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Name:
Early Career Professionals Panel Discussion
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Early Career Professionals Panel Discussion
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Upload Date:
2024-02-23T00:00:00.0000000
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Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
OK welcome, everyone, I think. We are going to go ahead and get started. So this is the early career professionals panel discussion. And I think they put us after lunch because this is going to be a little different. We're not trying to solve any of the problems that we're confronting in scholarly communications in this session.
What we are looking to do is help give you thoughts and ideas and ways to help cultivate and encourage your early career professionals that are in your organization and in full transparency. I am not an early career professional. I have been in the industry for 34 years. And I looked around for a definition of early career professionals and found that it suggested 1 to 10 years in the industry.
And again, from my perspective, 34 years in, I'm like, yeah, 1 to 10 sounds good because you're still learning a lot. You know, some people might think of it as 1 to 5, but to be fair, you're still learning a lot in those first 10 years. So the other couple of things that I'll share with you about the panel before we jump into it, I wanted to share a little bit about the origin story of this panel.
So I'm on the early career subcommittee of SSP, and I strongly put a plug-in for volunteering for SSP because it's a wonderful thing to do. And this is the second year that I've been responsible for submitting a proposal to the annual meeting, and last year we were accepted and last year the target audience for that panel was early career professionals. And by the way, if you're an early career professional, I believe you will get something out of this session.
But last year there weren't that many people in the audience, and I realized that's because, quite frankly, a lot of early career professionals are not supported in coming to a meeting like ours, which is just like again, planting a seed for those of us who have budgetary control over those kinds of things. And so in thinking about what I would propose for this year, I actually met one of our panelists, Emily hazard, at the niso plus forum, and she was telling me a little bit about her career profession progression.
And Emily has got, what, six years? Five years? Almost seven. Almost seven. OK and it was curious to me how much she had done in that time. And so I started asking her questions about that, how she had managed to accomplish that. Was it her? Was it her organization?
Was it cultural influences? Like what made that happen? And I realized that what she shared with me, her story is really stuck with me. And while it's something that I strive to do and had historically been trying to do as I had teams throughout my career, it just reinforced for me how important it was to give people opportunity to experiment and try other things and really, you know, stretch their wings and get more responsibility not to steal their thunder.
But so today's session is meant to be very accessible. We're going to stop at various points in time for questions. So if you have questions and you're like, these aren't my direct reports, so this is a safe space to ask some early career professionals some questions. Feel free to do that. But we have some prepared questions for them. And so they're going to share their story with you. And hopefully that will either reinforce for you the things that you're doing to help develop your early career professionals or will give you some ideas for different ways to help develop your early career professionals.
Because again, if we're going to solve the problems that all these other sessions are talking about, we need our early career professionals to stay with us and develop and to be me in a long time. But anyway, so with that, I want to introduce our panel and ask them individually to give us a very brief bioRxiv because they're going to start telling us their story in more detail, but just a little context.
So I'll start with Kendra. Why don't you give us a brief introduction to yourself? Hi, my name is kiandra Bailey and. My name is Kendra Bailey I currently work at. I don't think they can. It's still not the right.
Yeah can you hear me OK? Yeah, that's much better. My name is kiandra Bailey. I am currently at niso as the assistant standard program manager. Previously I was at Duke University press, and before that, in 2019. In December, I got my degree. My master of library science.
So perfect timing. I have been involved in and around the library and publishing, been around the library industry for over 10 years, been around the publishing industry for three years. And so our next is Emily hazard. Hi, everyone. Emily hazard. So I'm a Silverchair product operations analyst, but I've been, as Maria mentioned, at Silverchair for almost seven years, which is wild to think about.
And in that time, I've had lots of different roles, including client services, analyst, various flavors of business analysts and now am in product. So you'll hear more about how I got here in a little bit. And then our next is Andy Loftus. I'm Andy Loftus. I did my undergrad and theological studies. I did my master's in library science, and I've been a librarian at a local seminary here in Portland for about five years now.
We're a pretty small library, so my position is a cross between electronic services and reference. And then Avi Licciardi. Hi, everyone. My name is Avi. I'm currently an editor outreach manager for frontiers, a fully open access publisher. Prior to that, I worked for a smaller author and publisher services company, so like a vendor for editorial services called Acton.
And I had a brief stint at AGI as a freelance editor before that. But my main background is I am an academic, I have a master's and PhD in geology, so I come from the STEM side of things. So I had a few more introductory notes, but they were all about things that you've probably read, the lack of clear career progression in our industry. Charles Watkinson and Lisa Bayer wrote a very interesting piece in the Scholarly Kitchen in September of 2022, and, you know, you've probably read other things.
Forbes other things about, you know, the problems that early career professionals confront and also about their expectations for progression, career development, career support, the organizational environment in which they come into. But why don't we jump into the questions? So I'm just going to go down the line. What brought you into publishing? I know we have a librarian on the panel.
Important to have that, but what brought you into publishing? Scholarly communications, Academic Librarianship. So I'm going to I'm going to say what everyone says and that I fell into it. Um, when I got my master's, I wanted to be an electronic resources librarian, but I was tethered to a very specific geographical range that, in theory, should have given me a lot of options.
This was chapel hill, North Carolina area, but. The timing was just off in every way, as I would also find out in a couple of months. But I saw a job at Duke University Press working with the access electronic resources that they provide. And I said, you know, why don't I apply? And from there, I got the job and started March 2nd, 2020.
And that began my time in the publishing industry. So getting into scholarly publishing was also an accident for me. Did not mean to do it, but here we are. So I was a history major, which I think lots of people will tell you is a terrible idea. I would disagree with that. Um, but I was a history major at the University of Virginia.
I worked in the food service industry and wine for a long time. From there, moseyed my way on into the furniture industry, which is very spicy. If you're curious, I have lots of horror stories. And then from there, I was on the phone one day with my dad. And he's a software architect and he said, It sounds to me that you're actually really frustrated with the way that the data at this company is being managed.
Are you at all interested in moving back to the East Coast and learning sql? And I was like, yeah, sure. So from there I did. I learned how to use SQL, which got me into technology. And then from there I applied for a job at silverchair, came in client services, and I really just sort of followed what I'm interested in. So I think that this is I think this is very common for especially millennials.
We don't always know what is next. So there are some people who are like, I have a 10 year plan, I've got it all set. I'm going to have this corner office in this amount of time. I usually don't know what I want next until I'm into the thing that I wanted before. And so that's I really just followed my curiosity, which I think is probably something that we all have in common.
Well and even worse major than history is theology if you're thinking about your career. But that's what I did. And then I ended up working in a middle school for four years as an instructional assistant and decided that was not going to be my future career and had a friendship with my librarian from my undergrad University. And she we'd meet occasionally and she'd tell me about her job.
And I thought, that is exactly what I want to do. So it was really through her sharing her experience with me, and I ended up getting a master's in library science where she had gotten hers. And then as I continued to grow in my interest of being a specifically a theological librarian, I called around to all of the library, like local library directors and librarians that I could get a hold of.
And it was their just their openness to hear my story and to share their story and how they got where they were going. That that's what really drew me into librarianship. And in fact, it was meeting with one of those local librarians, and she pointed out the open position at the library that I work now, and that's how I got my current position. I probably have the classic story of going through academia and then getting to the end of your PhD and realizing that you don't want to continue on the cookie cutter steps moving forward of going to a postdoc, maybe one or two of those, and then assistant professor, associate professor.
And then on I, I ended my PhD for personal and professional reasons. And as a geologist, I was used to thinking about the past 140,000 years ago of glacier and climate change, which is very young for geologic past, by the way. So and now it's, you know, a big jump to thinking about the future here. We're always thinking about trends in what's going to happen.
So that was a big change for me. But when I finished my PHD, there were very few options in my mind. I was never, ever told by my advisor, a colleague or anybody that publishing was an option. You could become an editor for a journal, but that was the only option that I was aware of. So I applied to a million lab jobs consulting jobs, all of that, and eventually found editing at ag.
I did that for two months. It was very familiar to me as an academic because it's writing and editing, so I knew what that was. And then that gave me the foot in the door to get to Acton. And at the time as an academic, I thought I knew publishing. I thought it would be easy. And direct and boy, was I wrong. When I stepped into scholarly publishing, it felt like a whole new PhD.
So why don't we start? Why don't we start to get into why do you stay and, you know, thinking about the audience that we have here. Are there things that, for example, you found that your managers have done for you that either helped you decide to commit to this as a career, or were there things that you learned from? The modeling, perhaps behavior that you didn't want, but you were like, this is what I want to do anyway.
