Even though many of our graduates will have progressed in their careers since completing a case study, they are still of interest to students who wish to gain an understanding of the world of work.

In fact I'm currently juggling three graduate jobs, and really enjoy the flexibility and variety this provides. Each week I work two days on an information management project at the University of Sheffield, two days with government archives, and some hours indexing records on a freelance basis for the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (ProQuest).

Given that I have three very different jobs, there's no such thing as a typical day! I might be interviewing people about the way that they use information, working with paper archival material or with electronic article abstracts, collecting user requirements for a new database or trying to read handwriting from 30 years ago. Although I have to keep 're-tuning' my brain on a daily basis to deal with different types of information, all of my work in some way uses the skills that I learned on my MA Librarianship course.

In my university post, I enjoy being an 'information detective' - asking the right questions to figure out how people really use information in their jobs so that better systems can be designed to support them.

Splitting my time between two different cities (Sheffield and London) is proving to be quite tough, but I think its increasingly the way of the jobs market that you have to be flexible if you want to get suitable work at some points in your career.

I aim to help people get the best from available information. In my cataloging work, this means classifying and assigning metadata to records so that users can find appropriate sources. In my other post this means helping to design a database for university staff to supply the most reliable information about courses for students, applicants and employers.

The management module turned out to be extremely useful even though I'm not yet in a management post, and two particular skills that have proved invaluable are being able to conduct information interviews and to use a variety of databases. My cataloging roles also require background subject knowledge that I gained from my first degree in Politics and Economics. I learned to catalogue during my graduate traineeship, and I do wish that they taught this on the MA Librarianship course, because I think that if I hadn't been so lucky in my traineeship then I wouldn't be able to do a lot of the work that I do now.

Each time I have to work with a different set of cataloguing or archival standards, I am trained in this - once you've got the right 'mindset' I find its relatively easy to adapt. In my university post it took a while to understand my role and there was no formal training, but I just kept asking questions until I got my head around it!

Project Assistant (JISC funded) the University of Sheffield - October 2011 to present

Freelance Indexer for the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (ProQuest) - March 2012 to present

*I'm not permitted to give details of my government post

I could see myself in a university environment working with e.g. research databases, or in the government information sector.

Be flexible about hours and location. Look for jobs in sector specific publications though in my experience don't go near agencies if you can help it. All of my jobs I first heard about via contacts at the Information School, so its good to keep in touch! Learning some specific skills like cataloguing provides opportunities for freelance work.