Find a Job: Introductions Part 1

Submitted by CCCL_MarliaH

What are you going to be when you “grow up”? A librarian. A what? Graduating from high school in 2007, my career choice didn’t appear to be shared by any of my friends or anyone else that I went to school with. Insert the librarian jokes, clichés, and stereotypes: the "Shhhhh", comments like: “oh you get to read all day”, and my favorite—assumptions that all librarians are old ladies with buns and glasses. My love for libraries has always been deep rooted since my mother was a librarian as well as my aunt and uncle—but how do you go from being fresh out of high school to being a librarian?

Well, my advice would be to take things one day and step at a time. In order to simply just get my foot in the door to work in a library, I applied for a library page position at my local library. I got the job, which was also major for me because it was my very first job. For six years I was a library page, which means that I was the one putting the books back on the shelves and in order. Throughout both my years in junior college and the completion of my undergraduate work at San Francisco State, I was a library page. When the opportunity arose to move up to the position of library aide, I happily applied and received that position as well.

Shortly after my promotion, I started graduate school, working on my Master of Library and Information Science degree. It was then that I started focusing on how to improve my resume and interview skills in order to prepare for my next challenge: find a job as a librarian.