Friday, June 13, 2008

In Which Your Faithful Narrator Steps Back Into the Career Stream for Another Go at It

I don't know what to call what I had today. Was it an interview? Maybe. Let's call it an interview just for fun and semantics. A friend of mine has gotten a job as a librarian in one of the universities in Atlanta. He works at the reference desk at IUPUI's main library. I stopped by last week to wish him well and godspeed. While I chatted with him I gave him my resume and asked him to pass it along to the person in charge. He did and also added a recommendation to it. I got an email the other day saying that the librarians wanted to meet with me and talk about the job. So, today I went and had a little sit down with them.

It has some bad and some good aspects to it. I think the good outweigh the bad. The good is the pay. Its an hourly position, but the pay is quite a bit more than I'm makeing now at my current position for my current company. Also, I would be considered a part-time librarian, not a "reference assistant," or a "graduate assistant," or something like that; so, for resume purposes, it would look better on the resume. I would not only be manning a reference desk for some of the time, but also doing other library functions and behind the scenes work. This is experience I badly need.

Another "good," if you will is it would be a tremendous foot in the door for me. I'd like to work in the academic realm and getting this position would be a definite step in that direction. Also, since gas has decided to go up to the stratosphere in price being 12 miles from home is nice, too.

There are two bad aspects that aren't bad, bad, but might cause some concern eventually. There are no benefits, that is health, etc. And it might not be there after a year. Its a "soft money" position. That means that it is funded, but it might not be funded the next year. I would have to go down to part-time at my current position at the bookstore, approximately 20 or 25 hours. I can't go much lower than that because I wouldn't be able to keep my health benefits.

Hopefully, I'll find out sometime in the next week or so wheather I get the position. I feel pretty confident I will. They seemed to be impressed with my limited resume, which is always a good feeling.

Well, I guess we'll see what happens.

1 comment:

thirdworstpoetinthegalaxy said...

Here's to hoping! Keep us posted.