So, you know, thinking about this audience, you know, what would you say has helped you stay and grow? There either good or like, please don't do this. Examples I would say the number one most pivotal moment is the fact that when I was working at Duke University press, we had a mentorship program.
And in that mentorship program, you could get an hour, about an hour a month with a senior. Person on staff and you could talk to them about their career path and you could talk to them about, you know, basically if you were in the dark where you wanted to go next, you know, maybe they could shed some light on it and. My mentor was Alison bailon.
And there was. A moment where we were. Talking we were discussing. You know, sometimes when you get into a new field, you hand, I'd be very nervous and, you know. While I was doing work that I was very familiar with. You know, I could sushi counter and, you know, usage statistics all day. But the actual field of scholarly publishing is still very different from being involved in libraries.
So I remember talking to her and just saying, you know, I'm afraid I ask the wrong question. I'm afraid I'll ask a stupid question. And she said something along the lines of, are you afraid to ask these questions because you think they won't contribute anything to the conversation or because you are afraid that you won't contribute to the conversation? And I thought, huh, that makes a lot of sense.
So the next meeting I said, the next meeting I said to myself, I'm going to ask that question, whether it's, you know, whether I think it's stupid or not. And it ended up being a great question that nobody had asked at that point. So that gave me a lot of encouragement and courage to ask the questions, proceed with, you know, if I had a hunch about something, proceed with it. Not immediately sort of doubt it, because especially as you know, millennials coming into a new situation, we've been blamed for everything from fabric softener not being relevant anymore to, you know, the Modern downfall of society.
So you kind of get to you kind of get to a place where you're like you don't have the confidence. So instilling that confidence in me from that was my first month was definitely instrumental to leading me to basically be sitting in the seat here right now. Another moment was is in 2020, of course, SSP was virtual and my boss's boss, Casey Lindley, was involved with the annual meeting program committee and she was telling me about it and said she found it very fulfilling.
So I joined and I've been on that committee since about 2021. Apologies if anyone is in here and I've got the date wrong. The years just blur together at this point, but that's also been very, very instrumental in keeping me involved with everything going on in scholarly publishing and being able to actually understand because there's a lot of moving parts.
Um, and I'm also involved with another organization that keeps me it's not a scholarly publishing organization, but it is, it intersects. So I'm involved with nasig, which is a very small organization, and that organization is single handedly how I know anything about standards. And there's a story involved with that too. And I'm sorry if I'm talking too much, y'all, but yeah, tap me if.
OK, so when I worked at I worked at Duke Medical Center library and it was a very well known thing that if you were beginning your career at the library, you would get no professional development funds point blank. in 2019, the director looked at me and said, I'll give you $700. So I took my $700 and I decided to go to nasic in Pittsburgh.
I made it work. I didn't go over. I actually was a little bit under. But the fact that I was given that professional development money allowed me to go to nasig. Where? I basically met a bunch of people who would completely changed the course of my career and my I mean, my life, honestly.
So money gets tight and, you know, things change. But taking a chance on your, you know, younger coworkers or even, you know, you know, I, I am a very nontraditional student. I was in libraries for a long time before I actually went to library school. I graduated with my bachelor's degree. Gosh, I was 26 or 27, so pretty late start.
But I had people who were willing to take a chance on me, willing to listen to me and that. Single handedly has been an incredible inspiration to me and everything I do and pretty much why I stay in and around this industry. So I think the thing that is in common that I have in common with that is it's really all about being seen.
So when you're new, it's sometimes very difficult to be recognized or say like, oh, I actually know what I'm talking about here. It can be really difficult to raise your hand, even if you do have all the background information you need to answer a question. Um, so for me, it was when I was in, when I was in client services, one of my colleagues, she, I didn't, I had no idea what I wanted to do.
Like I said earlier, I didn't know if I wanted to go into business or be a developer or something else. And she looked at me one day and she's like, you knew all of the answers to this entire support question that came in without even having to look anything up. And you know, in our internal wiki you would be really good at business analysis.
Have you thought about that? And I was like, absolutely not. I have not thought about that. But, but being able for her, being able to see that. And then Plant that seed of you would be good at this. You should continue to think about it, and explore it, but not forcing it on me, allowing me to do it in my own time. That was super helpful because I wouldn't have ever thought of it.
Um, and from there that gave me again confidence, the confidence to then start more proactively exploring things. So when I was a business analyst for several years at silverchair, various levels of it, and I started to become interested in product and I found myself going, going to the powers that be and saying, you need me in this role. It will.
It will be good. Let me tell you why. Here is the value that I can bring. And you know, a year and a half later on the product team, I'm still having a ton of fun and I learn a lot of stuff every day. And I'm being I'm able to put myself out there for New opportunities. But it really was that initial boost of confidence and, and being recognized and seen.
Um, and the other thing that I think is that sort of tangentially related to that is just if you are able to see direct reports as whole individual people that are not just who they are at work, like this is not severance, right. Um, if you can see them for who they are outside of work and connect with them on that human level, it allows you to see them in a more well-rounded light. And I've been really lucky to have managers that see who I am and understand that I am not just what I bring to the table at work and that diversity of experience.
So coming in with restaurant background, being able to talk to customers at all comes together. Um, just seeing, seeing the person behind the screen these days since we're all on zoom, it's just it's been really, really life changing and it's why I'm still here. Um, the number one reason I stay is because of my supervisor. Um, he. He puts his family first, and he encourages all of his staff to put their family first.
And he doesn't, um, he whether we are, um, hourly employees or salary employees, he encourages us to have a task centered mindset rather than an hours centered mindset. And he doesn't oppose mean he really sees being a good dad or being a good mom or that is work too. So I have twin one-year-old daughters and it's a lot of work and I basically don't get anywhere on time.
Um, and he is extremely flexible and accommodating to that. Um, so that, that is the number one reason I stay. Other reasons are relationships with other librarians. So whether that's my local consortium of librarians, I mean, we just, we have genuine friendships. We get pizza together, we just, we one another and we learn professionally from one another. We call each other up to ask about how to use some, you know, database or how to, um, Yeah.
And then the, um, the Library Association that I'm a part of for theological librarians. Atla that has been a huge part of making me feel like I'm not just part of this one library or this small group of libraries, but I'm part of a, um, a vocation. Um, and we have, you know, we come from very diverse backgrounds, but we do really similar things and to come together and learn from one another.
Um, Yeah. I'll definitely echo all of you with the reasons why you stay in publishing. Like all of you, I've had very supportive, amazing managers and colleagues and friends. They've been on the front level as well as the professional level, which I think has been really great. But I kind of have three other reasons, I guess, and I think publishing many people say that it's academia adjacent, and I definitely agree with that.
But maybe you want to take it a step further than that and think we're all under the same realm. I think publishing is still very much in the academic realm, and I didn't leave my PhD because I wasn't passionate about the material. I wasn't all of a sudden not interested in doing it at all. It was for different reasons. So I really want to stay within that academic realm. And that's the reason why I stay in publishing.
I also just really love learning and challenges and change, and I think have to be willing to be curious and willing to learn here in publishing and kind of at times just go with the flow and pivot when you have to. And I that that makes this industry really exciting. And then the last part is I used to think that academia was, you know, it offered so much job security, right?
Like once you snag tenure, you know, you're golden. You're you don't have to worry about losing your job. But I think that that can be really restrictive and confining. And I know so many academics that either get tenure and just honestly become terrible professors, which does a disservice to so many people that they interact with every day or they're just not passionate about it anymore, but they stick with it just because they have tenure.
Now that I'm in publishing, I realize we have so many more opportunities, so many different career paths that you can go into. So stay here for that. You know, it's the opportunity to build a career, learn different things and go in different directions. Um, so we've heard a bit from our panel. And we have a rather large audience. And I don't know, we have some other questions for them, but we're very happy at this point to take questions.
As you can see, they're going to be pretty honest in their answers. So does anyone have particular questions, thoughts about developing your early career professionals? If not, it's fine. We do have a yes. Yes what's the least helpful advice you've ever received? So just to repeat that for everyone, what's the least helpful advice you've ever received?
I was given feedback once that I was too blunt and I'm like, OK, what am I supposed to do with that? Right like, that's my personality. And it's I. I talked to my manager about it and he was a couple of years ago. He at the time was like, oh, I don't expect or want you to do anything with that. You're good at your job because you're blunt and you, you, you don't hold any punches.
