Washington, D.C.
October 14-16, 1998

Confronting the Challenges of the Digital Era

Recruiting and Retaining Staff with Technology Skills
Mary Opperman, Vice President for Human Resources
Cornell University

The question that I was asked to respond to is how do you attract and retain staff with technology skills in this digital age given the competition around us? And I was told, “Now, remember, this is a very sophisticated group. You need to give high end answers and think out of the box.” When I was asked this seemed very doable, but about two o’clock this morning I thought . . .I can’t. I don’t have any high end answers, and I’m not sure I can think of anything out of the box. The fact is that what you’re facing is being faced in every discipline around the country. It is not specific to libraries. Technology and the boom of technology is infiltrating almost everything that we do.

And the fact is that we did not pick up on technology inside of the disciplines early enough and then train enough people to be able to have grown our own folks for the technology realities. And we have a labor shortage because of that. One of the dearest people I know is the university librarian at Harvard. And one time we were sitting with a group of librarians. This was several years ago when libraries were facing the “threat of the paperless library.” We were hearing from some very concerned librarians and he began the discussion by saying, “You know, in the golden age, when librarians walked tall upon the earth—."

(Laughter.)

Then he went on to remind folks that there actually never was a golden age. It taught me something about the way that at least some in the library world were feeling about these changes. For those whose entire career has been based on the extremely deep content knowledge that they have, the infiltration of technology expectations, which they are not ready for or necessarily trained for, has really shaken them in a very fundamental way.

And we know that change which is fundamental is fundamentally difficult. And so, I’m going to talk a little bit about two things. One, about some ideas in terms of recruitment and selection. But then, secondly, about retention and the impact the climate and culture of your library will have on retention.

There’s a supply and demand reality. When there are more qualified people than there are jobs, the people have to market to you. However, when there are more jobs than there are qualified people, you have to market to them. And that is a new experience for some of us. And so, the first thing I will say is just as we advise. We in human resources advise people in their careers to present themselves well, to be prepared for their interviews, to know about the place they’re going to. I would say to you that you must also check your look in the mirror. Look critically at yourself and be ready to market. Market the job. Market the library. Market your university. It’s about your job design. It’s about your organization. It’s about where you’re going in your organization and how that fits in with the university. I cannot stress that enough. It is critical not only for you in recruitment, it is critical for you in retention. We know that hot shots, stars, want more out of their jobs. They jump jobs often, and they’re looking for something to build on for their next job. They want more than just a set of duties. You need to be able to give them the context for how they will impact that organization. So my first message is be prepared to market yourselves and be prepared to recruit.

In recruitment, how are you going to set yourselves apart? What is special about working for you? Why should a 'techee' choose you over a high tech company? I will challenge you that universities, that libraries in universities have special things to offer. Each slightly different. Let me give you some general examples. Flexibility. The ability to keep going in your educational studies. Career growth, personal growth, quality of life. Whatever the marketing strategy is for you, develop it before the job’s open. Be passionate about what makes you special, and recognize that you are marketing all of the time. So grouse someplace else.

(Laughter.)

This is very hard for me, I might say. Because you never know who’s listening. And hot candidates can go anywhere, and they’re going to go where they hear an excitement and energy and electricity in the job and in the future. Hopefully, you are recruiting at a low level all the time. But now you actually have a job opening and you face job design.

For some of us, these are running in tandem, because we always have job openings. Do you know how that set of job duties fits inside of your organization? Have you thought about it beyond the set of tasks that the person is going to be asked to do? Do you know whether you really need a hot shot? Do you really know what it takes to get that job done? You are not going to be able to fill your library with hot shots. You can’t afford it. So pick the jobs carefully.

If you really know the job design, you can try to differentiate between where you need a real hot shot and where you can look for somebody with a solid skill set. I’ll also tell you that some of the strategies, like growing your own, which I’ll talk about in a minute, will net you people who will stay longer. True, they may not be hot shots, but you don’t need a whole library filled with hot shots. Recruit very realistically.

Do the duties fit together in the job design? When was the last time anybody looked at the job design? Are you just refilling and reposting as it comes open? Is it a relic from the former incumbent? I don’t know about you, but in our organization—I’m talking human resources, not the library—we take the jobs and we craft them and mold them to the person that’s in it. So if I was to just take that job, type it up and put it out, it wouldn’t make any sense, because it was very incumbent specific.

So be sure to know whether the conglomeration of duties, a) fits inside of your organization; b) requires a hot shot; and c) makes sense. It seems so logical, but yet, in the rush of time, we often skip these. Know where the job is in its evolution. I’ll give you the best example. Jobs that have Web design in them. These are jobs that turn over very quickly. This is a hot field. It’s fairly low paying. Lots of kids come into them, and pow, six months or a year later, they’re gone.

If you have Web design as an aspect of the job and then a series of other technology-based requirements and you’ve had a good person in it, the design may be done. If you don’t check, you’re going to bring in somebody else whose going to go, “Oh, my God, who made this design. We just have to start all over.” That person will stay a year and go, and the next person comes in and says, “Who did this design. We’re just going to have to start over again. Yeah, I’m not making any progress here.” So make sure you check on the evolution of the job. Draft the job description and then have it reviewed. We live in academic worlds. Peer reviews are very, very useful. This is a very good use. Send it around to some folks. Send it to some 'techees' you know. Send it to your HR people. Sometimes they can really help you.

