Put it on your resume!

At some point in your education, you have probably been tasked with creating a resume and cover letter. Many high school teachers will make an assignment out of it, stating that it is intended to help their students better prepare for job or college applications. By grading these assignments, the teachers are enforcing the idea that there are right and wrong things to include on your resume. While this is true to an extent, it is more about how you choose to include your information and less about what the information is.

In your undergraduate degree, you most certainly created a resume and probably had it reviewed by your advisors, professors, and peers. This resume is the one that your professors told you can make or break your entry into the career field. As a student, this puts a lot of stress on you to do it perfectly. You search and search for examples online and pick and choose which ones would look best, but at the end of the day there is no such thing as a perfect resume—there is not a one-size-fits-all template.

A resume should be unique to you and should include genuine examples of skill sets and experiences that make you qualified for the job. Sometimes this means including things that are “unconventional,” so long as you can back up your reasoning for including it. Regina Hartley ^[1] is a human resource expert who worked for the United Parcel Service (UPS) for 25 years. During her time there, she reviewed many resumes, and in her TED talk ^[2] she explains that there were two different categories of qualified candidates. In her department, they referred to them as either: The Silver Spoon or The Scrapper.

Hartley states that so long as either of these applicants meets the job qualifications, they deserve an interview. “Scrappers” typically have unconventional jobs and experiences on their resumes. They didn’t have the perfect internship opportunity, perhaps they had to work multiple jobs to pay for school or had to take time off for their health or an emergency. “Silver Spoons” have the golden resume, they have perfect grade point averages, experiences, and references. The Silver Spoons have done every step right along the way, and they deserve the interview—but so do the Scrappers. Sometimes, the unconventional or unimportant (at least in your eyes) experiences are the reason why you are the perfect for the job. It doesn’t matter if you want to be a public librarian, a school librarian, a cataloger, or an archivist.

If you have customer service experience or anything else that wouldn’t be considered “academic” enough for this field—put it on the resume! Your skills are not only a necessity but something that hiring managers in the information sciences are actively looking for. There is no need to diminish your experiences because you feel they are not relevant or important enough. At the end of her talk, Hartley encourages human resource workers in the audience to “Choose the underestimated contender, whose secret weapons are passion and purpose. Hire the Scrapper.” With people like Regina Hartley in charge of hiring workers, everyone is given the fair chance they deserve.

Why Customer Service Skills Matter

Some of the very first jobs you will ever work in your life often include retail, fast-food, and other consumer-based jobs. These jobs have very limited or no requirements to apply and often have short and sweet interview and hiring processes. No third and fourth interview, no cover letter, and most of the time no resume either. So when we get to the point where resume building is a necessity, why do all of us remove these valuable experiences? These jobs have long been looked at as “low-skill” occupations. If you have ever worked any of these types of jobs, you know that this is far from the truth. There are tons of skills that one can learn through these jobs and they are skills that carry over to future careers and life in general.

According to the Indeed Career Guide ^[3] the four key aspects of good customer service are being proactive, personalized, convenient, and competent. All four of these are skills that can carry over to a plethora of jobs, including librarianship. Soft skills, such as customer service, are extremely valuable in a library setting. Librarians are there to serve the community, we help we research, technology, job hunting, and more. As librarians are regularly speaking to the public, your former customer service experience will not only look impressive to prospective hiring managers but also help you complete your job with more ease. Indeed states that, “Employers value people with strong soft skills because of how well they can interact with both customers and colleagues.” If you have good customer service, you probably have a good attitude, and that can take you far.

Don’t trust me? Trust a librarian!

The American Library Association’s (ALA) Code of Ethics ^[4] promotes respectable decisions and actions in all libraries across the country. The first, and most important, code listed reads, “We provide the highest level of service to all library users through appropriate and usefully organized resources; equitable service policies; equitable access; and accurate, unbiased, and courteous responses to all requests.” Most—if not all—of those actions are improved by good customer service skills. A few codes down, the ALA goes on to say that “We treat co-workers and other colleagues with respect, fairness, and good faith, and advocate conditions of employment that safeguard the rights and welfare of all employees of our institutions.” From these two codes alone we can see how much the ALA and libraries everywhere value personable, soft skills that many people have been learning and perfecting through years of retail, food service, and other consumer-focused jobs.

Opinions from Illinois Librarians

Question 1: All library staff should possess a good amount of customer service skills.

Question 2: Prospective librarians should highlight their customer service experience on their resumes.

Question 3: Amount of your job that requires customer service work.