Dunn and Wilson scholarship project 1999 Changing roles, changing goals: transferring library technician skills beyond the library

Matching skills to positions

The aim of the study was always to establish a method of identification and matching of skills and knowledge to the broader employment market. It is fair to say that success or otherwise will still be dependant on the individual's ability to market themselves in this broader market. One of the main difficulties, however, lies in recognising and matching skills held to the essential requirements of a position. I do not intend to discuss resume preparation or effective interview techniques. Numerous resources are already available to assist with this component of career planning.

In the following table key functional skills and knowledge as identified in the skills analysis are listed along with possible Actions that can be applied to these areas. This reflects the suggestion in the literature search that library technicians need to use 'action verbs' to better understand and describe what they do. There are many more 'action verbs' that could be applied. These have been selected on the basis of dominant use in skills analysis and job advertisements.

Table 7

The combination of these elements offers a matching of the requirements of a non-library position to the skills held by an individual.

For example the following requirements have been extracted from the job survey. These advertisements were for non-library roles.

• Interpret client requests
• Develop and conduct training
• Maintain and develop the records management tools
• Manage flow of information and enquiries received
• Provide information and advice to students
• Develop, design, produce and disseminate quality aged specific information
• Conduct research on a clients' behalf
• Handle a busy information desk
• Maintain database
• Provide high-level research
• Customer service to internal and external customers
• Responsible for the day-to-day supervision of a team of Advisory officers
• Provide customer service within a team environment
• Improve database accuracy
• Apply subject heading to news stories for storage in electronic databases
• Maintain filing systems and databases
• Coordinate and maintain intranet web site
• Ability to resolve operational issues quickly and work effectively under pressure
• Knowledge of principles and practice of information management and dissemination

As we have discussed, generic skills support the individual in the workplace and they will generally be a stated requirement of any position. Doubt about position suitability often arises through a lack of awareness that these are skills held by the majority of individuals, developed through formal training and life experience. In job advertisements they will be listed similar to the following examples which have been selected from the job advertisements:

• Team worker
• Time management skills
• Excellent communication
• Organised person
• Ability to show initiative
• Demonstrated analytical problem solving
• Excellent interpersonal/communication skills
• Ability to plan and operate independently
• Willingness to learn
• Initiative