You deliver the information when we need it. That's actually a strength. And I do not want you to change that at all. And I'm like, OK, duly noted. Let's move on. Um, but I think, I think that, that I don't want to say bad feedback, but feedback that I was already going to ignore. I think turning that non actionable non-helpful feedback into a moment where my manager was able to say, you don't have to take every piece of advice you get that turned that into really good advice, which I really appreciate it and think about that often.
I don't think there's a single piece of advice that I've been given that comes to mind right now. Because if I mean, if it was truly bad, well, I wouldn't remember it. I'm very good with sorting things that I need to retain out from things that I do not need to retain. But one thing.
One thing I will say is that just. Make sure that you are getting to your employees first and encouraging them. Don't make them have to go around you. I also don't have a very specific example, but I will say that a lack or absence of feedback is something that you should avoid as leadership or management.
I worked for before frontiers. I worked for the author and publisher services company for about 3 and 1/2 years, and I never had a formal performance review. I never received. Constructive feedback. It was, you know, so I was left not knowing if I was doing great or doing poor or where to improve or any of that.
And kind of being in that ether of unknown is definitely not productive to one's career. I was told that I would need on top of having a master's in library science, I would need a master's in a specific field to be an academic librarian. And that is just not true. And it can be true for certain. Um, I'm just going to say it's not true.
Yes well, so. So are there aren't other. And we'll make time for more. Oh, yes. Hans, I'm curious if your early career, if you could go back in time, is there anything you would have done differently now. What you know today? Um, I would have done my undergrad in history instead of theology.
Really brought that full circle. I'll think of a better answer. I was about to say I probably wouldn't have majored in history in my undergrad, but apparently that was right where I needed to be, so. Uh, no.
I think that everybody's previous experience and their perspectives. It's what makes them who they are. So I've worked in restaurants for 8 and 1/2 years, and it's why I'm good at reading between the lines and really hearing what people are saying that they're not saying. Knowing how to deliver a better alternative when we're not able to give them exactly what they want.
Um, it's. It's what it's where I got my, my first training that I didn't know was going to be really, really meaningful training for what I'm doing now, where I'm in product and we want to do something in a really specific way, but maybe it's going to be 10 different steps to get there. So what is the medium version that we can do to get something that's going to be meaningful and get you part of the way.
And then set the momentum? So, no, I would not change anything. I don't think I would change anything either, even though I didn't get, you know, performance reviews or anything very structured like that in my first true role in publishing. The flexibility and support that I received in that role was really wonderful.
It was also a very like soft entry into the corporate world from academia. So that was quite nice because it can be quite harsh going from academia to corporate. Just the number of acronyms that we all use is quite alarming. So no, Andy, go ahead, please. I don't think I would have done anything different either. The one thing I would have done differently is, you know, um, academic brands often don't make very much money and don't make a whole lot of money.
But when I did finally get around to looking into, OK, for my type of library and budget size, what is the average librarian make? And I realized, Oh well it should be significantly higher. And so I went to my academic dean and said I should be getting paid this much. And within a week he said, we will pay you that much. And I wish I had done that earlier. So I want to go back to an earlier question, because we had a change in panelists and one of the individuals, their voice, we had a meeting where we talked about, you know, some of the stories that they wanted to share.
And for me being, you know, the tail end of the baby boom and coming up through organizations where there was a great deal of structure in sort of the hierarchy and how you behave. I think, you know, what I find interesting in some of in their stories really is their comfort level with asking questions and exploring new opportunities. And to be fair, even in my early years as part of the baby boom generation, starting in a very big company because I was part of ProQuest when I was starting out, you know, I did.
I'll share in all honesty, I did benefit from being able to experiment and learn things. And, you know, I did have the kind of managers who supported that. But one thing that I find that's a little different now and Amanda shared with us that and she would have shared it here because it was in her notes. I don't feel like I'm saying anything out of school. Um, she was recently diagnosed as being on the spectrum and how that manifests itself is she asks a lot of questions.
And I've been thinking about, you know, throughout my career and some of the people that I've had, um, and I had someone that reported to me when I was at one organization and she asked a lot of questions and, and it was taken by other people. And for Amanda, that was her experience. It was taken in a very negative way. And, you know, and I think she definitely left that organization.
And they it wasn't the partying was not on particularly good terms. Um, but what I found with the person that I had who was that way was they were asking those questions. So a new idea would come up and this person was responsible for helping make it happen, and she'd ask a lot of questions, and they were blunt. She was very blunt person.
She was asking a lot of questions. And the CEO of the organization who I reported to was like, I don't ever want this person in one of our meetings ever again. And I was like, you have to understand, she's not asking the questions because she's negative. She's asking the questions because she's already trying to figure out how to make it happen. And so, you know, she's not asking it to undercut it.
She's asking it because she's already trying to help. But the way she asked the questions came across very aggressive and so, you know, that respect for neurodiversity and that that like taking a step back for a moment and saying, you know, well, you know, actually this person is probably trying to help. They're not actually trying to, you know, be personal or rude. Um, you know, thinking about that, I'm not sure that that's something that culturally everyone is there.
I mean, if your organization is, that's fantastic. But I'm just sharing that because I really wanted to bring that particular piece of Amanda's voice into this conversation. And with that, I wanted to ask, We still have we still have some time. So I wanted to ask you all to share with us some ideas about. What you think successful organizations can do to support early career professionals and the fact that we.
May very well have to think about how to support you differently. I mean, I'll also, in transparency, share with you, you know, my conversation with Andy. Andy is looking for a new job and his manager knows that. His manager has given him exposure to a lot of different things. And his manager actually knows that Andy is actively looking for a new job.
Because when we were talking, he's like, oh, you know, when I'm on the panel, I might have a different title. I might be working for a different company. And I'm like, oh, OK. So, you know, we should like, he's like, Oh no, my boss knows. And I was like, what? OK, um, and it's all in that spirit of trying to develop Andy as a person and make sure that he's still part of our community and still making, you know, still making a contribution and still helping us grow.
So I was just wondering if you all have other thoughts about what organizations can do to support your stories have been great. They've been great examples. But, you know, if we could take it to like, what do you think organizations could do or avoid doing that would be good. I'll just speak to what you mentioned there, that ironically, one of the reasons why I continue to stay where I'm at am still in my current position is because of how the culture that my supervisor is created where he is completely comfortable with me sharing.
Yeah, I'm looking for new positions. Um, you know, not because I don't like where I'm at, just simply because I've got a growing family and I need to make more money and better benefits. Um, and it's his openness to recognizing that the position I'm in is an early career position. This is not a long term position. And he, he knows that and he helps me look for other jobs and he gives me recommendations.
And what it does is it makes me not immediately leave for a different position. It makes me treat that as a good home base to work from. Um, Yeah. So, yeah, just again, ironically, the reason I stay is because, um, he, he knows that I'm trying to leave and he, he's helping me do that. So when I was growing up, it was sort of.
People stayed in jobs, period. It's never a question of do you like your job? Like, who cares? It's just you stay. Both of my parents worked in a factory. So you stay in your factory job because you have kids to take care of. You have things to do. Bills to pay.
The nature of work has changed. People change jobs a lot. More often people feel that they have more freedom to do so. It's not, you know, a mark against you if you're applying for a job and you've only been in your position for two years, you know. With that. People are asking more from their places of employment.
You know, here are all of these things about, you know, how each generation approaches work. Some some of it's useful and some of it's incredibly unhelpful to the greater conversation. I have been on some really tense hiring committees, job searches. But one of the number one things I would implore everyone to keep in mind is that when you are hiring someone, you are not just filling a position and wiping the sweat from your brow and saying, OK, this person doesn't have to do that anymore.
We can distribute the work more easily. No, you are hiring someone. You are hiring a person who is going to have their own hopes, wants, dreams, desires, et cetera. Now the right thing to do with that information would be to encourage them as much as possible, get to know them. You don't necessarily have to be best friends with them, but know something about them and encourage them.
You know, if professional development funds are scarce, do what you can. Local conferences have been some of the most fulfilling conferences that I have been to. Encourage them as much as possible to develop their skills and develop what they would like to do. Even if they don't know, they don't have to know. But yeah, just.
Know, when you're hiring someone, you're not just filling a position. Yeah along similar lines, what I was going to say, and this is not just for early career professionals, but really for any employee, but is just to recognize them and to recognize their efforts. Not saying that we need pats on our back for every little thing that we do. Obviously, if it's something notable, you know, that would be really great.
But even just, you know, recognizing someone's skills, you may have a team of four people. They're skilled in different ways, you know, letting them know that. I think that's really helpful for us as early career professionals because we need to gain that confidence. You know, we come here and it's like, Oh my gosh, there's that big wig in that part of the industry. Or there's that chef that I just read the article about.
