How to Conduct an Effective Job Interview; Harvard Business Review, 1/23/15

Rebecca Knight, Harvard Business Review; How to Conduct an Effective Job Interview:

"As the employment market improves and candidates have more options, hiring the right person for the job has become increasingly difficult. “Pipelines are depleted and more companies are competing for top talent,” says Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a senior adviser at global executive search firm Egon Zehnder and author of It’s Not the How or the What but the Who: Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Best. Applicants also have more information about each company’s selection process than ever before. Career websites like Glassdoor have “taken the mystique and mystery” out of interviews, says John Sullivan, an HR expert, professor of management at San Francisco State University, and author of 1000 Ways to Recruit Top Talent. If your organization’s interview process turns candidates off, “they will roll their eyes and find other opportunities,” he warns. Your job is to assess candidates but also to convince the best ones to stay. Here’s how to make the interview process work for you — and for them."

Workzone: Encouraging women in leadership to be themselves; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/26/14

Mark Belko, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Workzone: Encouraging women in leadership to be themselves:

"My belief is that you have to be yourself, and you have to really understand the whole organization [you lead],” said Ms. Imhoff, president of the Community College of Allegheny County’s North Side campus.

It’s all well and good to study different leadership styles, to read all the best sellers on effective leadership. But in the end, you have to find the style that matches your personality and strengths.

Otherwise, you might end up with the incongruity “of what you’re trying to say versus who you are, and your staff will know right away,” said Ms. Imhoff, who gave a presentation this summer on how talented women thrive.

“I think it’s important to study leadership styles, but what’s most important is to be true to yourself. At the end of the day, you have to go home and look at yourself in the mirror,” she said."

Hard Times Ahead for the Library of Birmingham; Library Journal, 1/19/15

Lisa Peet, Library Journal; Hard Times Ahead for the Library of Birmingham:

"The award-winning Library of Birmingham (LB), which garnered applause and approval across the U.K. when it was built in 2013, is about to fall on hard times. After opening to great fanfare a little over a year ago, the library has been finding it hard to keep up with costs, citing a lack of private sponsorship and the Birmingham City Council’s (BCC) failure to raise promised money from land sales. Then at the end of 2014 the BCC announced a round of austerity measures that will cut some £72 million in funding for the arts, parks and recreation, care services, cemeteries, and children’s care services for 2015–16. Approximately £1.5 million will be cut from LB’s annual £10 million operating costs, meaning that 100 of the library’s 188 staff could be eliminated, and its hours reduced from 73 to 40 per week.

Recent reports from the U.K. paint a dire picture of the state of the libraries across the country."

The Ideas That Shaped Management in 2014; Harvard Business Review, 12/30/14

Katherine Bell, Harvard Business Review; The Ideas That Shaped Management in 2014:

"We look forward to the annual task of putting together an end-of-year reading list to keep you busy over the holidays. It gives us an opportunity to look back over all of the ideas and advice we published during the year and see what patterns emerge. We consider which ideas we think will have the best chance of really changing the way people and their organizations work. Which research best answered questions we hadn’t even thought to ask? Of all the ways the world changed in 2014 — economic, cultural, technological, all three — which will matter most to us in 2015? And which pieces of expert advice were most sensible, badly needed, and clearly explained?

So, here’s this year’s list: questions answered, helpful advice, and five themes that came up again and again. We hope you enjoy it."

Siobhan A. Reardon: LJ’s 2015 Librarian of the Year; Library Journal, 1/6/15

John N. Berry III, Library Journal; Siobhan A. Reardon: LJ’s 2015 Librarian of the Year:

"President and Director, Free Library of Philadelphia

She engineered the creation of an ambitious, five-year strategic plan, underpinned by a powerful mission to advance literacy, guide learning, and inspire curiosity through the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP). Siobhan A. Reardon had been in the director’s chair for less than a month when FLP was handed a 20 percent cut and branch hours were drastically reduced. Library state funding was slashed by 34 percent. In 2010, with funding trickling back into the budget, FLP launched a two-year process to formalize a new strategic plan. “We agreed that we had to stop trying to be all things to all people; we just didn’t have the money,” Reardon says.

Instead, her plan refocused the role of the library, identifying five target populations (job seekers, ­entrepreneurs, new Americans, children under five, and people with disabilities). The plan outlines a cluster model to streamline and enhance neighborhood library services, share resources and staff among neighborhood libraries, and collaborate with community leaders to develop programs and services most needed by residents."