museum careers
May 1st, 2006 by webmasterpreserving the past, exploring the future
This article by Julie Lee, former Venture staff member, originally appeared in Venture’s former online newsletter, E-Venture, in March 2001.
Venture recently had a chance to converse with two Brown alumae who- soon after graduating- began working at the Peabody Essex Museum, located in Salem, Massachusetts. Elizabeth Seater ‘99 and Katherine Blank ‘00 offered to share some of their experience and wisdom with students like you, who may be starting to think about finding your first job after graduating. If you are interested in applying for a job at the Museum, read on!
“You really do not always have to have majored in a certain field to find a job in that field…by having a BA at a liberal arts institution, you actually have (hopefully) gained basic important skills that make you fit for many different kinds of entry-level jobs; most places will train you in the specifics of what they do once you get there, so as long as you show your willingness to learn, you’re qualified.” - Elizabeth Seater, Coordinator of Interpretive Programs
statistics
Elizabeth Seater
Education: Brown University, 1999
Major: Theater
Current Position: Coordinator of Interpretive Programs
Katherine Blank
Education: Brown University, 2000
Major: Religious Studies
Current Postion: Museum Educator
from your senior year in college, how did you get to where you are now?
ES: I was a theater major at Brown, with a strong interest in history. I took a class my junior year on theater in education, that is, using theater to teach other subjects, as opposed to teaching acting itself. I knew that one career field which would allow me to do this was the museum field. While I had extensive theater experience, I had no previous museum work experience, so I did a part-time unpaid internship at the Rhode Island Historical Society over the summer (as well as working elsewhere in order to afford the unpaid internship.) I applied for a Museum Educator position at the Peabody Essex Museum because it was an entry-level museum position that did not require previous museum experience, and specifically involved theatrical productions. I was in that position for 6 months when my immediate supervisor was promoted to her supervisor’s old job, and I was promoted into her subsequently vacant job, Coordinator of Interpretive Programs, which is the position I hold now.
KB: I discovered this job through the Ivy Plus Career Fair.
did you actively seek out a position in the museum field?
ES: Yes, see above.
KB: No. I wasn’t seeking a job in the museum field so much as a job that would allow me to do event-planning and would hopefully involve American religious history. I was lucky!
what’s some advice you wish you would have had as a senior job-seeker and would like to impart to current seniors?
ES: First of all, use your career counselors! Have them look at your resume and cover letter, do a mock interview, etc. Ask them what to do in situations like getting a job offer from your second choice before you’ve heard from your first choice. It really does help! Also, now that I’ve been on the other end of the job application process, there are things I definitely see that I didn’t understand as an applicant. You really do not always have to have majored in certain field to find a job in that field. This is not usually true, of course, with certain fields like engineering, science, etc., but with many humanities-type jobs I think many seniors are afraid that because they didn’t major in, say, anthropology or history, they can’t work in a museum. This is not true at all; by having a BA at a liberal arts institution, you actually have (hopefully) gained basic important skills that make you fit for many different kinds of entry-level jobs; most places will train you in the specifics of what they do once you get there, so as long as you show your willingness to learn, you’re qualified. Think about what basic skills you have gained through activities you may think unrelated to your prospective job: organization skills, time management skills, the ability to write clearly, follow-through on things you’ve committed to, responsibility when given a project, etc. All of these are amazingly important, and they aren’t going to be skills you can only gain through one discipline. Find a way to bring these skills out on your resume (a list of activities and what you did with them is good), cover letter, and in your interview. These are the fundamental qualities in an employee that make them a great hire. Be pleasant and polite to every person you meet when you go into an interview. If you interact with the receptionist in a nice way, they often will mention how nice you were to your interviewer the next time they walk by. Besides, you never know when the person you think is just the secretary is actually the head of the department covering for the secretary who needed to go pick up their kid who got sick in school. This seems like an obvious way to behave, but we’ve had interviewees who were rude to the security guard who showed them in, or to the receptionist, and it certainly was a mark against them when compared to other candidates who not.
KB: The one thing that I wish someone had told me about non-profits while I was job seeking is this: non-profits often do not have the money that is required for job fairs and online job listings. I believed that if the only companies visiting career fairs at Brown and posting jobs on job-search websites were high-tech and economic firms, those were the only jobs out there. The truth is that that sort of recruitment is expensive, and the jobs with small, non-profit groups are much harder to find, but they do exist! Also, do your research on what the field is like for entry-level job-seekers. My boss has told me that students have dismissed our entry-level jobs at career fairs because either they believe that they want to be doing curatorial or preservation work but misunderstand what that entails, or they want to skip rungs on the ladder and start out by developing new programs.
Internships are a great way to find out who does what and at what level. Don’t dismiss any job as beneath you if it gets you into the right institution, introduces you to the right people, or will give you experience in the right field.
what did you expect or not expect from the non-profit sector?
Expected
ES: I expected the pay to be relatively low in comparison to for-profit fields, which it is. I also expected the work to fit more with my interests than much for-profit entry-level work. Like many fields, however, you must start at the bottom level and work up, so you do get stuck doing a fair amount of boring filing/copying work in the beginning.
KB: In the non-profit field, there is usually not enough money to hire support staff. So, most people at most levels have to do some grunt work: some filing, some photocopying, some picking up of coffee and answering the phones.
Did Not Expect
ES:Specific to museums, but most likely true for other fields as well, it may very well be that what you want to do is not what you would actually do in the area you think it is. For example, most people who want to work in museums think they want to work in curatorial departments. Some find out this is truly the area they want to work in, but most people don’t realize what curators actually do, and often discover that it’s not at all what they wanted to be doing. Museums have departments other than the curatorial ones; marketing, public programs, travel, education, visitor services, functions, development, volunteers, security, shops, cafes, etc. A job in a department like education, for example, allows a person to interact with many different departments and see which ones they’re really interested in, as well as allowing them to make connections helping them move more easily into another department.
KB: Also, because of the lack of funds, non-profits rely heavily on volunteerism. And those volunteers have to be kept happy. You may find yourself buying chocolates or pie for other people at your institution, cat-sitting for someone to whom your boss owes a favor, or driving 40 miles to buy special donuts for a volunteer meeting! Of course, this is also relates to the best thing about my job: every day is different. I have not had one single day that was just like any other. I have found that I love the random, unusual, and occasionally strange things that I have been assigned. Such as figuring out how to buy 2 tons of pumpkins wholesale, buying an antique-looking popcorn machine, driving to a recording studio, and styling wigs to look like historic hairdos! It’s pretty exciting to never know for sure what I’ll be doing on any given day. If you like predictability, a vibrant non-profit is probably not the place for you!