You know, it'd be amazing to meet them. And having that little bit of confidence in your back pocket is really important. And, you know, I've started I have a team of four and we do, you know, team appreciation like kudos every other team meeting that we have and it can be a little silly things like, that emoji that you sent on Microsoft Teams the other day, you know, that made me laugh.
And I appreciate you for doing that and lifting me up. And I think that even just those small things, you know, really, really help along the way. I'm glad that like, kudos are happening elsewhere. Silverchair does that too. And we put them in our company digest every week and it's always, um, not the most informative part of our newsletter, but it's certainly the most heartwarming.
And it, it affirms why we're, why we come to work. Um, but as far as stuff you can do, I mean, there's big stuff, there's little stuff, you know, my advice could run the gamut. I would say little stuff. Um, make sure that managers are empowered to really give their full attention when you're in one on ones like don't, don't be checking teams or Slack or whatever it is, like really be all there. And don't just think, don't just talk about, well, what's on what's on your plate, what's on my plate?
Great see you next week. Um, one of the easy frameworks that I really like, and I used this when I was mentoring a couple of vas in our organization is a win and a challenge. So what's, what's a win you had for the last week and what's something that's challenging you and what perspective, or what connection can I help you make to get over this or through it? Not solving the problem, but just saying I'm here with the resources if you need it.
But I fully believe that you can figure this out. So that's little stuff. You can also set up mentoring programs. So again, if funds are tight and you don't have a big professional development budget, you can create, you can create organization mentoring networks to say, oh, you're really interested in product management. You know who has a ton of experience with this, this person?
Why don't we get you guys connected and see if you want to talk every now and then just to get another perspective and then career pathways. I know that's something that a lot of I mentioned. I'm one of those people that doesn't know where I want to go until I am in the next thing. Um, so doing whatever you can to really clearly map out the possible career pathways both within your organization and it sounds scary also outside of your organization to sort of like an OH baby, the places you'll go.
But in scholarly publishing, right? But really making that clear so that you don't have to you're not expecting folks to do the guess work. Where could I go next or what might the next career jump look like? And then I do not want to make this an ad for Silverchair. However, in the last couple of years, our chief people officer has really revamped our performance review cycle, which sounds very unsexy.
However, um, we are now using a strengths based framework, which is the most, it's the most supported I have ever felt during any kind of performance review because it approaches it not from a well, you're doing this well, but you could do x, y and z things way better and you should work on this. It's you're doing this really well and knowing that you are really good at these five things, you could level up the way that you're working by doing this and this way.
Or can I offer this perspective of that would let you tackle this in a different way? So there's really lots of different things you can do. I would just encourage you to experiment if you get it wrong to say that that's fine. Like we were all individuals coming to work every day just trying to make great work happen and hopefully have a nice time while we're doing it. So I do think we have time for additional questions, if there are any.
Again, the goal of today was to either reinforce, you know, have a nice panel of early career professionals and reinforce if you're already doing these things, if you're already giving this kind of support, then, you know, this will hopefully reinforce that and strengthen your resolve. Or if it's something where you're like, we're still not exactly doing what we want to do for early career professionals, maybe their stories will Plant some seeds that you can go back and, you know, have internal conversations to think about the approach differently.
So I wanted to say that before I open it up to the floor because I know we're running out of time. I forget if this is supposed to end at 250 or 300, but but 300. OK so we do have a few more minutes. So are there other questions from the room? Yes yes. Hi, I'm Christina with one.
I'm Amanda Rogers, supervisor, and she's fantastic. I'm very sorry she couldn't be here today to share her great energy with all of you, but wanted to say one thing that, you know, we always work on, and one is a really nice corporate culture and a very generous corporate culture. And what I mean by that is people are generous with their. Everyone assumes that everyone is always doing the best they can, which I think is very unfair.
I'm sorry. The woman second from didn't get your name. The Lettie from Silver chair Emily. The feedback that you got that started out weird and then got better as someone gave it to you, as you kind of dug in on it. I really liked that story because, you know, when we someone gave us a piece of feedback like maybe they need something else.
Maybe there's a good way I can interpret this, like that kind of generosity. I always personally find that. And I will say now, now that I'm in the position of I've gone from the early career stage, I will say as a manager, no one teaches us how to develop staff, right? So don't assume sometimes we don't do it because we don't know what we're doing. I mean, like we're really good.
I'm really good at sales and marketing. This is the first time I've had to try to think proactively about, oh, I have this many folks on my team. Oh, I'm supposed to be developing them like we don't get that training. So this is a really helpful session. But like for us, this is, you know, we're on the other side of things.
That is something that we can be better at too. And I'll suggest that as a potential development, how can we be better managers to develop? What are some quick things we can learn? Because that is a very specific. Rebecca, are you getting that for us? Thank you. yeah, I think that's so important.
You know, it's you're right. It isn't something that is a part of supervisory training. You know how, specific one other seed I'll Plant and kiandra suggested to me that she has more something else to add so before I jump over to kiandra. We've talked about it a lot of different sessions. But, you know, SSP has some amazing free resources for early career professionals. You know, the early career subcommittee has the podcast and the podcast delve into individual roles, for example.
And, you know, and it's like, well, what is it? What is what's it like to be a sales person? What's it like to be a this or that? And so, you know, so there are a lot of free resources that particularly SSP seems to be very good at. And so just pushing that out to your staff can be, you know, can be tremendously helpful because they'll be like, huh? Because I mean, that is one of the challenges is like career progression, how opaque the, the profession is, the things that SSP is trying to do to pull back the curtain is amazing.
And so I'm sorry, kiandra, I'll let you go ahead. All right. How did. How did I want to say this? I don't remember a single thing said to me in a formal performance review. It feels like you are in traffic court. It is something where you're just you're in the hot seat.
And so, you know, you're just trying to get out of it. But what I do remember is every bit of feedback I have received from my boss in our one on ones casual conversations and, you know, SLACK messages in emails at Nasa. We don't even have performance reviews. We have, you know, conversations. If I am doing something that needs to be corrected or if I'm doing something great, I get that feedback right then and there.
So what I'm really trying to say is don't rely on formal performance review processes to give your employees the encouragement and the feedback that they need to be successful. I would echo that. I think continuous feedback. You know, it's a buzzword we hear a lot now, but continuous feedback really is helpful.
Like no one should be having surprises when it's performance review time. If you've got feedback, you should give it in the moment. You know, after you've had have had time to make sure that you can deliver it in a way that is constructive and helpful. But yeah, it shouldn't it should be surprise free and it should be a moment to affirm the course that you're on rather than do dramatic course corrections like that is not the time.
I think that we're past that. Other questions. Is there anything the town wants to ask us? I wasn't expecting that question. Our stories as early career professionals, how we got into publishing.
Are they similar to yours? Raise your hand. Yes, if they are. So I think that's AI think that's a good point, is like even though, you know, there can be, in some cases, a divide between Gen x, Gen y, Gen Z's, they're the future. So excited.
Um, but we hear a lot in the news of how different all these generations are. And the reality is, yes, maybe the technology that we experienced when we were growing up is very different, but we're not really that different. We've got tons in common and I think that being able to build on that experience is so valuable and you know, I'll echo that because when I was starting out in my career.
Emily was a little bit like you, which maybe is why her story resonated so much with me. You know, I. Had done a master's in philosophy, and I found myself at ProQuest in the editorial team, and I started being interested in how our products worked at that time on a platform called dialog that I'd be curious how many of you are familiar? OK, you're laughing and you know, and I was supported in that.
And, and so, you know, so I was supported in that and that helped. And then it was like, well, OK, I'm curious about this. So then, you know, as things progressed, I never actually created a job for myself. It was always particular openings that I then explored. But but I think you're right. I think that the similarities are not as great as we might think they are.
It's that creating the supportive environment. And you know, Christine, your comment about. I think that's true. I think that, you know, in talking to them and thinking about, you know, conversations I've had with people there maybe isn't as much intentionality about how to develop early career professionals. There's a lot about like, how do you give performance reviews?
And this is how our performance structure works in this company or and then separated from that is we have a budget for, for professional development. But like how all of that's integrated together to ensure that we have, you know, a wonderful group like this that are committed to our community and want to continue to grow with our their career, with our community. That is an area that I agree with you.
I think there's a gap there. Um, and I think it's worth like we can take it back to our committee and talk about it more. Um, and so with that, I don't get the sense there are more questions from the audience. So I think at this point, I'll Thank our panelists for taking the time today. And I also had a hidden agenda of wanting to give some early career folks a chance to be on a panel.
