It was the first thing you saw when you walked into the
library at Salisbury College of Technology – the word SILENCE in prominent
black letters posted on the opposite wall. There were at least half a dozen
similar signs at strategic locations around the library – they were impossible
to miss.
The job of College Librarian was my third professional post
and the first in which I was actually in charge of a library. The first thing I
did after greeting my new colleagues on my first morning was to take down all
those signs.
My predecessor had been very “old school” in his approach to
librarianship, and had retired not long before. I, on the other hand, was only
six years out of training college and full of bright ideas about how a modern
college library should work for the benefit of students in the late 20th
century, who were certainly not going to be encouraged to use a library that
resembled a Trappist monastery.
The library had - in my view – been badly neglected for
years, being full of tired old stock that was seriously out of date and in no
way suited to support students who needed to be supplied with the latest
information.
I therefore spent the following years upgrading the library,
negotiating ever larger budgets to buy in new stock and removing vast numbers
of books that had long outlived their usefulness. I had the full support of the
College Principal in making this happen.
However, after four years I felt it was time to move on. My
personal circumstances had changed and I needed to find a post that paid me
enough to consider re-marrying and setting up a new home. I therefore started
applying for jobs that looked suitable, wherever they might be. The new love of
my life had just finished teacher training and was free to find a job just about
anywhere, which gave me quite a free hand.
Offers of interviews came in fairly frequently, and I was
pleased to see that the ratio of interviews to job applications was quite high.
It would appear that my experience and qualifications, plus the statements I
made in my applications, were good enough to make potential employers think
that I was worth talking to, which was very satisfactory.
However, the downside was that none of the interviews
resulted in a job offer. Over the course of about twelve months I attended something
like 25 interviews, all over the country, but got nowhere in terms of landing
one. On one occasion I was interviewed in Coventry in the morning and Leeds in
the afternoon, after a frantic drive up the M1 in my ancient VW Beetle, but neither
interview got me anywhere.
I was beginning to wonder if I would ever find a new post
when I had a piece of good luck. It was not a job offer, but a conversation
with one of my interviewers after yet another failed bid. This was at a college
in Derby, and I had recognized one of the interview panel as someone who had
been on the staff of the College of Librarianship in Aberystwyth where I had
gained my postgrad diploma. He had not actually taught me, but had clearly seen
the link on my application form and decided, after the interview, to take me to
one side for a quick word.
“Do you realise”, he said, “that you will never get a job
with a reference like that? It’s very much against convention for me to be
telling you this, but I thought I owed it to you as a personal favour. You
should not use your College Principal as a referee if he is going to be saying
things like that about you.”
This was an absolute bombshell. I had no idea that the
Principal, with whom I was on generally good terms, had been queering my pitch
behind my back. When I got back to Salisbury I made a few enquiries and the
true situation emerged.
This was that the Principal was unpopular with many of the
college staff, who held him in contempt for the way he behaved towards them. He
held grudges against people who displeased him and had been known to stand at
his office window, armed with a stopwatch, when certain individuals went out at
lunchtime to ensure that they did not overstay their permitted time off the
premises, thus giving him a reason for being even more unpleasant towards them.
He had installed a tracking system on the telephone
switchboard so that he could be sent lists of all the phone numbers of outgoing
calls, from which he could challenge people about making private calls at the
College’s expense.
As one might imagine, when staff members who were in his
crosshairs had the opportunity to leave for pastures new, this is what they
did. This had been noted by the County authorities who were concerned that
staff turnover was a lot higher at Salisbury than at the other colleges in
Wiltshire, and the Principal had been spoken to about this.
He had therefore adopted a new policy, which was to make it
as difficult as possible for anyone to leave, whether they were on his hitlist
or not. When someone employed by a college makes a job application, one of the
references they give is almost always that of their college Principal – the
applicant could expect to be asked a few awkward questions if they did not. If
the reference is a poor one, maybe containing a few downright lies about the
person in question, then their chances of landing a new job can go straight
down the pan.
This had been my fate for the best part of a year, and
presumably it would have continued had I not had the good fortune to encounter
someone on an interview panel who was prepared to break a golden rule and tell
a candidate what was really happening.
My next move was therefore to give up on the idea of getting
a new job and instead to apply for a Master’s course at my old training college
in Aberystwyth. That was somewhere that had no need for a reference from my
current employer, and I was duly accepted to join the next intake of students,
after which I made a fresh start on my career as a librarian.
Sometimes it is really helpful when a person breaks a
silence and tells the truth.
© John Welford
