Working Knowledge

A Monthly Column about Life on the Job

By Mary Pergander
American Libraries Columnist

Mary Pergander is director of the Deerfield (Ill.) Public Library. Send comments or questions to working@ala.org.

Column for December 2007

Oh, Behave!

Using behavioral questions to get inside your head

Q: What is a behavior-based interview and how do I prepare for it?

A: Potential employers want to go beyond what you know and what you have done. Behavior-related questions are purported to predict your future behaviors by exploring your past reactions.
    How can you spot a behavior-related question? Listen carefully for introductory phrases such as “Tell me about a time when you…” or “Describe an occasion when…” The interviewer is not interested in what you think, or how you plan to act in the future. Rather, you are expected to describe an actual event from your past work experience.
    Some candidates, lacking a quick example, create a plausible story and describe it as if it actually happened.
    Perceptive interviewers will circumvent this by asking what happened next, sometimes more than once per story. They know that describing an event in deeper and deeper detail is difficult to do, and fabricators usually stumble in the attempt.
    How should you respond if you do not think of a real situation that addresses the question?
    Ask if the interviewer could come back to that one a little later. Then, as your conscious mind answers the subsequent inquiries, your unconscious mind is working on the stumper. Chances are good you will suddenly recall an appropriate answer as you discuss other library matters, so relax.

Be real
It is difficult to prepare for such questions, because you cannot predict all of the situations about which interviewers may ask. Instead, with a friend or trusted mentor, focus on your technique for recognizing and responding to behavioral questions. Practice how to answer even without knowing what to answer. There are a number of excellent online and print resources for sample questions. Here are a few to get you started:

Tell me about a time you disagreed with your current boss. How was the situation resolved?
Describe a stressful situation with a coworker and your subsequent actions.
Describe a time when you had an overwhelming workload. How did you prioritize?
Tell me about a time when you quickly had to learn a challenging new skill.

Give short but descriptive answers, and be prepared for followup queries. Remember, the interviewer wants to know about an actual occurrence, so respond with real events, not philosophical statements about what you believe. If the results were not what you hoped, add what you learned from the experience. After all, growing and adapting are desirable behaviors, too!

WORKING WISDOM

When preparing to be interviewed, take a look at books written for employers, like How to Choose the Right Person for the Right Job Every Time by Lori Davila and Louise Kursmark (McGraw-Hill, 2004). This will provide you with important insights; it is like getting the playbook for the opposing football team. Will you be the hiring manager? If so, do the opposite—read some online articles written for job candidates about performing well in behavioral interviews. Stepping inside the other person’s head can help you both get what you need.

Latest Library Links

10h

Genevieve Trainor writes: “The Guinness World Record holder for Most Prolific Book Thief is Ottumwa (Iowa’s) Stephen Blumberg. The 23,600 volumes he accumulated between the 1970s and his arrest in March of 1990 were all stashed in his 17-room home. Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, got involved with Blumberg as part of the FBI’s efforts to return the stolen manuscripts and rare books to their museums and libraries. Referred to as the Omaha Project, the information science proving ground involved four weeks, 44 catalogers and reference librarians and 600 volunteer hours to determine who might be the rightful owners.”

Little Village (Dubuque, Iowa), Dec. 4
14h

Casey Newton writes: “At the moment, no one knows for sure whether the large language models that are now under development will achieve superintelligence and transform the world. And in that uncertainty, two primary camps of criticism have emerged. The first camp, which I associate with the external critics, holds that artificial intelligence (AI) is fake and sucks. The second camp, which I associate more with the internal critics, believes that AI is real and dangerous. Today I want to lay out why I believe AI is real and dangerous.”

Platformer, Dec. 5
1d

Latia Ward writes: “One way to keep current with what students think of the library and its services is through Student Library Advisory Committee meetings. These meetings are a way to gather feedback and reinforce the library as a welcoming place. How do librarians create a welcoming environment within Student Library Advisory Committee meetings? Librarians create a welcoming environment through community, purpose, and dedicated space.” Also see part 1 of this blog post.

RIPS Law Librarian Blog, Nov. 13, Dec. 5
2d

Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

Smashing Magazine, Dec. 6
2d

Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

WVLT-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), Dec. 4
3d

Joe Foley writes: “Copyright rules vary from country to country and have changed over time. In the US, works created between 1929 and 1963 that gave notice and renewed copyright have 95 years from their first publication date. That means that on January 1, 2025, a host of works from 1929 will enter the public domain. This means that copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster’s first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye.” Other notable works entering public domain in the United States include the Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts, contralto Marian Anderson’s first record, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Creative Bloq, Dec. 7; Everybody’s Libraries, Dec. 3, Dec. 7; Public Domain Review, Dec. 10
3d

Brittany Adams writes: “The digital landscape of libraries is expanding rapidly, with an increasing shift towards electronic resources and online services. As members of the library community, we’re witnessing a transformative era where physical collections are complemented—and sometimes replaced—by digital ones. This transition offers new opportunities for enhancing accessibility and engagement, but it also presents challenges, especially for young patrons and their families. It is essential to equip children and their caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to navigate this evolving space confidently.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 9

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