48 hours of interview anxiety

Who hasn’t experienced a train wreck of an employment interview? Fleeting memories of past interviews cycle through my head, and I don’t want to re-visit them. Am glad they’re in the past.

Ian Ross Hughes covers that in his chapter “Mental illness and the in-person interview” within LIS Interrupted. Disclosure: I know Ian professionally. We were matched as part of an ALA mentoring program between new librarians and established librarians years ago and we follow each other on social media.

Almost immediately I was shocked that someone at the interviewing library remarked on his trench coat and made awful insinuations about him coming in to shoot up the place. That’s a terrible way to begin a day. Ian describes the day, or days, as “meeting the library family,” at which I cringed (another post, another time).

There are always problems when creating an agenda for a person’s interview. As a search committee chair and search committee member, I’ve advocated on the candidates’ behalf for more time to rest. And believe it or not, I’ve experienced lively debates on whether to end the interview with a dinner, even though we began with a dinner the previous day. In retrospect, asking the candidate about their preferences seems the best course of action. Ian writes “If the day is not well planned, or clear objectives are not set, the day can be further complicated.” He also reminded me about eating and meals and how this activity can be a point of stress for people with disordered eating or whose dietary restrictions may be challenging for libraries with very little experience handling that type of diversity.

The public speaking aspect of library interviews gets to us all. Most entry-level positions in academic libraries require a presentation to those working in the library, and sometimes others from campus are invited to attend as well. Ian reminds us that body language and speech patterns we exhibit while speaking may not be due to nervousness, but manifest as part of a person’s mental illness and people should not be judged a poor fit for the job or organization based on those visible things.

In closing, he makes a case for “eliminating superficial barriers and hiring the best candidate” as the goal.