Administrative Services: Employment Opportunities and Search Process

These links point to opportunities for employment at MIT and beyond:

• Current vacancy postings for librarian, other administrative, and support staff
• Student employment information for MIT students
• MIT employment opportunities beyond the Libraries

Please follow this link to create a job vacancy. This form is designed to streamline the job requisition requests put forth by various departments in the MIT Libraries. When submitted, HR will present to the ADs and once approved, will get back to you with suggestions or to schedule the kickoff meeting.

You will be required to provide the following information among other things:

1. Search committee members

2. Stakeholders

3. Search venues you'd like us to use- Here is a list of our commonly used placement venues [updated 3/29/2022].

4. A position description

Below are some helpful writing tips extracted from Central HR's page that may facilitate the process of creating the job description:

Job titles versus position titles

A job title is a generic title assigned by HR and used by HR to group similar jobs together. A position title, determined at the School or DLC level, is the public-facing title that appears in the MIT directory. For some roles, the job title and position title will be the same.

Writing tips

Describing position responsibilities clearly and concisely can be challenging. The following tips may be helpful to you.

1. Initial preparation

Do some initial preparation and advance thinking:

• What are the 4 - 6 major end results the position must accomplish on an ongoing basis?

  • What are the activities associated with getting these end results accomplished?

  • What type of independent judgment and discretion is exercised?

  • What types of decisions are made?

• Begin by listing the activities associated with the position, then cluster those activities into related groupings. Review the groupings to identify the nature of the accountability associated with the activities.

• List the responsibilities in descending order of importance and assign a percent of time spent on each. This helps the reader get a clearer picture of the position. (Note: the FLSA regulations no longer use "percent of time" in the duties tests, so this percentage will be used primarily to understand the job content.)

2. Put yourself in the reader's place

• Think about how to describe the position to someone who is unfamiliar with the position or department.

• Avoid the use of jargon, acronyms, or other non-standard language.

3. Structure your statements

Use the following model as a way to structure each statement:

    Action Word    +    Subject    +    Specific Activities

Hint: Make sure to be specific about the activities to be performed. See below for examples and see the glossary for more action words.

Examples:

When the time comes to schedule search days [usually following the Phone Screen Debrief, please fill out this form to request search participants, timing, if there is a presentation component [and if so, what it is so candidates can be notified ahead of time], and additional information. The liaison from the Search Committee assigned to each group should reach out simultaneous to form submission so nobody gets any surprise calendar invites in their inbox from the lib-hr team!

• Reducing Unconscious Bias (created by The Campus Change Network at Las Positas College in CA)

All search committee members have responsibility for assuring that candidates are given fair and impartial consideration throughout the full search process.  All staff who are involved in the search process, and particularly search committee members, are encouraged to read and refer to this brief article in order to raise our awareness around how unconscious bias as individuals or within a group dynamic may influence this hiring process. 

• Inviting the Committee for the Promotion of Diversity and Inclusion to Searches

What does CPDI bring to the interview process?
"While not experts, we provide insight on the topics of equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice. 
We provide support in the creation of questions, provisions of EDISJ resources available to CPDI, and general thought partnership prior to and during the interview. We keep EDISJ in the forefront of our minds during the interview and can add an additional perspective. Other participants likely focus on multiple aspects of a candidate’s answer, we focus on one. Our participation in an interview should not be seen by a search committee as “checking the EDISJ box.” While we will suggest and encourage questions that promote discussions of EDISJ mission and values, the search committee and all interview participants are empowered to do the same." 
 

• Leveling the Playing Field:  (presentation given by Prof. Shelley Correll of The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University)

While this 25 minute video focuses on gender stereotypes, the principles and strategies may be applied more broadly to many kinds of stereotypes.  Particularly helpful is a discussion of realistic strategies to use to counteract widely held stereotypes. 

• Project Implicit

A widely used instrument in social psychology for raising awareness of individual bias is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT measures the strength of associations between concepts (e.g., black people, gay people) and evaluations (e.g., good, bad) or stereotypes (e.g., athletic, clumsy). They continue, “Implicit attitudes are positive and negative evaluations that occur outside of our conscious awareness and control. Project Implicit contends that through awareness and vigilance, implicit preferences and biases can be changed.

• The Quest for Diversity in Library Staffing: From Awareness to Action by Jennifer Vinopal

“Despite our ongoing quest for diversity and a growing number of initiatives to increase it, the demographics of the professional librarian population haven’t changed in any significant way. We are starkly lacking in diversity based on race and ethnicity (we are overwhelmingly white), age (librarianship is an aging profession), disability, economic status, educational background, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other demographic and identity markers of difference. This lack of diversity should be seen as a signal, an invitation to us to look critically at our culture, our practices, and our assumptions, and investigate what it is about ourselves and our profession that is preventing underrepresented people from being able to, or even wanting to, enter and stay. We need an awareness of how privilege, bias, and the attendant power differentials and oppression play out at the individual and the systemic levels of our profession. And we must consider how these affect the experiences of underrepresented and marginalized people within our dominant (white, heterosexual, cisgender, and patriarchal) culture.”

• Soliciting Performance, Hiding Bias: Whiteness and Librarianship by Angela Galvan

       “Despite the growing body of research on our professional demographics and multi-year diversity initiatives, librarianship in the United States remains overwhelmingly white. I suggest the interview process is a series of repetitive gestures designed to mimic and reinforce white middle class values, which ultimately influence the hiring    decisions—and relative lack of diversity—of librarianship as a whole. I consider how the whiteness of librarianship may manifest long before the hiring process. By identifying and interrogating the body of white, middle class values inherent to both librarianship and professional job searching, I offer suggestions to encourage an authentically diverse pool of applicants.”

• In addition to the sources above, search committees may wish to take a look at the hiring page on the MIT Libraries Committee for the Promotion of Diversity and Inclusion (CPDI) wiki.

​​​​​​Who can apply?

1. Students are able to check eligibility to work. More details are available at the Student Financial Services (SFS) website.
2. Students much complete the I-9 form. New paid employees and student workers (including Research Assistants, Teaching Assistants and hourly paid student employees), as well as those who need reverification, must complete the I-9 forms at the Atlas Service Center.
3. Students must determine their availability:
   • When can they work?
   • How many hours do they want to work each week?
4. Inform lib-hr of the position, student jobs are posted here

Once a student is selected:

1. Supervisor submits form via Google form.

2. lib-hr processes employment on Atlas

3. lib-hr informes Judith Gallagher 

Further details for the IDLA process may be found here.