So I'm really thrilled that this came together. And Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today.
Segment:0 .
OK welcome, everyone, I think. We are going to go ahead and get started. So this is the early career professionals panel discussion. And I think they put us after lunch because this is going to be a little different. We're not trying to solve any of the problems that we're confronting in scholarly communications in this session.
What we are looking to do is help give you thoughts and ideas and ways to help cultivate and encourage your early career professionals that are in your organization and in full transparency. I am not an early career professional. I have been in the industry for 34 years. And I looked around for a definition of early career professionals and found that it suggested 1 to 10 years in the industry.
And again, from my perspective, 34 years in, I'm like, yeah, 1 to 10 sounds good because you're still learning a lot. You know, some people might think of it as 1 to 5, but to be fair, you're still learning a lot in those first 10 years. So the other couple of things that I'll share with you about the panel before we jump into it, I wanted to share a little bit about the origin story of this panel.
So I'm on the early career subcommittee of SSP, and I strongly put a plug-in for volunteering for SSP because it's a wonderful thing to do. And this is the second year that I've been responsible for submitting a proposal to the annual meeting, and last year we were accepted and last year the target audience for that panel was early career professionals. And by the way, if you're an early career professional, I believe you will get something out of this session.
But last year there weren't that many people in the audience, and I realized that's because, quite frankly, a lot of early career professionals are not supported in coming to a meeting like ours, which is just like again, planting a seed for those of us who have budgetary control over those kinds of things. And so in thinking about what I would propose for this year, I actually met one of our panelists, Emily hazard, at the niso plus forum, and she was telling me a little bit about her career profession progression.
And Emily has got, what, six years? Five years? Almost seven. Almost seven. OK and it was curious to me how much she had done in that time. And so I started asking her questions about that, how she had managed to accomplish that. Was it her? Was it her organization?
Was it cultural influences? Like what made that happen? And I realized that what she shared with me, her story is really stuck with me. And while it's something that I strive to do and had historically been trying to do as I had teams throughout my career, it just reinforced for me how important it was to give people opportunity to experiment and try other things and really, you know, stretch their wings and get more responsibility not to steal their thunder.
But so today's session is meant to be very accessible. We're going to stop at various points in time for questions. So if you have questions and you're like, these aren't my direct reports, so this is a safe space to ask some early career professionals some questions. Feel free to do that. But we have some prepared questions for them. And so they're going to share their story with you. And hopefully that will either reinforce for you the things that you're doing to help develop your early career professionals or will give you some ideas for different ways to help develop your early career professionals.
Because again, if we're going to solve the problems that all these other sessions are talking about, we need our early career professionals to stay with us and develop and to be me in a long time. But anyway, so with that, I want to introduce our panel and ask them individually to give us a very brief bioRxiv because they're going to start telling us their story in more detail, but just a little context.
So I'll start with Kendra. Why don't you give us a brief introduction to yourself? Hi, my name is kiandra Bailey and. My name is Kendra Bailey I currently work at. I don't think they can. It's still not the right.
Yeah can you hear me OK? Yeah, that's much better. My name is kiandra Bailey. I am currently at niso as the assistant standard program manager. Previously I was at Duke University press, and before that, in 2019. In December, I got my degree. My master of library science.
So perfect timing. I have been involved in and around the library and publishing, been around the library industry for over 10 years, been around the publishing industry for three years. And so our next is Emily hazard. Hi, everyone. Emily hazard. So I'm a Silverchair product operations analyst, but I've been, as Maria mentioned, at Silverchair for almost seven years, which is wild to think about.
And in that time, I've had lots of different roles, including client services, analyst, various flavors of business analysts and now am in product. So you'll hear more about how I got here in a little bit. And then our next is Andy Loftus. I'm Andy Loftus. I did my undergrad and theological studies. I did my master's in library science, and I've been a librarian at a local seminary here in Portland for about five years now.
We're a pretty small library, so my position is a cross between electronic services and reference. And then Avi Licciardi. Hi, everyone. My name is Avi. I'm currently an editor outreach manager for frontiers, a fully open access publisher. Prior to that, I worked for a smaller author and publisher services company, so like a vendor for editorial services called Acton.
And I had a brief stint at AGI as a freelance editor before that. But my main background is I am an academic, I have a master's and PhD in geology, so I come from the STEM side of things. So I had a few more introductory notes, but they were all about things that you've probably read, the lack of clear career progression in our industry. Charles Watkinson and Lisa Bayer wrote a very interesting piece in the Scholarly Kitchen in September of 2022, and, you know, you've probably read other things.
Forbes other things about, you know, the problems that early career professionals confront and also about their expectations for progression, career development, career support, the organizational environment in which they come into. But why don't we jump into the questions? So I'm just going to go down the line. What brought you into publishing? I know we have a librarian on the panel.
Important to have that, but what brought you into publishing? Scholarly communications, Academic Librarianship. So I'm going to I'm going to say what everyone says and that I fell into it. Um, when I got my master's, I wanted to be an electronic resources librarian, but I was tethered to a very specific geographical range that, in theory, should have given me a lot of options.
This was chapel hill, North Carolina area, but. The timing was just off in every way, as I would also find out in a couple of months. But I saw a job at Duke University Press working with the access electronic resources that they provide. And I said, you know, why don't I apply? And from there, I got the job and started March 2nd, 2020.
And that began my time in the publishing industry. So getting into scholarly publishing was also an accident for me. Did not mean to do it, but here we are. So I was a history major, which I think lots of people will tell you is a terrible idea. I would disagree with that. Um, but I was a history major at the University of Virginia.
I worked in the food service industry and wine for a long time. From there, moseyed my way on into the furniture industry, which is very spicy. If you're curious, I have lots of horror stories. And then from there, I was on the phone one day with my dad. And he's a software architect and he said, It sounds to me that you're actually really frustrated with the way that the data at this company is being managed.
Are you at all interested in moving back to the East Coast and learning sql? And I was like, yeah, sure. So from there I did. I learned how to use SQL, which got me into technology. And then from there I applied for a job at silverchair, came in client services, and I really just sort of followed what I'm interested in. So I think that this is I think this is very common for especially millennials.
We don't always know what is next. So there are some people who are like, I have a 10 year plan, I've got it all set. I'm going to have this corner office in this amount of time. I usually don't know what I want next until I'm into the thing that I wanted before. And so that's I really just followed my curiosity, which I think is probably something that we all have in common.
Well and even worse major than history is theology if you're thinking about your career. But that's what I did. And then I ended up working in a middle school for four years as an instructional assistant and decided that was not going to be my future career and had a friendship with my librarian from my undergrad University. And she we'd meet occasionally and she'd tell me about her job.
And I thought, that is exactly what I want to do. So it was really through her sharing her experience with me, and I ended up getting a master's in library science where she had gotten hers. And then as I continued to grow in my interest of being a specifically a theological librarian, I called around to all of the library, like local library directors and librarians that I could get a hold of.
And it was their just their openness to hear my story and to share their story and how they got where they were going. That that's what really drew me into librarianship. And in fact, it was meeting with one of those local librarians, and she pointed out the open position at the library that I work now, and that's how I got my current position. I probably have the classic story of going through academia and then getting to the end of your PhD and realizing that you don't want to continue on the cookie cutter steps moving forward of going to a postdoc, maybe one or two of those, and then assistant professor, associate professor.
And then on I, I ended my PhD for personal and professional reasons. And as a geologist, I was used to thinking about the past 140,000 years ago of glacier and climate change, which is very young for geologic past, by the way. So and now it's, you know, a big jump to thinking about the future here. We're always thinking about trends in what's going to happen.
So that was a big change for me. But when I finished my PHD, there were very few options in my mind. I was never, ever told by my advisor, a colleague or anybody that publishing was an option. You could become an editor for a journal, but that was the only option that I was aware of. So I applied to a million lab jobs consulting jobs, all of that, and eventually found editing at ag.
I did that for two months. It was very familiar to me as an academic because it's writing and editing, so I knew what that was. And then that gave me the foot in the door to get to Acton. And at the time as an academic, I thought I knew publishing. I thought it would be easy. And direct and boy, was I wrong. When I stepped into scholarly publishing, it felt like a whole new PhD.
So why don't we start? Why don't we start to get into why do you stay and, you know, thinking about the audience that we have here. Are there things that, for example, you found that your managers have done for you that either helped you decide to commit to this as a career, or were there things that you learned from? The modeling, perhaps behavior that you didn't want, but you were like, this is what I want to do anyway.
