application.
• In writing about what you worked on, focus on measurable accomplishments rather than listing duties.
• Each job description should be shorter than the one before
• No need to go back more than 10 years. “Recent work experience” is good!

Interview

Each interview should be a conversation and a learning opportunity, and a way to practice talking about yourself. An interview shouldn’t be an inquisition, and if it feels like one, that may be a sign to pull yourself out of the applicant pool.

Be prepared to go through multiple rounds of interviews spread out over several weeks. Again, prepare to be ghosted at any time.

Answer questions

Have a few stories at the ready: tell us about a conflict, tell us about an initiative you led from start to finish, tell us about managing up, tell us about working with a difficult client. Think about the projects you have worked on.

What stories do you have to tell about working with stakeholders in an organization, navigating competing priorities or compromising?

Ask questions

Ask a LOT of questions. You want to know what you’re getting into, and employers want someone who is curious and motivated.

Depending on the vibe of the interview, you might ask questions after you answer their questions:

“You asked about managing multiple competing priorities. How are priorities set and communicated here? Who would the person in this role work with to establish a good priority order?”

Here are some of my favorite questions to ask hiring teams:

• I see that this is a (new role

  existing role). What does success look like for the person in this role? Why did the person in this role previously move on?

• How will you work with the person in this role? How do you collaborate and what duties would you like to see this person take on?
• What goals and initiatives does your company have around diversity, equity and inclusion? What are some challenges or opportunities? (If they don’t have a good answer for this, it’s a red flag.)
• What are some growing edges for the organization? What are y’all actively trying to improve right now?
• How do y’all support each other in both completing work and making sure you take care of yourselves outside of work? Do folks take their vacations here?
• What questions am I not asking that I should be? What do you wish you’d known before you started work?

Resource: Carter Baxter has shared a comprehensive list of questions to ask potential employers.

References don’t really matter

A lot of places outside of higher ed and nonprofits don’t care about calling your references. Instead of calling references, they will simply make you go through a 4-6 step interview process!

In my experience, places only call to verify your former employment at an organization - not get a character reference.

Hang in there

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about leaving a specialized role in a field that encourages folks to achieve national recognition as an individual scholar, it’s that I’m not actually that special. But what I do have is the wisdom of seeing how institutions work and understanding what makes those gears turn. That knowledge translates very easily across sectors and organizations.

You are going to get there! Keep going.

Change log

• 2025/04/27 Moved to this URL, added change log, updated markdown formatting

Job hunting, simply put, sucks. Please do not let the LinkedIn influencers tell you a new job can be willed into being if you’re just passionate enough. It’s a numbers game, a crapshoot, and a deeply demoralizing mindfuck. I’m a pretty confident person and this process had me down in the dumps. I’m sharing this info in hopes that it’s helpful for others and as a record for myself when I’m on the market again.

Big themes

Some big things that I observed:

• Jobs are more plentiful in the private/tech sector and there are also more applicants, especially for fully remote jobs. Folks are hiring on a different scale. And many companies treat applicants accordingly. 🚮
• Timelines are wacky as hell. In higher ed, it can be 4 months at best between a vacancy and a hire (and for tenure-track roles, Jesus take the wheel). The private sector moves faster…mostly. I heard back from some jobs within a day or two. Others took a few weeks. Some, I never heard back from.
• Rejections are helpful and rare. I heard back with a yes or no from only half of the jobs I applied for. 👻
• Interview processes take weeks. Every place where I got to the interview stage let me know I’d be doing at least four different video calls – on different days, different weeks – to complete the interview process. This was a disjointed process and never a positive experience for me.
• Nobody shares interview questions in advance. The really kind and inclusive practice of sharing questions in advance of an interview is becoming more common in higher ed/libraries and is just hilariously nonexistent outside of those spaces. I take that back. One of the interview session leaders at one place I interviewed sent questions in advance. I was so grateful. That was the best interview session of my entire job search.
• People want to help. With few exceptions, most folks in my network were eager to help and extremely supportive. I got better at asking for, and accepting, help. Also, shoutout to my wife for her unwavering support during this time!
• My resume isn’t special. I mean, we are all special, and I stopped being so precious about my resume and asked multiple friends to help me revise it, find ways to talk about my experience, and angle myself appropriately for new roles. Separating my self-worth from my work has been a whole journey since leaving higher ed. Hopefully getting 38 rejection emails has helped move me along the continuum a little bit.
• Money hits way different. The first time I was asked, “What are your salary requirements?” I ’bout fell out of my chair. The salaries are higher in tech than in higher ed and certainly in libraries. I have sold out. This is fine.

