The Information and Knowledge Professional's Career Handbook: Define and Create Your Success

By Ulla de Stricker and Jill Hurst-Wahl

The definitive guide to developing and managing a successful career in the information profession: Information Professionals and Knowledge Managers deal with significant challenges in building successful careers for a number of reasons associated with common misperceptions of their expertise and roles. In environments where they must often justify their work and value over and over again, those already in the profession need a boost and those just entering need to be prepared for a reality that may differ quite a bit from their expectations. The book is intended to give readers a set of tools and techniques with which to secure a strong career, build an effective brand, and succeed as professionals.Click Here to view the official page for this title on Facebook.

• Written by opinion leaders and highly respected authorities in the field
• Draws upon 50-plus years of experience in a variety of settings and roles
• Offers realistic and honest pointers - no sugar-coating

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Jan 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781780630557

Ulla de Stricker

A widely respected information professional working in the information industry since the late 1970s and as a knowledge management consultant since 1992, Ulla de Stricker is known for her pioneering activities, leadership, and support to colleagues through conference presentations, articles, books, and in the last several years through her Information and Knowledge Management Blog. Professionally, she assists clients in a wide range of strategic planning projects (see http://www.destricker.com).

Book preview

USA

1

Introduction: an invitation

Dear Reader,

We have prepared our career book for our current and future colleagues in all the professions associated with information, knowledge, and learning:

 librarians or curators working in libraries, museums, archives, and similar entities focusing on collecting, protecting, and making accessible various objects through such functions as digitization, indexing, and web display

 those in academic settings who identify, organize, and make available to faculty and students the content and tools they need

 researchers supporting news media, publishers, and entities related to arts and culture

 those in specialized roles supporting the management, protection, and accessibility of records, data, information, and knowledge in all kinds of organizations in all sectors

 those holding information technology roles, working on intranets or websites or with social media

 those in the information industries who support publishers, aggregators, search engine and software providers, and similar players

 copyright, patent, and digital rights specialists managing ownership and access to content

 independents who operate research businesses or consultancies.

Whether you are an experienced or a brand new professional, are considering entering a graduate program leading to a Master’s degree (variously named – MIS, MI, MLS are common), or are contemplating furthering your previous education with specialized certifications in, say, records management, we speak to you.

We invite you to think about your professional life in new ways, see your opportunities in new contexts, and plan now – no matter how new or advanced you may be in your career – for the next steps. So please deface the pages with your own thoughts, festoon the book with sticky notes, and be in touch with us!

In our work roles, we have had many opportunities to engage with our colleagues in discussion about the choices we make daily as well as at life-changing junctures. Looking back and around us as our profession is changing fast, we collected the key topics and arranged them in brief chapters, each intended to raise questions only you can answer for yourself. Our distillation of experience – in some cases direct, in other cases informed by the thought, ‘now that we look back, perhaps another option deserved more weight’ – is presented for you to consult as each topic becomes relevant for you. Although sequenced with a logical progression in mind, each chapter stands alone. Our topics reflect what we each ‘wish we’d known before we learned it the hard way’ as well as inspiration from watching our colleagues at work and at professional events over the years. Feel free to start where you like.

Why this book?

When you chose a profession that isn’t instantly and universally recognized for its work and value (the way, say, veterinarians’ and engineers’ professions are), you set yourself up for a fair amount of future work some professionals don’t typically have to do – justifying your value and making the case why you should be hired or your department’s budget sustained or increased. We would like to help you minimize that work so as to maximize the time you have available for demonstrating your value to remove all doubt.

Your graduate school education prepared you for a range of technical and professional undertakings… but it may not have emphasized the social and interpersonal skills you need to get along with colleagues, build relationships, create a brand for yourself, and give that brand professional visibility. You may feel unprepared to take on managerial or project management roles or to resolve conflict in the workplace, and you may wonder what is the best way to lead meetings and encourage team members and staff to do their best work. In short, you may feel very confident in your technical skills yet anything but confident in your social and interpersonal ones.