So, you know, thinking about this audience, you know, what would you say has helped you stay and grow? There either good or like, please don't do this. Examples I would say the number one most pivotal moment is the fact that when I was working at Duke University press, we had a mentorship program.
And in that mentorship program, you could get an hour, about an hour a month with a senior. Person on staff and you could talk to them about their career path and you could talk to them about, you know, basically if you were in the dark where you wanted to go next, you know, maybe they could shed some light on it and. My mentor was Alison bailon.
And there was. A moment where we were. Talking we were discussing. You know, sometimes when you get into a new field, you hand, I'd be very nervous and, you know. While I was doing work that I was very familiar with. You know, I could sushi counter and, you know, usage statistics all day. But the actual field of scholarly publishing is still very different from being involved in libraries.
So I remember talking to her and just saying, you know, I'm afraid I ask the wrong question. I'm afraid I'll ask a stupid question. And she said something along the lines of, are you afraid to ask these questions because you think they won't contribute anything to the conversation or because you are afraid that you won't contribute to the conversation? And I thought, huh, that makes a lot of sense.
So the next meeting I said, the next meeting I said to myself, I'm going to ask that question, whether it's, you know, whether I think it's stupid or not. And it ended up being a great question that nobody had asked at that point. So that gave me a lot of encouragement and courage to ask the questions, proceed with, you know, if I had a hunch about something, proceed with it. Not immediately sort of doubt it, because especially as you know, millennials coming into a new situation, we've been blamed for everything from fabric softener not being relevant anymore to, you know, the Modern downfall of society.
So you kind of get to you kind of get to a place where you're like you don't have the confidence. So instilling that confidence in me from that was my first month was definitely instrumental to leading me to basically be sitting in the seat here right now. Another moment was is in 2020, of course, SSP was virtual and my boss's boss, Casey Lindley, was involved with the annual meeting program committee and she was telling me about it and said she found it very fulfilling.
So I joined and I've been on that committee since about 2021. Apologies if anyone is in here and I've got the date wrong. The years just blur together at this point, but that's also been very, very instrumental in keeping me involved with everything going on in scholarly publishing and being able to actually understand because there's a lot of moving parts.
Um, and I'm also involved with another organization that keeps me it's not a scholarly publishing organization, but it is, it intersects. So I'm involved with nasig, which is a very small organization, and that organization is single handedly how I know anything about standards. And there's a story involved with that too. And I'm sorry if I'm talking too much, y'all, but yeah, tap me if.
OK, so when I worked at I worked at Duke Medical Center library and it was a very well known thing that if you were beginning your career at the library, you would get no professional development funds point blank. in 2019, the director looked at me and said, I'll give you $700. So I took my $700 and I decided to go to nasic in Pittsburgh.
I made it work. I didn't go over. I actually was a little bit under. But the fact that I was given that professional development money allowed me to go to nasig. Where? I basically met a bunch of people who would completely changed the course of my career and my I mean, my life, honestly.
So money gets tight and, you know, things change. But taking a chance on your, you know, younger coworkers or even, you know, you know, I, I am a very nontraditional student. I was in libraries for a long time before I actually went to library school. I graduated with my bachelor's degree. Gosh, I was 26 or 27, so pretty late start.
But I had people who were willing to take a chance on me, willing to listen to me and that. Single handedly has been an incredible inspiration to me and everything I do and pretty much why I stay in and around this industry. So I think the thing that is in common that I have in common with that is it's really all about being seen.
So when you're new, it's sometimes very difficult to be recognized or say like, oh, I actually know what I'm talking about here. It can be really difficult to raise your hand, even if you do have all the background information you need to answer a question. Um, so for me, it was when I was in, when I was in client services, one of my colleagues, she, I didn't, I had no idea what I wanted to do.
Like I said earlier, I didn't know if I wanted to go into business or be a developer or something else. And she looked at me one day and she's like, you knew all of the answers to this entire support question that came in without even having to look anything up. And you know, in our internal wiki you would be really good at business analysis.
Have you thought about that? And I was like, absolutely not. I have not thought about that. But, but being able for her, being able to see that. And then Plant that seed of you would be good at this. You should continue to think about it, and explore it, but not forcing it on me, allowing me to do it in my own time. That was super helpful because I wouldn't have ever thought of it.
Um, and from there that gave me again confidence, the confidence to then start more proactively exploring things. So when I was a business analyst for several years at silverchair, various levels of it, and I started to become interested in product and I found myself going, going to the powers that be and saying, you need me in this role. It will.
It will be good. Let me tell you why. Here is the value that I can bring. And you know, a year and a half later on the product team, I'm still having a ton of fun and I learn a lot of stuff every day. And I'm being I'm able to put myself out there for New opportunities. But it really was that initial boost of confidence and, and being recognized and seen.
Um, and the other thing that I think is that sort of tangentially related to that is just if you are able to see direct reports as whole individual people that are not just who they are at work, like this is not severance, right. Um, if you can see them for who they are outside of work and connect with them on that human level, it allows you to see them in a more well-rounded light. And I've been really lucky to have managers that see who I am and understand that I am not just what I bring to the table at work and that diversity of experience.
So coming in with restaurant background, being able to talk to customers at all comes together. Um, just seeing, seeing the person behind the screen these days since we're all on zoom, it's just it's been really, really life changing and it's why I'm still here. Um, the number one reason I stay is because of my supervisor. Um, he. He puts his family first, and he encourages all of his staff to put their family first.
And he doesn't, um, he whether we are, um, hourly employees or salary employees, he encourages us to have a task centered mindset rather than an hours centered mindset. And he doesn't oppose mean he really sees being a good dad or being a good mom or that is work too. So I have twin one-year-old daughters and it's a lot of work and I basically don't get anywhere on time.
Um, and he is extremely flexible and accommodating to that. Um, so that, that is the number one reason I stay. Other reasons are relationships with other librarians. So whether that's my local consortium of librarians, I mean, we just, we have genuine friendships. We get pizza together, we just, we one another and we learn professionally from one another. We call each other up to ask about how to use some, you know, database or how to, um, Yeah.
And then the, um, the Library Association that I'm a part of for theological librarians. Atla that has been a huge part of making me feel like I'm not just part of this one library or this small group of libraries, but I'm part of a, um, a vocation. Um, and we have, you know, we come from very diverse backgrounds, but we do really similar things and to come together and learn from one another.
Um, Yeah. I'll definitely echo all of you with the reasons why you stay in publishing. Like all of you, I've had very supportive, amazing managers and colleagues and friends. They've been on the front level as well as the professional level, which I think has been really great. But I kind of have three other reasons, I guess, and I think publishing many people say that it's academia adjacent, and I definitely agree with that.
But maybe you want to take it a step further than that and think we're all under the same realm. I think publishing is still very much in the academic realm, and I didn't leave my PhD because I wasn't passionate about the material. I wasn't all of a sudden not interested in doing it at all. It was for different reasons. So I really want to stay within that academic realm. And that's the reason why I stay in publishing.
I also just really love learning and challenges and change, and I think have to be willing to be curious and willing to learn here in publishing and kind of at times just go with the flow and pivot when you have to. And I that that makes this industry really exciting. And then the last part is I used to think that academia was, you know, it offered so much job security, right?
Like once you snag tenure, you know, you're golden. You're you don't have to worry about losing your job. But I think that that can be really restrictive and confining. And I know so many academics that either get tenure and just honestly become terrible professors, which does a disservice to so many people that they interact with every day or they're just not passionate about it anymore, but they stick with it just because they have tenure.
Now that I'm in publishing, I realize we have so many more opportunities, so many different career paths that you can go into. So stay here for that. You know, it's the opportunity to build a career, learn different things and go in different directions. Um, so we've heard a bit from our panel. And we have a rather large audience. And I don't know, we have some other questions for them, but we're very happy at this point to take questions.
As you can see, they're going to be pretty honest in their answers. So does anyone have particular questions, thoughts about developing your early career professionals? If not, it's fine. We do have a yes. Yes what's the least helpful advice you've ever received? So just to repeat that for everyone, what's the least helpful advice you've ever received?
I was given feedback once that I was too blunt and I'm like, OK, what am I supposed to do with that? Right like, that's my personality. And it's I. I talked to my manager about it and he was a couple of years ago. He at the time was like, oh, I don't expect or want you to do anything with that. You're good at your job because you're blunt and you, you, you don't hold any punches.
You deliver the information when we need it. That's actually a strength. And I do not want you to change that at all. And I'm like, OK, duly noted. Let's move on. Um, but I think, I think that, that I don't want to say bad feedback, but feedback that I was already going to ignore. I think turning that non actionable non-helpful feedback into a moment where my manager was able to say, you don't have to take every piece of advice you get that turned that into really good advice, which I really appreciate it and think about that often.
