Here’s part two of my New Professionals Conference report summing up my notes from session one. Part one is here.

Session one: Developing your skills on a shoestring

Bronagh McCrudden opened the morning session with her (award-winning) paper Would you work for free? Unpaid work in the information professional and how to make it count. Discussing the Catch 22 scenario (can’t get experience without a job; can’t get a job without experience) that most new professionals find themselves in during the early stages of their careers she presented the idea of grindhopping – skipping the bottom rungs of the career ladder by taking personal responsibility for your career goals.

Encouraging us to think creatively about the unpaid work we do Bronagh quite rightly pointed out that it’s important to work out your needs and assess the options as ‘not all unpaid work is created equal’. Use unpaid work as a vehicle to get ahead but stay loyal to the profession and make the work you do visible – create a portfolio of evidence for example; blog about what you do.

To make unpaid work work for you have a look at her 9 point guide to getting your return of investment:

• scrutinise – you’re not signing your life away, talk to the organisation about expectations;
• gamble – except that you don’t know how this is going to plan out;
• economise – watch your finances;
• boomerang – go back to the family home to ease financial pressure maybe;
• experiment – you’ll not know if you like it without trying it out;
• typecast – build your portfolio;
• create – finite projects that allow you to create something tangible;
• broadcast – make sure people know what you’re doing by showcasing its value;
• be loyal – professionally, don’t be exploited.

Next up was Laura Woods on Taking charge of your continuing professional development. This was the talk I was particularly looking forward to as it seemed to be the one with the most relevance to the current stage of my career. Opening with a Wikipedia definition of CPD (tut tut ;) ) she emphasised the professional element of updating our knowledge and competencies to further develop the personal qualities required to demonstrate our expertise and professionalism.

For Laura the two main barriers that impact our CPD are money and time! With no official training budget there have been times when Laura’s training has had to be hidden in the stationary budget (imagine that). This got me thinking more about how incredibly lucky I am to work within an organisation that values employee CPD and even has a separate budget to support it.

To work towards overcoming these barriers and negotiate funding it’s important to illustrate the benefits of CPD to your organisation and the added-value of developing the skills of its workforce. It’s worthwhile keeping notes/documenting your personal development and the acquisition of new knowledge that has made a difference to your day to day work to really prove the worth of your CPD.

Some of Laura’s tips for CPD on a budget included:

• keep up-to-date with professional literature;
• engage with the library blogosphere;
• get involved with professional bodies (not just CILIP) – special interest groups/volunteer on committees;
• try job shadowing to learn more about people from different teams and their different roles;
• attend events virtually – Twitter, live video, blogs, slideshare;
• apply for awards and bursaries for conference attendance (see JISCMail-LIS awards for info);
• and seize the initiative – there are other opportunities.

Finally Bethan Ruddock closed the first session with Proving the value of peer networks: Plugging into your peers. For our purposes peer networks refer to the contact groups we make within the professional environment – work colleagues, members of associations, Twitter followers (or Tweeples), Facebook groups etc. Yet why are these important?

Well to start with they are a way to share best practice and generate a collective intelligence. It means we’re able to learn from the experiences of our peers and garner support for our informal training. It’s a way of maintaining current awareness and participating in a discussion forum on common issues effecting the profession. Maybe the solutions thrashed out could even help the development of the library and its service model. Not only that but it’s a good way to create new friendships that develop our personal qualities and encourage us to succeed. Crowdsourcing from a community of experts adds to the profession’s knowledge base and helps us with our continuing professional development, especially those of us just starting out on the career path.

Bethan also went on to talk more about the opportunities that arise out of your peer networks:

• joint papers;
• guest blog spots;
• book contributions;
• conference collaboration etc.

But how do you find a peer network? Look for the ready made networks e.g. colleagues/fellow students etc. Check out the bloggers network and find like-minded people on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Summing up some of the challenges to developing peer networks – time consumption and employer support – Bethan stressed the importance of proactively proving the value of peer networks to your employers, it’s good practice. As Woodsiegirl says ‘be open with your employer about using networking tools. Demonstrate [their] value from [the] start, don’t wait until you’re caught tweeting at work!’.

Read more:

• Bronagh McCrudden – The Shiny Forager;
• Woodsiegirl – Organising Chaos;
• Bethan Ruddock – Bethan’s Infomation Professional Blog.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 10:51 am and is filed under Libraries and tagged as career development, cilip, cpd, new professionals, npc2010, skills, social media. Print this blog post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.