At 11:37 AM 6/5/98 -0700, you wrote: >research, I found that even though hiring organizations list Qualifications >at BA and only a few years experience, they are hiring people with Masters >degrees and many years of experience. Between the two of us we make the >perfect candidate, education and experience, but without one or the other >you will have a difficult time, I know I am. If you are interested I have >info on the most frequently requested skills, breakdown of regional >differences in qualifications, etc. From someone who just got finished with a job search, I can also sympathise. I think a good chunk of the problem is the lack of museum positions and those that are available are mainly lower level admin positions. Since most of the management level positions require several years experience in museum work, sometimes the only way to get started is through the admin-type positions, especially in the larger institutions. Thus people who want to work for these larger places like the Smithsonian, start out in whatever position they can get hired for, usually an admin position since they are high turn-over and a good way to meet people to network up. I know plenty of people with masters degrees doing admin work at the Smithsonian just because it was a foot in the door. In my opinion, this is sometimes a bad practice because it means that once someone has mastered all the office procedures and daily routines after a couple of years, they finally have enough time under their belts to work their way into another position. This creates a position where someone is always being trained and thus the work is never done as efficiently as possible. Contrast this with the "business" admin world where the salaries are much better and people usually stay on longer or move up to other admin positions in the same company. Plus in the museum world, there seems not to be the "market" for professional admins like there is in big business, especially in the smaller museums. Thus the people who do get hired as admins are not trained to be admins but liberal arts students who learned MS Word really well from writing all those research papers and have spent a lot of time temping. :) (I fall into this category. ) Unfortunately, I don't see a good way to change this since museums are strapped for money and can't afford to create entry-level positions for all areas of museum work like education, curation and research so students fresh out of college can get practical museum experience without having to start off as an admin. Nor can museums afford to command a high enough salary to attract the professional admins who can make upwards of $40K working for the big companies for several years. My advice is to just keep plugging at it. All museum positions are hard to get these days no matter how much experience and education you have. Keep sending out those resumes and networking around and you'll find something eventually. Most people I know have job hunted around a year before they found something that paid a living wage. Good luck!! Deb Fuller