I don't think there's a single piece of advice that I've been given that comes to mind right now. Because if I mean, if it was truly bad, well, I wouldn't remember it. I'm very good with sorting things that I need to retain out from things that I do not need to retain. But one thing.
One thing I will say is that just. Make sure that you are getting to your employees first and encouraging them. Don't make them have to go around you. I also don't have a very specific example, but I will say that a lack or absence of feedback is something that you should avoid as leadership or management.
I worked for before frontiers. I worked for the author and publisher services company for about 3 and 1/2 years, and I never had a formal performance review. I never received. Constructive feedback. It was, you know, so I was left not knowing if I was doing great or doing poor or where to improve or any of that.
And kind of being in that ether of unknown is definitely not productive to one's career. I was told that I would need on top of having a master's in library science, I would need a master's in a specific field to be an academic librarian. And that is just not true. And it can be true for certain. Um, I'm just going to say it's not true.
Yes well, so. So are there aren't other. And we'll make time for more. Oh, yes. Hans, I'm curious if your early career, if you could go back in time, is there anything you would have done differently now. What you know today? Um, I would have done my undergrad in history instead of theology.
Really brought that full circle. I'll think of a better answer. I was about to say I probably wouldn't have majored in history in my undergrad, but apparently that was right where I needed to be, so. Uh, no.
I think that everybody's previous experience and their perspectives. It's what makes them who they are. So I've worked in restaurants for 8 and 1/2 years, and it's why I'm good at reading between the lines and really hearing what people are saying that they're not saying. Knowing how to deliver a better alternative when we're not able to give them exactly what they want.
Um, it's. It's what it's where I got my, my first training that I didn't know was going to be really, really meaningful training for what I'm doing now, where I'm in product and we want to do something in a really specific way, but maybe it's going to be 10 different steps to get there. So what is the medium version that we can do to get something that's going to be meaningful and get you part of the way.
And then set the momentum? So, no, I would not change anything. I don't think I would change anything either, even though I didn't get, you know, performance reviews or anything very structured like that in my first true role in publishing. The flexibility and support that I received in that role was really wonderful.
It was also a very like soft entry into the corporate world from academia. So that was quite nice because it can be quite harsh going from academia to corporate. Just the number of acronyms that we all use is quite alarming. So no, Andy, go ahead, please. I don't think I would have done anything different either. The one thing I would have done differently is, you know, um, academic brands often don't make very much money and don't make a whole lot of money.
But when I did finally get around to looking into, OK, for my type of library and budget size, what is the average librarian make? And I realized, Oh well it should be significantly higher. And so I went to my academic dean and said I should be getting paid this much. And within a week he said, we will pay you that much. And I wish I had done that earlier. So I want to go back to an earlier question, because we had a change in panelists and one of the individuals, their voice, we had a meeting where we talked about, you know, some of the stories that they wanted to share.
And for me being, you know, the tail end of the baby boom and coming up through organizations where there was a great deal of structure in sort of the hierarchy and how you behave. I think, you know, what I find interesting in some of in their stories really is their comfort level with asking questions and exploring new opportunities. And to be fair, even in my early years as part of the baby boom generation, starting in a very big company because I was part of ProQuest when I was starting out, you know, I did.
I'll share in all honesty, I did benefit from being able to experiment and learn things. And, you know, I did have the kind of managers who supported that. But one thing that I find that's a little different now and Amanda shared with us that and she would have shared it here because it was in her notes. I don't feel like I'm saying anything out of school. Um, she was recently diagnosed as being on the spectrum and how that manifests itself is she asks a lot of questions.
And I've been thinking about, you know, throughout my career and some of the people that I've had, um, and I had someone that reported to me when I was at one organization and she asked a lot of questions and, and it was taken by other people. And for Amanda, that was her experience. It was taken in a very negative way. And, you know, and I think she definitely left that organization.
And they it wasn't the partying was not on particularly good terms. Um, but what I found with the person that I had who was that way was they were asking those questions. So a new idea would come up and this person was responsible for helping make it happen, and she'd ask a lot of questions, and they were blunt. She was very blunt person.
She was asking a lot of questions. And the CEO of the organization who I reported to was like, I don't ever want this person in one of our meetings ever again. And I was like, you have to understand, she's not asking the questions because she's negative. She's asking the questions because she's already trying to figure out how to make it happen. And so, you know, she's not asking it to undercut it.
She's asking it because she's already trying to help. But the way she asked the questions came across very aggressive and so, you know, that respect for neurodiversity and that that like taking a step back for a moment and saying, you know, well, you know, actually this person is probably trying to help. They're not actually trying to, you know, be personal or rude. Um, you know, thinking about that, I'm not sure that that's something that culturally everyone is there.
I mean, if your organization is, that's fantastic. But I'm just sharing that because I really wanted to bring that particular piece of Amanda's voice into this conversation. And with that, I wanted to ask, We still have we still have some time. So I wanted to ask you all to share with us some ideas about. What you think successful organizations can do to support early career professionals and the fact that we.
May very well have to think about how to support you differently. I mean, I'll also, in transparency, share with you, you know, my conversation with Andy. Andy is looking for a new job and his manager knows that. His manager has given him exposure to a lot of different things. And his manager actually knows that Andy is actively looking for a new job.
Because when we were talking, he's like, oh, you know, when I'm on the panel, I might have a different title. I might be working for a different company. And I'm like, oh, OK. So, you know, we should like, he's like, Oh no, my boss knows. And I was like, what? OK, um, and it's all in that spirit of trying to develop Andy as a person and make sure that he's still part of our community and still making, you know, still making a contribution and still helping us grow.
So I was just wondering if you all have other thoughts about what organizations can do to support your stories have been great. They've been great examples. But, you know, if we could take it to like, what do you think organizations could do or avoid doing that would be good. I'll just speak to what you mentioned there, that ironically, one of the reasons why I continue to stay where I'm at am still in my current position is because of how the culture that my supervisor is created where he is completely comfortable with me sharing.
Yeah, I'm looking for new positions. Um, you know, not because I don't like where I'm at, just simply because I've got a growing family and I need to make more money and better benefits. Um, and it's his openness to recognizing that the position I'm in is an early career position. This is not a long term position. And he, he knows that and he helps me look for other jobs and he gives me recommendations.
And what it does is it makes me not immediately leave for a different position. It makes me treat that as a good home base to work from. Um, Yeah. So, yeah, just again, ironically, the reason I stay is because, um, he, he knows that I'm trying to leave and he, he's helping me do that. So when I was growing up, it was sort of.
People stayed in jobs, period. It's never a question of do you like your job? Like, who cares? It's just you stay. Both of my parents worked in a factory. So you stay in your factory job because you have kids to take care of. You have things to do. Bills to pay.
The nature of work has changed. People change jobs a lot. More often people feel that they have more freedom to do so. It's not, you know, a mark against you if you're applying for a job and you've only been in your position for two years, you know. With that. People are asking more from their places of employment.
You know, here are all of these things about, you know, how each generation approaches work. Some some of it's useful and some of it's incredibly unhelpful to the greater conversation. I have been on some really tense hiring committees, job searches. But one of the number one things I would implore everyone to keep in mind is that when you are hiring someone, you are not just filling a position and wiping the sweat from your brow and saying, OK, this person doesn't have to do that anymore.
We can distribute the work more easily. No, you are hiring someone. You are hiring a person who is going to have their own hopes, wants, dreams, desires, et cetera. Now the right thing to do with that information would be to encourage them as much as possible, get to know them. You don't necessarily have to be best friends with them, but know something about them and encourage them.
You know, if professional development funds are scarce, do what you can. Local conferences have been some of the most fulfilling conferences that I have been to. Encourage them as much as possible to develop their skills and develop what they would like to do. Even if they don't know, they don't have to know. But yeah, just.
Know, when you're hiring someone, you're not just filling a position. Yeah along similar lines, what I was going to say, and this is not just for early career professionals, but really for any employee, but is just to recognize them and to recognize their efforts. Not saying that we need pats on our back for every little thing that we do. Obviously, if it's something notable, you know, that would be really great.
But even just, you know, recognizing someone's skills, you may have a team of four people. They're skilled in different ways, you know, letting them know that. I think that's really helpful for us as early career professionals because we need to gain that confidence. You know, we come here and it's like, Oh my gosh, there's that big wig in that part of the industry. Or there's that chef that I just read the article about.