What seemed to work for me

• Learning the language. I had never worked in the private sector before 2022. Things are just worded differently and have different names in business, so learning some of that language was helpful. I think that’s an entirely different post and I hope I get it together!
• Updating my LinkedIn After 13 years in academia I hadn’t really thought much about my profile. LinkedIn is a whole-ass weird ecosystem especially for folks in the private sector. I found some folks who I thought had good/aspirational profiles and updated mine with more details, using language similar to theirs.
• Working my network. I reached out to friends, previous colleagues and acquaintances for advice, resume reviews, and internal referrals at their companies. Most folks were very eager to help.
• Asking for informational interviews with folks who had roles similar to the ones I wanted, or who worked at companies that interested me. I tried to keep these to a half hour to respect folks’ time. These conversations helped me (1) get better language to describe my own skills and what I wanted to do; and (2) make connections with folks who could refer me for open positions later on.
• Finding companies I wanted to work for and setting up job alerts for them.
• Updating my resume for each job application. I copy/pasted lines/phrases from the job descriptions or required qualifications into my resume then made small changes.
• Keeping track. I made a spreadsheet of jobs I applied for. Title, company, link to job ad, salary range, date applied, status (applied/no response, rejected, interviewed, etc.) and any other notes I wanted to add.
• Approaching each interview as a conversation. After being on the other side of the hiring table for a very long time, I felt more confident about myself, what I brought to the table, and the types of organizations I wanted to join. I asked questions, followed up my own answers with questions, and generally tried to understand the motivation behind each question that was asked. If someone was looking for a “bias towards action” what would that mean day-to-day? I also asked about their DEI goals and challenges which was a good litmus test for how committed companies were to tackling that work.
• Letting myself feel the feels. Truly, it is hard out there, and though it’s easy to tell myself that it wasn’t about me, I often felt stressed, sad and hopeless. When I needed to I would give myself a day or two off from applying so I could rest. And I would also remind myself that I was still glad to be out of academia.

Where I looked

• Websites for companies I was interested in for remote work and companies nearby with hybrid roles that I thought would be a match for. I signed up for so many email alerts.
• LinkedIn A necessity. Lots of jobs here, searchable on many facets. Can set up push notifications and email alerts. Highly recommend.
• Indeed Many jobs here that aren’t on LinkedIn – including local jobs, hourly, contract and term-limited jobs.
• People-first Jobs Focuses specifically on organizations that (at least claim to) put supporting their people at the top of their priority list.
• Words of Mouth an extremely useful newsletter for hearing about work/fellowships/opportunities from mission-driven companies. This is especially for folks from a humanities/writing/design background.
• Tech Jobs for Good nonprofit jobs in tech – not a super high volume but worth a subscribe.
• Public Sector Job Board Rebecca Heywood compiles an excellent weekly list of government IT/tech jobs.
• We Work Remotely more startup-y; interesting feed of remote work oppportunities

Finally, I must give a huge shoutout to the amazing folks in the GLAMed Out discord community for providing support, resume review, job leads, commiseration and shared joy. If you’re thinking about leaving your work in GLAM to seek techy jobs in other sectors, reach out! I’d love to support folks going down a similar path.

Three months ago I started working at TMI Consulting, after over a decade of working at a large state university. In my previous job I onboarded new employees often, but I had not started a new job myself since 2009. I was nervous about the transition, and worried about whether I would be able to succeed. But through my first few months of employment, the TMI team has given me space to find my way, made it clear that I am welcome, and showed me that my contributions are valued.

Here are some ways TMI has made my first few months so meaningful.

Keep in touch. I was hired in May but didn’t start work until August. Through that time, TMI staff reached out periodically to check in on me, make sure I had the information I needed, and remind me that they were excited for me to join. This allowed me to focus on closing out work at my previous employer while feeling confident and excited about starting at TMI.

