Applying for Library Jobs? Think Mini-case Studies to Dazzle Your Interviewers

If you’ve been honing your interview skills, you probably know to expect at least a few “tell us about a time ….” questions. These are often ones like tell us about a time when you…

· had to deal with a difficult colleague/patron/customer

· were asked to do something you didn’t know how to do

· successfully resolved a problem

· tried something and failed

· were asked to do something that made you uncomfortable

· had to choose between two competing work priorities

· were given a task to do but realized the deadline was unachievable

· you had to manage a project (or create a new process)

Essentially, interviewers are trying to ascertain how you approach difficult or challenging situations, and how well you’d be able to handle challenges “in the moment.”

An effective way to respond to this type of question is to fall back on the mini-case study approach, i.e.: 1) challenge/problem/issue, 2) solution design and application, and 3) result. By having this organizational structure in mind for your response no matter what “tell me about” question you get hit with in an interview, you’ll be able to focus on providing a good example of your relevant strength rather than on how to clearly frame your response. (Interview tip: when responding to interviewers’ questions, be brief, concise, and never, ever ramble….)

What would a mini-case study response look like?

Every interview situation is different, but here are two examples of how this approach would work.

First, suppose you were asked to describe a time when you dealt with a personnel issue. Your response might be organized along these lines (without including the issue, solution, and result words, naturally):

Issue: My library, which had a well-intentioned group of seasoned but older managers, was having great difficulty creating effective teams because of the diverse attitudes and experiences of four generations of employees in the workplace.

Solution: Working with representatives of each generation, I created a series of interactive workshops that were geared toward experiencing each other’s “realities” and life views and highlighting the strengths of engaging multiple viewpoints in order to better represent the patrons and the community.

Result: Team productivity and morale increased substantially (no more shouting matches!), and annual turnover has been reduced from 25% to 5% over the past two years.

Second, imagine you’ve been asked to describe a situation where you were able to help solve interpersonal conflicts. Your response: your library had been struggling to devise a fair staff scheduling plan for the reference desk (the problem being faced), you worked closely with the reference team to create a rotational approach based on staff members’ personal commitments, preferred schedules, and generational mix (solution you created/led), and the result was a 15% decrease in reference staff sick days (the positive outcome).

As you can see, these responses don’t need to be lengthy or overly detailed (assume you’ll be asked for more details if your interviewer is curious), but they do need to provide a clear, on-target, easily understood answer to the question you’ve been asked.

Will this approach work for students?

Absolutely! If you’re a graduate student, this same approach can work just as effectively for you, but you may need to base your mini-case study responses on key moments from your grad school experiences.

Those might come from challenges dealt with in group projects (a wealth of issues to overcome!), how you’ve mastered complex technologies to enrich your online course assignments, a special project you organized and completed, a leadership role you assumed in a student organization, or perhaps an internship challenge that you successfully navigated.

This is just a short list of the kinds of experiences that you can turn into mini-case studies in response to potential interview questions.

Making this work for you

Now that you’ve got the basics down, you can adapt your strengths and experiences to all sorts of interview questions. Even better, as you launch or continue to grow your career you can keep an eye out for work situations that lend themselves to these types of narratives, so you’ll always have great examples to share in interviews.

Additionally, as you consider how to take your career to the next level (or next promotion), think about the strengths and accomplishments you’d like to be able to describe in an interview situation, and then find ways to create those types of opportunities for yourself. Volunteer to join cross-departmental teams, lead initiatives, come up with community collaborations and see them through, take responsibility for a new social media campaign, help management implement an organizational or process change, find local subject matter experts to lead engaging makerspace classes, and more.

Your goal is to spot a challenge, problem or issue that your library is facing, come up with and implement a solution, and then document the results. Note that not all your efforts will have terrific results; this is simply the reality of trying new ideas! On the other hand, when you’re asked to tell an interviewer about a situation where you had to deal with a situation that didn’t work out the way you’d hoped, you’re good to go!

Looking for more library and information science interviewing strategies and tactics? Visit the San Jose State University School of Information’s website for a wealth of career development resources.