That’s why we wanted to share our experience. As the saying goes, we have ‘been there, done that’, and feel we have ‘seen it all’. At times it was deeply painful, at times exhilarating – but we learned a lot, and we’d like to pass our lessons on by commenting on topics you may not encounter at the professional conferences you attend. We trust you will understand that we are blunt and honest about some things that may be awkward to discuss – and we hope our messages may save you headaches and speed your path to success!

Overview: what is in the book

In Chapter 2, we comment on a unique characteristic of the profession you have chosen and the ensuing need you may experience – throughout your career – to explain to others why it is worthwhile investing in the functions you carry out: you will need a special ‘bag of tricks’ at work.

In Chapter 3, we point to some key insights you need about your own ‘work personality’, how you might go about getting such insights, and how they could be crucial in helping you deal with the inevitable challenges in the workplace.

Chapter 4 addresses head-on the need to develop a professional brand and to market yourself the way any product or service is. We focus in particular on the power of professional associations as career builders.

Chapter 5 gets practical with a look at job hunting, the tools of applying for a job, interviewing, and getting safely through the critical first few weeks on a new job.

Chapter 6 outlines the building blocks of a resume and comments on the conflicting advice you may receive.

In Chapter 7, we comment on the notion that ‘career planning’ may be a contradiction in terms. Of course planning and skill building are essential – but there is no accounting for chance, and it is important to be ready for it.

Chapter 8 takes a look at the reality of organizational life: success is not guaranteed to the technically proficient. Political savvy is paramount! That said, simple guidelines go a long way toward reducing stress and maximizing effectiveness within an organizational culture.

In Chapter 9, we cover the essential skill of constructing compelling proposals and business cases. Regardless of the nature of the workplace (private or public sector, large or small), advocacy and getting support for change and investment requires compelling arguments.

By Chapter 10, we want to help you as you transition to a first managerial position. You do not have to make the mistakes we did!

Chapter 11 stresses the importance of the attitude we bring to our work, and we touch on the need to be honest about when it may be appropriate to leave a work situation.

Chapter 12 takes a look at salary and other aspects of compensation and suggests resources for ensuring you are armed with the relevant information at times of negotiation.

In Chapter 13, we advocate for a lifelong mentoring orientation. Take advantage of the wisdom of those older and more experienced when you are young… and pay it back, either as a young ‘techie’ supporting senior colleagues or as a more experienced professional guiding those looking for support.

In Chapter 14, you get a chance to hear the career stories of colleagues of ours.

In Chapter 15, we introduce ourselves and comment on the lessons we have learned through varied and rewarding careers.

We hope that by the time you have sampled our book or gone through it systematically, you will feel energized and confident about the work life still ahead of you.

2

An opaque profession: special challenges

Unlike some professionals holding well-understood occupations – think teachers, dentists, sports coaches – practitioners in information-related fields deal with a unique challenge throughout their careers: their employers and potential beneficiaries may not appreciate why it is worthwhile paying for their services:

Had I only known how much work I’d need to do to justify my job, my department, my staff, and my budget… perhaps I would have chosen a profession everybody understands!

It wasn’t mentioned in the graduate program that selling and advocacy is in fact the key element in the job of an information professional.

It is quite disconcerting to have senior managers – who may have no familiarity at all with what we do – comment that we are expendable now that Google takes care of our work.

Looking back, I would have educated myself sooner about relationship management, grassroots support, and political savvy.

We hear comments like these all the time. They illustrate in personal ways a fundamental and pervasive challenge associated with our evolving profession: outside the community of our grateful clients, few people have a clear impression of the range, impact, and value of the work information professionals do.

Some professions are universally understood

Practitioners in well-understood professions may feel they are underpaid and overworked, but they don’t usually comment that it’s a mystery to others what they contribute. There may be concerns about the cost of the skilled experts who operate an MRI machine and interpret the resulting images, but no one questions the diagnostic value of their work. There may be concerns about the cost of the public school system, but no one questions the need for the teachers.

Information professionals do not generally enjoy such universal acceptance of their value and function. Similarly, they are not among the professionals called on as a matter of course when there is a problem to be dealt with. No one has any doubt the veterinarian must be seen if a pet is ill; we would all look for a roofer if rain leaks into the house; everyone knows to call the police if a crime is witnessed. We bet few have ever heard the cry ‘call an information professional, pronto!’

