On the value of clutch hitters

Time and time again I have the same conversation with my evening and weekend full-time staffer about student employees who in her opinion aren't quite up to snuff. She always wonders why I keep certain people around.

"So and so is bad with the details," she'll tell me. "X always forgets to do this, and Y never remembers to that unless I remind her."

While I'm not saying that attention to detail isn't critical in a library setting, I tend to be a little more forgiving in this regard than my coworker (whom I often refer to my "enforcer"). This is in part because of the economics of work-study - on our campus the library jobs tend to be the ones that pay the least, so aside from a spike of interest at the beginning of each semester there are often few takers no matter how aggressively we advertise - but mostly because I've discovered an interesting correlation between "more" and "less" reliable workers: namely, that the former, while consistent, are less available at clutch times than the latter.

Of course this is not some mysterious principle at work, as kids who already have their life together at 19 tend to know when they are overcommitting themselves and give me plenty of advance warning to schedule themselves off duty to accommdate their papers, exams, and everything else that needs their attention as the semester comes to a close and free time is squeezed down to zero. Whereas the ones who tend to be a little flakier during the regular semester are suddenly the students whom you depend on to man the fort when everyone else is home studying - they're the clutch hitters, to borrow a baseball metaphor (sorry, I've got Sox on the brain, especially this season!).

I've worried about this phenomenon, mostly because as a supervisor in a higher educational setting I don't want to be taking advantage of this second category of students. But insofar as they are adults - albeit young ones - if they want to pick up the extra hours I will gladly take the help during the tumultuous end of the each term, as I'd be dead in the water without them. I try to communicate this to my enforcer colleague, and I think she gets it sometimes, but I know that deep down inside she'd rather have students who are both reliable and there when the chips are down.

So would I! But just as my beloved Red Sox dare not part with their at-times brilliant, at-times lackadaisical slugger Manny Ramirez, neither can I cut loose my clutch-hitting students. Because sometimes when you're down by three runs in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, only a player like Manny will do.

The question of questions

(This post originally started as a response to a query on an email listserv, but it occurred to me that it made a pretty good Library Ass posting in its own right on the topic of interviewing prospective student workers. So here it is!)

I am responsible for hiring and supervising between 8-12 student workers and a handful of temps. My desk is a point of service for both regular library patrons accessing rare or noncirculating materials as well as visiting researchers who access the entire collection through us, so there is a very large customer service component which requires a certain kind of temperament and/or work ethic. The trouble is that library jobs tend to be the lowest paid work-study jobs on our campus, which means that many times our "interviewing" process actually works in reverse, as prospective student employees shop around for the best gig for that academic year.

That being said, there are a few standard questions that I ask:

1. "How comfortable are you in a library?" While we try to keep our desk covered with one staff member and one student at all times, during breaks or book pages it's entirely possible that the student worker will be manning the desk on his/her own and subject to all manners of informational questions. Bearing in mind that by the time patrons get to our desk they've already been bounced around a couple of times we try not to send them away without the answers they need (with the exception of bonafide reference questions, of course), so that requires a certain familiarity with how our library and university library system functions. It's okay if a prospective student employee has no such experience or familiarity, provided that he or she demonstrates an eagerness to learn those skills during the interview.

2. "Do you consider yourself a 'people' person?" We are public service desk that interacts with scholars visiting from all over the world and who aren't afraid to make unflattering comparisons if we fail to live up to the other members of our peer group. As luck would have it, these same patrons tend to be the ones who require the most hand-holding, especially where technology is concerned (sometimes there is also a language barrier or physical disability). While our Circ Desk is much more production-oriented and is trained to make quick and efficient referrals when needed, in the reading room we need student workers who are above all patient, understanding, and willing to go the extra mile.

3. "How well can you multitask/prioritize?" Although our reading room has an hourly paging schedule and periodic deliveries from off-site storage, there is absolutely no regularity to our workflow from day to day, even hour to hour. I'm impressed that people can dash off an email while staffing our desk, let alone read a book for class or write a paper, but as long as students give their undivided attention to any patrons who comes to the desk we're pretty much laissez-faire about what they can and can't do with their free time. We're well aware of the fact that due to our abysmal wages we need to sell this fact in order to attract and keep a regular schedule of students, but that requires a certain kind of worker who is able to keep one eye or ear open while cranking out a problem set at the last minute.

4. (Perhaps most importantly of all) "Can you stay in touch and keep us in the loop?" I don't pretend that the 4-10 hours that our students work for us every week is the most important thing in their lives, and I'm not particularly interested in trying to teach them 'life lessons' about keeping a job in the real world. What I do expect, however, is for my students to read every email I send and respond when asked to, as well as give me advance notice of any upcoming problems in their schedule so that I can plan accordingly. I also ask prospective students how comfortable they feel with being contacted via IM or through Facebook for work matters, as I'm well aware that email is increasingly taking a backseat to social messaging. If through the initial contact period I suspect that there will be a problem on this front, I tend to turn away the students right then and there.

In truth, however, it's pretty hard to tank an interview with me. This isn't simply a function of campus economics, but an acknowledgment on my part of the limitations of trying to evaluate an employee's worth in the space of the first 10-20 minutes that we know one another. I've had students who interviewed impressively but were absolute basket cases on the job and vice versa, so unless there are any serious warning flags during the hiring process I tend to err on the somewhat lenient side. I guess I'm just a big softee that way...

Chaos

The transition from semester to semester in an academic library is always an unpredictable thing, especially if you depend on work-study students to fill out your desk schedule as much as we do in Access Services. Sometimes you switch from Fall to Spring with nary a hitch, maybe bumping a shift here or moving some hours there, and other times everything goes to Hell, as if the schedule had been written on an Etch-a-Sketch and someone decided to shake it up for no good reason.

This is one of those latter transitions, I'm sorry to report -- it seems every single one of my work-studies wants to swap out their hours as they settle into their new class schedules, so it'll be a legitimate miracle if I can somehow get them all situated and not have huge Mack Truck-sized gaps in coverage here at the Reading Room Desk. Ah, well! And I thought the end of the semester had been a bumpy ride!

However what this situation does do is give me the impetus and opportunity to hire a new crop of students to help fill out the schedule. Ever since we've had a change of supervisor I seem to acquire a new responsibility with each passing week. Mind you, this is a good thing, as not too long ago I'd begun to worry about stagnation on the job (whereas now the situation is anything but, although I'm still keeping my eye out for a chance to land that first entry-level professional gig). What this means though is that I have to schedule myself off the desk much more than I have up until this point, so I can give myself at least even odds of getting all this extra work done without clocking in overtime.

But that will take more coverage, which means more students. Which of course means more hiring and training, which naturally takes time -- the one thing that is in painfully short supply (and isn't that the reason why I'm doing all of this in the first place?). Oh, well. No one ever said life in the Big Library was going to be a cakewalk...