Walk, don’t run. During my first few weeks at work, my new colleagues made sure to remind me that they didn’t expect me to know everything right away, and told me their own stories of starting work at TMI. The expectation was not that I would hit the ground running, but that I would take time to be curious and explore at the start of my journey.

Welcome the beginner’s mind. Moving from the public sector to the private sector reset many of my mental models about work. I explored the company with a beginner’s mind and colleagues supported me wholeheartedly. Rudimentary questions I posed in meetings or on Slack were answered sincerely and quickly. In meetings, folks asked what I thought as someone with fresh eyes on the business. Rather than seeing me just as someone who needed to be brought up to speed, my colleagues saw my newness as a value-add and encouraged my contributions right away.

Give space, give grace. TMI values space. Space to breathe, think, thoughtfully reflect and respond, and let ideas grow. By resisting the rush to a conclusion, avoiding either/or solutions, and not believing that there is only one perfect solution to everything, we actively resist the characteristics of white supremacy culture and give time for the best work to emerge.

Focus on people. As a core value, TMI employees honor each other’s humanity and dignity and enact that in all the ways we interact with each other, in every space. The baseline view is, “You are good enough. Your contributions make us stronger.” This means checking in, paying attention to how others are doing, listening, and valuing everyone’s perspectives and ideas.

Scaffold social time. Like most companies, TMI went fully remote in 2020 and didn’t look back. In addition to an annual in-person retreat, we have twice-weekly virtual check-ins that are optional, and the only rule is we can’t talk about work. I have loved being able to get to know my coworkers better in these spaces.

Make boundaries and rest everybody’s job. In my previous job, work-life balance was individuals’ responsibility and not an organizational mandate. I had dialed in a good work/life balance after years of finding out the hard way what my boundaries were. At TMI, there is clear organization-wide reinforcement of boundaries. There is no expectation of after-hours availability, we have dedicated days for rest, and we check in with each other to avoid overscheduling or overextending ourselves or others. This new-to-me consistent, predictable rest time has given me valuable space to learn, reflect, and find my way. I also love seeing how much this benefits my colleagues.

Hold space for unlearning too. When there is a culture that honors the wholeness of employees and communicates consistently “you are good enough”, it might take a while for new employees to adjust. I have been unlearning some of the patterns and behaviors that served me and my team in my previous job, but that are no longer necessary at TMI. This isn’t an indictment of my former workplace – this is, in fact, how most workplaces are! So, when an organization talks the talk and walks the walk, expect new employees to need a minute to breathe and to heal.

A colleague from another library emailed a few weeks ago asking for tips on how to recruit talented web workers for a library web developer position. Here are some things I’ve done to get people in the door.

1. Advertise on jobs.code4lib.org – these jobs are automatically forwarded to the code4lib listserv. Those listserv subscribers tend to tweet interesting jobs out as well.
2. Advertise on non-library job websites including Craigslist (lots of spam but talented people too); and consider paying to advertise on LinkedIn and other tech job sites.
3. Post the salary, both on the code4lib site and on your organization’s jobs site – even if it’s just a range or a minimum.
4. Indicate some of the big projects you’d like the person to work on – where you would see this person contributing right away. Whet the appetite: “How can I grow? How can I help this organization grow?”
5. Note your current tech stack. Are you developing your own web applications? Managing your own server? Using PHP, Ruby on Rails, Ember, Node?
6. Sell the non-salary benefits. Advocate for and advertise soft benefits that tend to go a long way with digital folks:
   • telecommuting – a day a week minimum;
   • dedicated time and administrative support for working on innovative projects – bonus if it’s built into the official job description;
   • support for travel/training;
   • flexible hours;
   • 40-hour workweek – sadly, in the U.S. this is a perk;
   • all other non-salary benefits of working for a higher ed, government or nonprofit institution: retirement, tuition remission, gym membership, etc.?
7. Sell the mission. Some people are tired of working for the bottom line and want to do work that matters. Libraries help people. Our work matters.
8. Longer-term: get out there. If you are a web worker yourself, get involved in local web meetups, professional groups, etc., and meet people in your community of practice. This serves a couple of purposes beyond helping with your own learning: it expands the network of people you can reach out to when you’re hiring, and it gives your library some cred as a place to work.

