IN DEPTH
Navigating a job market ‘in the eye of the storm’
What is going on in the information professional job market? How much impact has Covid had and can we identify trends in the profession? Simon Burton, Angela Krzyzanowska and Sue Willis look at the steps candidates can take to prepare in such uncertain times?
DISRUPTION from Covid is distracting us from the disruption of Brexit, which is distracting us from the disruption of a decade of austerity. Although they are not affecting all sectors in the same way, and the effects are not all negative, it does mean that this is not a stable landscape for identifying long- term trends. Here our contributors pick out some interesting possibilities that are becoming visible through the chaos.
Simon Burton is Director and co-founder of CB Resourcing, an information profes- sional recruitment firm he set up in 2014. He has worked in the information sector since 2009 and was in IT recruitment before that. Here he gives his view of changes in the job market for library and information roles in the corporate sector.
Sue Wills, who is responsible for Arts, Heritage, Libraries and Registration Services at Surrey County Council, interprets the jobs market in public libraries. Her experience includes leading library services in Cam- bridgeshire and Poole and working on the Libraries Taskforce.
But first we turn to CILIP’s own view of the market through its jobs board: Informa- tion Professional Jobs. This has been run by Angela Krzyzanowska, CILIP’s Advertising Manager, for well over a decade.
Public libraries jobs
“There has been a bit of an explosion in Public library jobs on Information Profes- sional Jobs in the past few months,” Angela says. “Before 2008 public libraries made up about 50 per cent of CILIP job advertis-
September 2021
Rob Mackinlay (@cilip_reporter2,
rob.mackinlay@
cilip.org.uk) is Senior Reporter, Information Professional.
ing revenue. At the start of austerity it fell sharply to about five per cent, sometimes with no new jobs coming onto the market for months on end. It remained at that level until this recent post-pandemic resurgence. It is hard to explain because obviously we see the activity around the job, but not the context. So, what is driving these trends? We don’t know exactly. “Taking a closer look, we’ve had a lot of demand in the public library sector for posts like reader and collection development and also digital. This is a focus on relationships with communities, the customer base, and developing a collection, and access that matches their needs. Also, we are seeing a similar rise in demand for digital roles – like IT infrastructure – in the sector. And the pay for some of these roles is looking pretty good for the public library sector too.”
Academic Libraries
“From our job advertising revenue figures, the significant changes in the academic
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