On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 4:02 PM Salazar, Christina <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I think a part of why I'm asking is it seems sometimes (oftentimes?) the
> folks who are doing the hiring or job postings don't really KNOW what all
> is involved in many of the techie type librarian positions and so I often
> see job postings that seem to throw in all kinds of stuff and it's hard to
> tell how much emphasis would be placed on say writing code or maintaining
> systems.


As you point out, those doing the hiring often don't know what is involved.

Moon, stars, and kitchen sink announcements can be a sign that they don't
even know what they want, or even worse, that the job consists primarily of
of sitting in meetings where decisions aren't made beyond small scale
stuff. If they knew what they wanted, they'd probably ask for it.

The real question is if someone can handle a job, not if they've worked
with X language/technology. It's nuts to disqualify an otherwise highly
capable person just because they haven't worked with a specific language
unless there is specific reason to believe they couldn't achieve the needed
level of proficiency in a reasonable amount of time -- all jobs worth
having require learning lots of new things.

What's weird is that announcements rarely indicate preference for
understanding the work of people you support. At least in my experience,
the hardest part of systems is the carbon based liveware and it's a heck of
a lot easier to retrofit skills than the soft stuff.

kyle