Related: I gave a talk at the Code4Lib conference earlier this year about recruiting and retaining – it’s a repeat of some of the info above but may be helpful.

The Ada Initiative’s mission is to increase the status and participation of women in open technology and culture. The organization holds AdaCamps, ally workshops for men, and impostor syndrome trainings; and spreads awareness of the need for conference codes of conduct.

Update 9/11: Librarians have given over $10,000 to the Ada Initiative in the past day. Galen Charlton wrote a must-read call to action for men in technology and a list of other #libs4ada posts. Thanks for reading!

Library tech is a great place to be right now

Library tech is an increasingly gender-inclusive space. I’m especially happy to be part of the Code4Lib community. In late 2012 Code4Lib adopted a conference code of conduct, and at this year’s conference, the Ada Initiative’s Valerie Aurora joined us for the whole conference and keynoted on the final day, which was a treat. Meeting her was a big deal for me and I learned a lot from her talk.

And, there are awe-inspiring women role models in library tech-land: Bess Sadler, Andromeda Yelton, Coral Sheldon-Hess, Margaret Heller, and many others.

…but that doesn’t mean we can’t do better

Despite our forward momentum, there are still some fundamental gender gaps in libraryland.

I went to grad school because I liked building websites and wanted to get a theoretical background for my work in IT. Information science seemed like a natural place for me. I didn’t think I would become a librarian, but my path started to veer toward library technology as I finished my program. As that happened, I realized that there was a false distinction between the library science and information science programs at my school. So I wrote my master’s paper about it.

The distinction between the programs bothered me most because of how gender-divided they were, despite the trivial difference in core curricula (two courses). The year I did my research, 2009, the gender proportions were inverse: about 70% of library science students were women and about 70% of information science students were men. What my paper didn’t include, but should have, was a deeper analysis of the stark gender gaps between the programs and how that informed students’ perceptions of and interactions with each other and their career choices. As a woman in the information science program going into a career in librarianship, I was a deep outlier in the program. I identified myself as a technologist, while many women in the library science program did not, even though their tech aptitude was way higher than most mortals’. Something was holding other women back from choosing essentially the same degree path but with a more technical label.

Now with five years under my belt as a librarian, a few things have become clear to me:

The distinction between the grad programs was largely cultural, not curricular.

Libraries are technology. The past, present, and future of libraries is technology.

The future of library leadership is technology.

To be such a female-dominated field, libraryland has a disproportionately low number of women in leadership roles and in technology roles. So few women align themselves as technologists even when they are doing work in technology. And so few women align themselves as leaders even when they are poised to take leadership roles.

We need to encourage more women to embrace technology leadership roles in libraries.

What we can do

• Librarian up. Read and make yourself aware.
• Attend a training on becoming an ally or impostor syndrome.
• Give a training.
• Advocate for inclusive spaces and communities.
• Diversify your media.
• Speak up.
• Get uncomfortable. It means you’re learning.
• If you’re in a leadership position: All of the above, and more. Hire women. Encourage women. Pass along opportunities to women. Use your power for good.
• Give to the Ada Initiative, which is actively working on this.

This is cultural. This is something we need to talk about. This is something we need to work on. Even if that process is uncomfortable.

Thank you: Wren Lanier for clarifying edits and Laura Gariepy for additional ideas.

Life gets a lot easier once you realize that nobody really knows what’s going on. Go forth with confidence, breathe, and fail open.

“Fail open” is a term that comes from the IT world. In security practices, it means something like, if the system fails, give the user access to the system anyway. It’s not a wildly popular IT security principle but it works a little better with humans.

Day-to-day, fail open has come to mean this for me: if you don’t know what to do, default your actions to “open.” So often we close ourselves to new or different things, people, and experiences because we are scared or because we don’t know what to do. If instead the default is to fail open, the world opens to us, too.

A few examples of what it means to fail open:

Say “yes” to something that scares you.

When you don’t understand what’s going on, ask for help.

Own it when you mess something up, then show how you have learned from it.

Notice when you feel uncomfortable. It means you’re growing.

Volunteer to take the lead.

Say how you feel.

Smile and say good morning to someone you don’t know instead of avoiding eye contact.

When in doubt: don’t close yourself. Fail open.