6 Tips for Museum Job Seekers
Getting a copy of the AAM Salary Survey Cross-reference that data with other museum, nonprofit and allied career salary data from your community or state. The more data points you can consult, the stronger your case for your salary ask. Know what to expect salary-wise for your job choice before you're called to interview.
Know what it will cost you to live where you'd like to work. Use MIT's Living Wage Calculator (updated 2017) or the Economic Policy Institute's calculator (updated 2018).
Use these figures as guard rails for subsequent compensation discussions.
Don't think because you're 24 and still on your parent's health insurance that having no health benefits is acceptable. It is not.
Ask to meet the people you'll be working with. Ask them how work gets done, how new ideas are nurtured, and where do they go if there are HR problems? Be alert to silence and eye rolling.
No offer is perfect. Negotiate. If you won't be able to live on what's offered without a second job, be prepared to walk away. And tell them why. And if you're hiring newly-minted graduates:
Use the AAM Salary Survey. Be able to talk knowledgeably about where your salaries fall versus the local and national figures.
Know what other benefits are on the table and how they differ from your competition, either local museums or nonprofits.
Provide time for your interviewee to meet the people s/he/they will work with.
The power balance is especially acute for first-time hires: Make sure you and your staff know an illegal question from a legal one.
Review your interview process for unconscious bias. You can also have your staff and board take Harvard's implicit bias tests. Based on the 2017 Bureau of Labor Statistics figures the museum field is 50.1-percent female. And based on our 2018 survey of 700-plus humans, as well as nikhil trevidi and Aletheia Wittman's 2018 survey of approximately 500 respondents, sexual harassment is alive and well in the museum field. As leaders, let's do our best to make first-time job seekers' journeys a smooth one and educate ourselves, our staffs, and our boards in the process. Joan Baldwin