Make sure that people who don’t know what happens inside your organization think that the job makes sense. Make sure it describes your organization well and describes the set of duties clearly enough so that they could actually think of somebody who could do it.

Now, qualifications for the job: I went to the Web. First of all, I had to get through the fact that there were over a thousand Web sites with digital library in the title. Then I looked around on some of the Web pages, and I looked around on some of your Web pages. I looked at some of the jobs in the libraries and I couldn’t help but notice that many of the jobs require an MLS, a particular academic background, and a background or degree in computer science, and they were paying $40,000. I could be wrong, but I’ll bet you’re having trouble. Am I out on a limb here?

(Laughter.)

When you look at your qualifications, be realistic. If you’re going to require an academic background, an MLS and a computer science degree, you are not going to be able to pay $40,000. You’re just not. So when you look at the conglomeration of duties, test the qualifications as well as the actual job duties themselves and be realistic about that. Remember that the more qualifications you require, the smaller the pool of candidates. So if we start with the original assumption, which is that there aren’t very many to begin with, and they’re really, really expensive, the more you add on, the fewer people there are.

So now you have your job description. It makes sense. You’re ready to go. You’ve swallowed hard and understand the cost. I’ll talk about that in a minute. Now, it’s time to post the job. Guess what? Nobody applies if all you do is post the job. Nobody.

And for the most part, the people who apply because they saw it on the Web, you’re not interested in. I mean, every so often you really luck out and pow, wasn’t that lucky. You need to recruit. Do you know how to recruit? Hopefully, your human resource office knows how to recruit. Somebody needs to know how to recruit. You need to advertise. You need to network when you’re here. You need to talk to people. You need to go to your local colleges. You need to know what the degree candidates coming out are interested in. You need to be doing that all the time. Because you know what? Everybody else is doing it. You wont’ get candidates just from an advertisement. You’ll get some, but you won’t get the ones you really, really want. That’s why every job can’t be filled by a hot shot.

That’s why you have to be really clear about which jobs require five degrees and the best candidate in the world, because it takes a lot of time to find that person. As I said in the beginning, you’re always going to be marketing. So be sure you have your hip pocket reason why somebody should come to you. I can do it for Cornell. There’s got to be a reason why someone wants to come and work for you. Be ready, and be ready to blow your own horn.

Talk about your vision for your organization. Talk about your great leadership team. Talk about your president. It’s just like fundraising. You have to be marketing all the time. Know the markets in which you’re going to recruit. If this is a heavily technology driven market, you have to be out in the technology field. Ask your information technology folks for help. If it’s mostly an MLS job, you already know those markets well.

Now, here comes the hard part. You need to know before you go out what the competitive market pays for jobs like yours. You need to rely on your human resource office for this. They should be able to give you a competitive external market analysis for jobs. If they don’t give it to you regularly, which we do, then you ask them for it. Give them the job and ask them to give you an external competitive market analysis so you know. If you’re going to recruit nationally, you want a national market analysis. If you’re going to recruit locally, you want it locally. But you have to know what the pay is going to be before you get out there and start to recruit. I’m assuming that you’ll know those numbers better if it’s primarily a library job.

Grow your own. Don’t be afraid to grow your own talent. I would encourage you to think about a competency-based model for your job families. Do you know what it takes to grow up a job family? If you know your competencies, you can do things like move people laterally into the digital area.

Now, let’s assume that you’ve found somebody. Good for you. Now, take them and hide them somewhere before someone else sees them. You have to be ready to hop on this really fast. Know those salaries. Be ready to negotiate. It does not work to say the hiring range for the job is $35,000 to $42,000, and we generally pay near the minimum. You have to be ready to negotiate.

(Laughter.)

Does that sound familiar? You have to be ready to negotiate. So you need to have set that up in advance. Bonuses are going to really help you. Hiring bonuses, retention bonuses, performance-based bonuses. And Jerry Baker is absolutely right. Even at the mid-level, you need to have pay for performance in place. Now, that isn’t necessarily going to mean that you’re going to get a wad of new money, it is going to mean that you have to manage the performance across the board to free up the money for your top performers. And they’re going to want to know coming in that they have a shot for a reasonable annual increase or you won’t keep them. And if you promise it and don’t give it, they’ll be gone right after that increase comes in.

Finally, let me talk very quickly about retention. Be aware of the culture in your organization. I thought it was very interesting in the program brochure for this meeting, you talk about the parallel systems libraries are running, print and digital. If you are still dealing with cultural issues and climate issues between those two, you need to get those addressed, because people coming in who have lots and lots of opportunities elsewhere are not going to stay in an uncomfortable environment. I don’t mean to sound like an advertisement for the human resource office, but hopefully your human resource office can help you.

If you have a strategy for dealing with resistance to digital formats, there are a few things that will happen. It will make your organization stronger. You may also uncover some very, very good talent inside of the organization that were too afraid to speak up before, because there was kind of a right side and a wrong side—they were actually interested in digital, but they’re on the print side, and they were afraid to say so.

So finally, these are very basic messages. Market your place, recruit actively, know your compensation strategy, and be aware of your culture as it relates to retention. Thank you.