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I had the first job interview today. It was for a copy cataloging position at a county library west of Philadelphia. For those who might not remember, we are in north_east_ Philadelphia, so that will be quite the hellacious commute. It seems like it will be a nice enough job - I'm overqualified, but cataloging jobs don't seem to be falling out of trees and I'd rather take a tech position at a library than do something non-library related.
It's somewhat miserly in terms of vacation and sick days - only _six_ days in my first year, which will be awfully hard when I have a child in daycare. I could use of half of those on one bout of pinkeye alone.
The interview next week is with a major corporation, doing data indexing. The job description reads like it was written exactly for someone with my background of computer science and library science and it sounds like it will make use of both my cataloging and online searching skills.
Of course, the whole reason I went to library school was to avoid jobs like this. If I wanted to work to boost someone's profit line, I would have become a computer programmer. I think it will be a lot harder to get a library job after a job like this, and I'm not sure where I'll find a similar job if we move someplace else. I'm somewhat afraid that will higher pressure job, with the potential to periodically have to work overtime to get projects done. And the commute will be long for this one too, although while it's longer in terms of miles than the other job, I think it will actually be an easier drive.
But on the plus side, this is a big news corporation (I'm not going to name them, but you've probably heard of them), which means a very nice salary. And very very nice perks, if I can trust what I read on their website. More vacation time as well. The prospect of a high salary is particularly attractive when you're just squeaking by every month the way we are, especially when you live in a city where the public schools are lousy and you'd really like to send your child to one of the Friends schools. There's also the added perk that I think there's a high likelihood I'll get the job - they seem to have multiple positions and they've been advertising it heavily for the past several weeks. My initial phone conversation made it sound like 1) they were having trouble finding the right sort of people and 2) on initial inspection, I sound a lot like the right sort of person.
So I tend to vacillate on which job I would prefer, always assuming that I have the luxury of choosing. Hopefully next Tuesday will provide more illumination on the subject.
It's somewhat miserly in terms of vacation and sick days - only _six_ days in my first year, which will be awfully hard when I have a child in daycare. I could use of half of those on one bout of pinkeye alone.
The interview next week is with a major corporation, doing data indexing. The job description reads like it was written exactly for someone with my background of computer science and library science and it sounds like it will make use of both my cataloging and online searching skills.
Of course, the whole reason I went to library school was to avoid jobs like this. If I wanted to work to boost someone's profit line, I would have become a computer programmer. I think it will be a lot harder to get a library job after a job like this, and I'm not sure where I'll find a similar job if we move someplace else. I'm somewhat afraid that will higher pressure job, with the potential to periodically have to work overtime to get projects done. And the commute will be long for this one too, although while it's longer in terms of miles than the other job, I think it will actually be an easier drive.
But on the plus side, this is a big news corporation (I'm not going to name them, but you've probably heard of them), which means a very nice salary. And very very nice perks, if I can trust what I read on their website. More vacation time as well. The prospect of a high salary is particularly attractive when you're just squeaking by every month the way we are, especially when you live in a city where the public schools are lousy and you'd really like to send your child to one of the Friends schools. There's also the added perk that I think there's a high likelihood I'll get the job - they seem to have multiple positions and they've been advertising it heavily for the past several weeks. My initial phone conversation made it sound like 1) they were having trouble finding the right sort of people and 2) on initial inspection, I sound a lot like the right sort of person.
So I tend to vacillate on which job I would prefer, always assuming that I have the luxury of choosing. Hopefully next Tuesday will provide more illumination on the subject.
