I would also agree with Dan.  All your work can give you skills and you need to find what skills will translate into the job you are applying for.  I got my first museum job on the combination of my museum internships and the skills I had from my retail job.  I was the stockroom manager for a Disney store location.  From this job, I could show that I had experience providing customer service, managing people, inventory control (i.e. collections management skills) and time and resource management.  When that combined with my internships, if gave me that edge over other who had applied.

Look at the real skills and see what you have gotten from those pre-museum jobs that you can highlight and include in your list of applicable skills

Good Luck
Tracie

________________________________________
From: Museum discussion list [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Dan Bartlett [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2015 9:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Resume: One Page or More?

Collen:

Use as many pages as you need as long as it's relevant information for the position you are applying to (and all resumes and cover letters should be tweaked for the position you are applying for).

But I have this advice for people looking for their first position. I've been reviewing resumes here at the college for a grant program that places students into real work experiences in the community and I'm troubled by students' inability to explain on a resume or in a cover letter just how working at McDonald's qualifies them for working, say, as a marketing assistant at a local historical society. Most students seem embarrassed by these very real work experiences. Your master's degree gives you only the most basic qualifications for whatever museum job you are after and there are hundreds of others just like you churned out every year competing for the same spot. You'd better flaunt every advantage you have.

Here's what your resume should say about your fast food experience:

  *   Taught me how to show up to work on time
  *   Taught me how to fill multiple roles working on a team
  *   Taught me that details are important.
  *   Taught me how important it is for everyone on a team to do their job well or it affects everyone else on the team.
  *   Taught me how to smile and be pleasant and say "thanks you" to customers who didn't deserve it because it was good for the franchise (professional behavior)
  *   Taught me how to live within a budget.
  *   Taught me how NOT to manage people (or maybe you did learn something if you had a good manager)
  *   etc.
  *   etc.

I've been monitoring this list for almost 15 years and this time of year there is an inevitable flurry of "Oh-my-god-I'm-gonna-graduate-and-i-need-a-job-what-do-I--do?" posts. My advice is that if you're applying to work in a small to mid-sized museum you ignore everything your college's or university's career counselors tell you about resumes. You need to be noticed and your personality needs to shine through. The person reading your resume should say, "I want to meet this person." You can't do that following the corporate philosophy where page lengths, job titles, and career paths actually matter. Museums want flexible, multitasking, problem-solving, innovative, pleasant superstars. Corporations might not think that working the stock room at Target qualifies you to be an entry level junior accountant, but the right museum might think you're the perfect person to work in collections because you had to pay attention to details in recording the physical placement of merchandise in storage so the computer inventory system was accurate.

EVERY position you have ever held has prepared you for whatever job you are applying for. Dog walker, baby sitter, dishwasher in the college cafeteria. Your challenge is to figure out how it did and tell the person reading your resume why it helped make you an awesome person to hire.

Best,

Dan
--
Dan Bartlett
Curator of Exhibits and Education
Instructor of Museum Studies
Logan Museum of Anthropology
Beloit College

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