Hi,
As I understood it, this was the original email query below, or was there another one? Sincerely-Elaine
Elaine Hughes
Collections Director
Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA)
3101 North Fort Valley Road
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
928-774-5211x228
Fax: 928-779-1527
Founded in 1928, MNA is an AAM accredited institution.
The mission of the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) is to inspire a sense of love and responsibility for the beauty
and diversity of the Colorado Plateau through collecting, studying, interpreting, and preserving the region’s natural and cultural heritage.
On Wed, Mar 7, 2018 at 9:42 AM, Dan Bartlett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Imagine you are the hiring manager for a small to mid-sized (up to 15 staff people) museum. Knowing that you will receive scores of applications for that collections or education position you are hiring, what
do you want the resumes to look like?
I'm not asking what skills you're looking for, but about resume format. This relates to the advice our students receive from our placement office.
Are two pages okay if the information is all relevant (our students must adhere slavishly to one)? Would you like to see specific sections listing hard and soft skills separate from the employment history (which can then be greatly abbreviated)? Do you care
about the objective statement? How important really is a GPA if the student has the degree? Students fresh out of college (undergrad or grad) often have little or no "relevant work experience" (a required section according to our placement folks) but often
have many applicable hard and soft skills derived from "related activities" like volunteer activities and coursework (an optional section). Personally I think this is backwards.
What format is going to catch your attention and help you assess the applicant fastest? Again, I'm not talking about specific skills, but the types and arrangement of information on the page(s).
Our placement office pushes a very corporate model for resumes that I'm not sure serves our museum and non-profit students well. One page, really stereotypical. While "accounts receivable clerk" has a broad
meaning in the business world, the responsibilities of a "visitor services associate" can be very different in museums across the street from each other.
I look forward to hearing the group's collective wisdom.
db
--
Dan Bartlett
Curator of Exhibits and Education
Instructor of Museum Studies
Logan Museum of Anthropology
Beloit College
Ms. Walton, with all due respect, we
are talking about teenagers, as well as adult applicants, because we’re talking about the process and how one presents their job history. That’s how teenagers entered the picture here. What’s more, I routinely receive applications from teenagers (mostly
college freshman, but high schoolers too) looking for internship or work-study opportunities. So they are absolutely part of this discussion.
It’s not about having zero experience. Once more, we’re talking about the pitfalls of having a strict set of criteria when reviewing applications that could
cause one to throw out a young person’s application solely because of a lack of experience or job history.
You specifically doubted that people would be applying for hundreds of jobs: “Where are these hundreds of positions people are applying to? Are they applying
to every position posted in every museum even if they are not qualified or even interested?”
Regardless of how you feel about it being a waste of time, people can and do tailor their resumes for a given position, highlighting relevant experience. This can be done across a
variety of fields, including museums.
Once again, no one is saying that part-time work is bad, or low-paying work isn’t worth it. Deb is emphasizing the importance of understanding where young people
are coming from, the context, and keeping that in mind when looking at a pool of applications.
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Elizabeth Walton
Sent: Thursday, March 8, 2018 12:24 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Resumes - What do you want them to be?
When talking about museum jobs we are not talking about teenagers, we are talking about 22 year olds or older who are finishing or finished college or grad school. They are adults, not kids. If they have done
other things they would have an answer to that question. Maybe museums have a higher number of wealthy applicants who have not needed to work, I don't know. But I would find it unusual to meet a person in their 20s who had never held any paid job of any kind.
I did not call anyone lazy, and living at home does not mean being unemployed. There are always exceptions to anything, but experience comes from working in some way outside of a classroom, paid or unpaid. Paying interns would certainly level the playing field
a bit.
Applicants are competing against others who have worked and gained those experiences in multi-tasking and customer service, etc. Part time work is not a throwaway thing done only out of desperation or something that should be looked down on like it is beneath
us (even if the pay is low and only covers your beer money in college), it is an important part of growing and learning and is a very valid consideration for a hiring manager when looking to fill a job.
I did not say there were not hundreds of listings, but those listings are not all entry level or in the area of work someone has studied or gotten experience in. I have seen many applications that were just standard resumes sent out to everyone that read as
if they did not even read the listing, these are a waste of time. We may send a resume knowing we could learn to do the job, but others have worked specifically for that type of job and will be the ones to be more likely to get an interview. I work in collections
management and curatorial, I would never apply for a marketing or development job even if I know I could learn and do it. The people hiring are looking for the best fit, for the person who can step in and start working with minimal hassle and training, not
usually going to prioritize someone who could maybe be trained eventually to do the work when they have a dozen people who already know how.
I never thought of having a part time job in high school or college as some form of torture I suffered from not being rich
(summer jobs are not the only form of first paid job) , it was always a stepping stone to getting what I wanted. It is not some evil system that the youth of today need to be
saved from. It is a learning experience that benefits them and teaches them about the real world.
On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 11:09 AM, Deb Fuller <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I'd like people to think outside of their own experiences and really listen to others. Just because it's not YOUR experience, doesn't mean that someone else's experience is invalid. And think about your own experience. When was the last
time that you were on the job hunt? 5-10-15+ years ago? Things have probably changed a lot in that time, even if it has been a few years.
Your area might be different and your experience might be different. But there are studies out there that show fewer teens are getting summer jobs and valid reasons why that aren't because they are lazy. Don't assume all teens are the same.
As for paying for groceries and what not - they're living at home or taking out student loans. See articles about crushing student loan debt and boomerang kids.
