If You Post It, Will They Come? Effective Advertising for Librarian Jobs

Academic libraries face many challenges in developing an excellent workforce for the 21st century. One of these challenges occurs at the outset of the librarian recruitment process: how to effectively advertise job opportunities to attract the most highly qualified candidates. The University of California, Irvine (UCI) Libraries has developed a list of over 25 publications, websites, and email listservs where we regularly advertise librarian positions. Our goals are to a) reach national and international audiences, b) attract a diverse applicant pool including candidates from underrepresented groups, c) be noticed by qualified job seekers in our geographic region, d) target communities where specialized skills are most likely to be found, and, e) limit advertising expenses. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of our advertising plan, we developed an online survey and asked all those who applied for librarian positions at the UCI Libraries between October 2007 and January 2009 to indicate where they saw our job advertised and to name any other sources they consult for librarian job openings. This poster describes the advertising sources we have used, explains the applicant survey, analyzes the results of the survey, and suggests how the data may influence our recruitments in the future