You know, it'd be amazing to meet them. And having that little bit of confidence in your back pocket is really important. And, you know, I've started I have a team of four and we do, you know, team appreciation like kudos every other team meeting that we have and it can be a little silly things like, that emoji that you sent on Microsoft Teams the other day, you know, that made me laugh.
And I appreciate you for doing that and lifting me up. And I think that even just those small things, you know, really, really help along the way. I'm glad that like, kudos are happening elsewhere. Silverchair does that too. And we put them in our company digest every week and it's always, um, not the most informative part of our newsletter, but it's certainly the most heartwarming.
And it, it affirms why we're, why we come to work. Um, but as far as stuff you can do, I mean, there's big stuff, there's little stuff, you know, my advice could run the gamut. I would say little stuff. Um, make sure that managers are empowered to really give their full attention when you're in one on ones like don't, don't be checking teams or Slack or whatever it is, like really be all there. And don't just think, don't just talk about, well, what's on what's on your plate, what's on my plate?
Great see you next week. Um, one of the easy frameworks that I really like, and I used this when I was mentoring a couple of vas in our organization is a win and a challenge. So what's, what's a win you had for the last week and what's something that's challenging you and what perspective, or what connection can I help you make to get over this or through it? Not solving the problem, but just saying I'm here with the resources if you need it.
But I fully believe that you can figure this out. So that's little stuff. You can also set up mentoring programs. So again, if funds are tight and you don't have a big professional development budget, you can create, you can create organization mentoring networks to say, oh, you're really interested in product management. You know who has a ton of experience with this, this person?
Why don't we get you guys connected and see if you want to talk every now and then just to get another perspective and then career pathways. I know that's something that a lot of I mentioned. I'm one of those people that doesn't know where I want to go until I am in the next thing. Um, so doing whatever you can to really clearly map out the possible career pathways both within your organization and it sounds scary also outside of your organization to sort of like an OH baby, the places you'll go.
But in scholarly publishing, right? But really making that clear so that you don't have to you're not expecting folks to do the guess work. Where could I go next or what might the next career jump look like? And then I do not want to make this an ad for Silverchair. However, in the last couple of years, our chief people officer has really revamped our performance review cycle, which sounds very unsexy.
However, um, we are now using a strengths based framework, which is the most, it's the most supported I have ever felt during any kind of performance review because it approaches it not from a well, you're doing this well, but you could do x, y and z things way better and you should work on this. It's you're doing this really well and knowing that you are really good at these five things, you could level up the way that you're working by doing this and this way.
Or can I offer this perspective of that would let you tackle this in a different way? So there's really lots of different things you can do. I would just encourage you to experiment if you get it wrong to say that that's fine. Like we were all individuals coming to work every day just trying to make great work happen and hopefully have a nice time while we're doing it. So I do think we have time for additional questions, if there are any.
Again, the goal of today was to either reinforce, you know, have a nice panel of early career professionals and reinforce if you're already doing these things, if you're already giving this kind of support, then, you know, this will hopefully reinforce that and strengthen your resolve. Or if it's something where you're like, we're still not exactly doing what we want to do for early career professionals, maybe their stories will Plant some seeds that you can go back and, you know, have internal conversations to think about the approach differently.
So I wanted to say that before I open it up to the floor because I know we're running out of time. I forget if this is supposed to end at 250 or 300, but but 300. OK so we do have a few more minutes. So are there other questions from the room? Yes yes. Hi, I'm Christina with one.
I'm Amanda Rogers, supervisor, and she's fantastic. I'm very sorry she couldn't be here today to share her great energy with all of you, but wanted to say one thing that, you know, we always work on, and one is a really nice corporate culture and a very generous corporate culture. And what I mean by that is people are generous with their. Everyone assumes that everyone is always doing the best they can, which I think is very unfair.
I'm sorry. The woman second from didn't get your name. The Lettie from Silver chair Emily. The feedback that you got that started out weird and then got better as someone gave it to you, as you kind of dug in on it. I really liked that story because, you know, when we someone gave us a piece of feedback like maybe they need something else.
Maybe there's a good way I can interpret this, like that kind of generosity. I always personally find that. And I will say now, now that I'm in the position of I've gone from the early career stage, I will say as a manager, no one teaches us how to develop staff, right? So don't assume sometimes we don't do it because we don't know what we're doing. I mean, like we're really good.
I'm really good at sales and marketing. This is the first time I've had to try to think proactively about, oh, I have this many folks on my team. Oh, I'm supposed to be developing them like we don't get that training. So this is a really helpful session. But like for us, this is, you know, we're on the other side of things.
That is something that we can be better at too. And I'll suggest that as a potential development, how can we be better managers to develop? What are some quick things we can learn? Because that is a very specific. Rebecca, are you getting that for us? Thank you. yeah, I think that's so important.
You know, it's you're right. It isn't something that is a part of supervisory training. You know how, specific one other seed I'll Plant and kiandra suggested to me that she has more something else to add so before I jump over to kiandra. We've talked about it a lot of different sessions. But, you know, SSP has some amazing free resources for early career professionals. You know, the early career subcommittee has the podcast and the podcast delve into individual roles, for example.
And, you know, and it's like, well, what is it? What is what's it like to be a sales person? What's it like to be a this or that? And so, you know, so there are a lot of free resources that particularly SSP seems to be very good at. And so just pushing that out to your staff can be, you know, can be tremendously helpful because they'll be like, huh? Because I mean, that is one of the challenges is like career progression, how opaque the, the profession is, the things that SSP is trying to do to pull back the curtain is amazing.
And so I'm sorry, kiandra, I'll let you go ahead. All right. How did. How did I want to say this? I don't remember a single thing said to me in a formal performance review. It feels like you are in traffic court. It is something where you're just you're in the hot seat.
And so, you know, you're just trying to get out of it. But what I do remember is every bit of feedback I have received from my boss in our one on ones casual conversations and, you know, SLACK messages in emails at Nasa. We don't even have performance reviews. We have, you know, conversations. If I am doing something that needs to be corrected or if I'm doing something great, I get that feedback right then and there.
So what I'm really trying to say is don't rely on formal performance review processes to give your employees the encouragement and the feedback that they need to be successful. I would echo that. I think continuous feedback. You know, it's a buzzword we hear a lot now, but continuous feedback really is helpful.
Like no one should be having surprises when it's performance review time. If you've got feedback, you should give it in the moment. You know, after you've had have had time to make sure that you can deliver it in a way that is constructive and helpful. But yeah, it shouldn't it should be surprise free and it should be a moment to affirm the course that you're on rather than do dramatic course corrections like that is not the time.
I think that we're past that. Other questions. Is there anything the town wants to ask us? I wasn't expecting that question. Our stories as early career professionals, how we got into publishing.
Are they similar to yours? Raise your hand. Yes, if they are. So I think that's AI think that's a good point, is like even though, you know, there can be, in some cases, a divide between Gen x, Gen y, Gen Z's, they're the future. So excited.
Um, but we hear a lot in the news of how different all these generations are. And the reality is, yes, maybe the technology that we experienced when we were growing up is very different, but we're not really that different. We've got tons in common and I think that being able to build on that experience is so valuable and you know, I'll echo that because when I was starting out in my career.
Emily was a little bit like you, which maybe is why her story resonated so much with me. You know, I. Had done a master's in philosophy, and I found myself at ProQuest in the editorial team, and I started being interested in how our products worked at that time on a platform called dialog that I'd be curious how many of you are familiar? OK, you're laughing and you know, and I was supported in that.
And, and so, you know, so I was supported in that and that helped. And then it was like, well, OK, I'm curious about this. So then, you know, as things progressed, I never actually created a job for myself. It was always particular openings that I then explored. But but I think you're right. I think that the similarities are not as great as we might think they are.
It's that creating the supportive environment. And you know, Christine, your comment about. I think that's true. I think that, you know, in talking to them and thinking about, you know, conversations I've had with people there maybe isn't as much intentionality about how to develop early career professionals. There's a lot about like, how do you give performance reviews?
And this is how our performance structure works in this company or and then separated from that is we have a budget for, for professional development. But like how all of that's integrated together to ensure that we have, you know, a wonderful group like this that are committed to our community and want to continue to grow with our their career, with our community. That is an area that I agree with you.
I think there's a gap there. Um, and I think it's worth like we can take it back to our committee and talk about it more. Um, and so with that, I don't get the sense there are more questions from the audience. So I think at this point, I'll Thank our panelists for taking the time today. And I also had a hidden agenda of wanting to give some early career folks a chance to be on a panel.
So I'm really thrilled that this came together. And Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today.
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