As for hundreds of jobs - look at the listing that the University of Delaware puts out every week or every other week. Leicester University also puts out a listing of jobs. Each has at least 50 jobs on it. Then look at state and local job
listings, AAM, ALHFAM, ASTC, and other professional organizations that list jobs. Places like Indeed.com and LinkedIn also post jobs. People often just aren't applying for museum jobs. When I was actively looking for museum jobs, I easily sent out at least
2-3 applications per week for various positions. If you are ambitious, you can easily send out a resume a day, especially if you are going for summer positions and seasonal work. In the non-museum world, the average time to find a job these days is 3-6 months.
If you're collecting unemployment, the government requires you to send out at least 2 applications a week. That's 24-48 applications right there over a 3-6 month period if you just do the minimum.
None of what I'm saying is about "fair". It's about reality. And seriously, just because you flipped burgers and did crap summer jobs for no money doesn't mean we need to perpetuate the system for the next generation. There are lots of
ways to learn responsibility, punctuality, and other job skills than traditional summer jobs. Kids these days are also doing loads of volunteer work, running student organizations, and juggling crazy schedules. Heck, students who just survived a school shooting
are holding press conferences and organizing a nation-wide march. I'm sure many of them haven't had summer jobs but are doing just fine.
On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 10:05 AM, Elizabeth Walton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I think the whole point of this thread is to sort out the special needs of museums over typical advice on the internet. For instance we cannot have one simple resume, as others have pointed out government applications are completely different
from others due to scanning and keywords. With government pay scales you have to include everything because ultimately your experience and education also determines your pay rate. Of course the downside to that is that it also declares your age and that you
are more expensive when older..
The jobs for teens and college students are out there, my niece and nephew are 17 and 20 and have never had a problem finding part time work, they do restaurant work during the school year and lifeguard in the summer, they make over $10 an hour. In college
I worked internships and waited tables a couple nights a week. Making it work is a sign of maturity and professionalism IMO. Personally, I would rather hire someone who cashiered, flipped burgers, or waited tables than someone who never had a job or had to
earn their own money. Learning to be professional, to show up on time, to deal with co workers and bosses and customers and even skills like how to use a copier can be more important than anything learned in a classroom.
If $7 an hour does not pay for groceries... how do you get the groceries and rent paid with nothing? How can they be offered a job with reasonable pay if they are not applying for anything and have no experience in the first place? You start low and move up,
that is how someone starts by bagging groceries and ends up a well paid professional. Wanting to skip to the well paid fun part is pretty unfair to the people who had to work and earn their way because they did not have parents with the resources to pay for
everything for them. And I think we need to be careful not to punish people who had to work and could not afford to travel and live without pay for months to get the best internships.
As far as a plain text resume, that is not a special format you have to spend any time on, you can save the resume as text and attach it to the application in a matter of seconds. As most applications are submitted digitally it is easy to attach a nicely formatted
pdf and a plain text format attachment. If an applications asked for this I would make sure to do it, as following instructions is the first test for every single application IMO.
Where are these hundreds of positions people are applying to? Are they applying to every position posted in every museum even if they are not qualified or even interested? That sounds like an enormous waste of time for everyone involved and generally a bad
idea.
On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 8:35 AM, Michelle Zupan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
7) If the applicant has never actually held a paying job (which is generally a deal breaker for me) there ought to be a statement as to WHY. (read)
Defending students who haven't had paying jobs - the hard truth is that in many places, there aren't any jobs for high school and college students. Many of us earned money in the summer by working retail, food service, paper routes, mowing
lawns, and other minimum wage jobs. Those jobs are now going to adults who work them year round because they don't have any other job choices. High school kids are also pressured to do "enrichment programs" so many kids are going to academic camps or programs
instead of working jobs. Granted, some kids get "jobs" as "counselors in training" but even those positions are limited. Many students have internship requirements that don't pay so they get all the fun and experience of a job without any of the income. During
the school year, students often don't have time for jobs or think that minimum wage type jobs will hurt their future employment chances or it's not worth their time to make no money. It really sucks for kids these days because they are damned if they do and
damned if they don't. I don't know any student who would pass up a paying job at a reasonable wage if they were offered it. But I also don't blame them for not wanting to slave away flipping burgers for $7/hour because that doesn't even pay for groceries these
days, let alone rent and other living expenses.
Also again, I ask HR people and anyone with hiring authority who looks at resumes to look at what job seeks are told about what goes into a resume and cover letter. There are MILLIONS of sites out there and just as many opinions. One site
will insist that you HAVE to put your education first. Others will say put it last. I will vary depending on the job because outside of the museum field, my museum studies degree counts against me. Older people will tend not to put years with their degrees
because they don't want to be passed over because of ageism. (You know this happens.) Museum people tend to have non-traditional career paths so listing jobs in chronological order doesn't always give a clear picture of our experience, especially if we've
had a bunch of seasonal positions. People will use skills-based resumes or other formats to highlight their skills and experience the best way. Don't toss those resumes out because they don't fit what you think a resume should be.
I've seen articles that advocate for a plain text resume so that it can be easily read and scanned by HR systems. Other articles will talk about how you need a visually appealing resume so that you can catch the eye of the HR manager. Use gerunds or not? Write
in present or past-tense? Then look at the resume templates in Word and no wonder people don't seem to know how to write a resume. Too many formats!! UGH!!
Remember museum job seekers are applying to HUNDREDS of positions. No joke. We also aren't mind-readers and don't know what your preferred resume format is. Please keep an open mind. Other than deal-breakers like not spellchecking, including
pictures, and informal language, resumes should be about conveying the skills, abilities, and experience of a candidate, not about figuring out what format the hiring manager wants.
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