by Lynn Strand-Meyer, Minnesota Chapter, Advertising & Marketing Division
Spring 2007: Graduate with MLIS.
Summer 2007: Attend 1st SLA conference in Denver.
Fall 2007: part-time back-up consumer market research job morphs into excellent job share position with another SLA member.
Spring 2008: Morphs again into fulltime position.
Summer 2008: Attend 2nd SLA conference in Seattle.
Summer 2008: Job morphs again back to part time.
Fall 2008: Lay-off.
Winter 2008-09: Wallow in self-pity and bemoan lack of jobs.
Winter 2008-Spring 2009: Start taking on contract research gigs.
Summer 2009: Attend 3rd SLA conference in Washington DC.
Fall 2009-Spring 2010: Having a lot of fun working for myself.
Summer 2010: Attend 4th SLA conference in New Orleans.
Fall 2010: Great opportunity at a big company opens for a market intelligence position. This newly created position SCREAMS for an individual with a library science background, but the big company doesn’t realize that. I sell myself. They totally buy in. Core competencies include knowledge management, organization of data, serving internal clients in a variety of positions – sales, marketing, business development.
The through line of the past almost 4 years: SLA conferences, keeping my skills, knowledge and expertise Future Ready.
Summer 2011: Attend 5th SLA conference in Philadelphia.
Summer 2012: Attend 6th SLA conference in Chicago (as part of the Annual Conference Advisory Council).
The Future? Bring it on!
Lynn Strand-Meyer is the immediate Past Program Development Chair of the Minnesota Chapter and Past-Chair of the Advertising & Marketing Division.
Lynn,
your story hopefully inspires others. More and more we will have to “sell” ourselves to potential employees.
In my role I am responsible for all matters related to information and knowledge management. But not everyone was sold on that idea – if people don’t realize they have a problem in that area, they are not open to me helping them. So I first had to explore all the business problems and many of them I could trace back to information / knowledge management issues. And then “selling” my services was a lot easier – I was not pushing something they did not understand, I was going to help them solve problems.
Keep it up!