Going a bit deeper, we could say that no one questions the enabling functions carried out by veterinarians, roofers, and law enforcement personnel. Of course they need to procure materials, pay for various personnel, fund computing infrastructure, and so on. Our enabling functions – procurement, cataloguing, taxonomy construction, website maintenance, and so on – may not be understood, and we may need to explain them many times (without using jargon, of course).

What do people know about what we do?

The views commonly expressed about our profession – for example, when we seek input for strategic planning – focus on a subset of activities associated with what is visible and tangible: we are known to manage a physical collection of paper records, print materials, and other items (in the case of public libraries, of videos, music, games, and art). By those who have given us ‘impossible’ questions, we are known as magicians who are able to dig up the most obscure information, and by those who may request more casual assistance from time to time, we are described as unfailingly courteous and responsive.

All the efforts and skills going into resource discovery and assessment, license negotiations with vendors, content management for the intranet, current awareness alerting – just to mention a few of the behind-the-scenes functions we undertake – tend to fly under the radar. As an example, the work associated with specialized taxonomies to manage corporate repositories is so remote from the awareness of most that we often find ourselves needing to describe it in lay terms when explaining the resources required to operate information functions.

But let that be OK. Let’s agree that we aren’t about to conduct seminars for the general public about the enabling work tasks we undertake. Those tasks are our business – and in fact we would argue that we should focus not on what we do and how we do it but on developing and presenting our value proposition: what is the impact and value we deliver to the communities and organizations we serve?

Fashioning the value message

Given that our value message is not universally appreciated the way other professionals’ value is, we must step up and craft the message ourselves, in ways our stakeholders find meaningful. Here are some considerations:

 We have traditionally been preoccupied delivering value as opposed to collecting evidence of that value. We must turn our attention to such evidence collection, which is not the same thing as activity statistics!

 It is impossible to attach a financial value calculation to information services: what is the monetary value of the fact that an item in a library, archives, or museum collection turned out to be invaluable for a policy analyst, city planner, or engineer? What if it made the difference between one decision and another?

 It is equally difficult to attach a risk financial value: what is the cost when information is lacking? In some cases, we may be able to project a financial consequence of lacking or inaccurate information; for example, we can calculate the costs of extra treatment for a patient who accidentally received the wrong drug or dosage. Most of the time, we cannot assign a monetary value. For example, we can only describe in qualitative ways the impact of an analyst starting a project from scratch, unaware of the relevant information available in the library or corporate repository.

 Our value plays out over a very long time horizon. Cataloguing and protecting a report (especially a grey literature item) decades ago may turn out to be incredibly valuable today … accordingly, we need to justify investment today for future value. Mechanisms for harvesting information and the content we collect in our repositories now may pay off in unforeseen ways years down the road for people arriving in the organization long after we left.

In older times, the profession of librarianship enjoyed a more secure esteem in the views of academics, scholars, researchers, and public library users because it was clear that librarians held the keys to stored knowledge. Now, we need advocacy and salesmanship because the emergence of information saturation, search engines, and social media has driven a perception that ‘everyone with access to the internet is now a researcher’ and ‘everything anyone wants to know is available on the internet’. Our challenge now and in the future is not to refute such perceptions as much as it is to create the experience on the part of our stakeholders how much more value we can deliver than the open web tools themselves are capable of delivering.

In Chapters 4 and 9, we discuss promotion – of ourselves and our projects – in more detail. But we wanted to set the stage by being honest about a key characteristic of information-related professions: not only should you expect to explain yourself if at a social gathering you are asked what you do, you should hone your skills in explaining to stakeholders and funders throughout your career how the information professions’ practitioners deliver value worth paying for.

The corporate repository manager

A subcategory of information professionals work in roles associated with managing an organization’s records – evidence of business transactions conducted, of discussions held to arrive at decisions, and the myriad other information objects arising out of conducting the affairs of the organization. The old fashioned records manager role has a long tradition, and many are the anecdotes about ‘central files’ being a black hole from which information could be extracted only by the one person who had operated the filing room for decades. Contemporary roles are becoming better known along with document management systems and systems to archive and search the massive volumes of email arising from day to day