5 minute read
The Day I Was Offered My Dream Job! Amanda Ward
The Day I Was Offered My Dream Job!
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I am so excited to be writing to you all as an SEMC EMP but also as a newly employed member of the museum community! With so many job listings popping up on the SEMC Job Board over the past few months, I was so excited when I was offered one of those coveted full-time museum jobs. I have never been more excited to talk about my job or even just share my job title, Education & Engagement Coordinator at the Palmetto Historical Park (in case you were wondering!). I also know I am not alone in this excitement over these new opportunities. The Palmetto Historical Park is one of five locations in the Historical Resources Department under the Manatee County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller and since the shut down in March of 2020, the historical resources department has recently filled 6 of the open positions with eager museum professionals.
The COVID-19 pandemic was especially hard on the job searching museum community and many organizations had hiring freezes, layoffs and shut downs. When COVID-19 hit and the world shut down, I was in the last semester of my master’s program and working part-time as a visitor services associate at a local museum. In fact, the day before the world shut down, I submitted my final draft of my master’s thesis for publication and was headed for my last college spring break. Graduating during the pandemic was less than ideal (oh who am I kidding, I was devastated), but what was even more frustrating was trying to find a job while museums were closed.
Application, after application; ZOOM interview, after ZOOM interview; hiring freeze automatic response email, after hiring freeze automatic response email — I was exhausted! I was frustrated, I was bitter, and I was even mad at myself. So I did what every other resourceful, millennial job hunter does during a pandemic.… I took the first full-time job I was offered. Pizza delivery shift leader was not exactly the job I envisioned upon graduating with a master’s degree in applied anthropology, but it was a full-time job with benefits and I was feeling pretty desperate. The next day I was offered another full-time job, still not in my degree field, but a little closer and anything had to be better than food service. I accepted a position working at a nonprofit feline-only animal shelter. I was feeling pretty good about this. I was doing some things that I wanted to do in a museum but using cats as my subject instead of history and artifacts — educational programming, social media marketing, donor engagement, community outreach — and I got to make a lot of cat videos
Amanda Ward on the porch of Palmetto’s first kindergarten schoolhouse featuring the “Frankie A Howze School” sign memorializing the first teacher of Palmetto located at the Palmetto Historical Park.
for YouTube! It was not the worst alternative to my dream job.
After 8 months of gaining experience with a nonprofit, honing my skills and attending every webinar and virtual conference I could get my mouse on, I was ready to reopen the wound that was the museum job search. I had every job board list and professional organization favorited on my browser, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn alerts turned on for SEMC, FAM, AAM, and any other museum group with the potential for job listings, and daily email job alerts from Google and Indeed. And one day … there it was! The job posting for the perfect job. It checked all the boxes and then some! There was no way I was getting this job because it was too good to be true. It was a museum job, close to my home, full-time, with benefits, and salary comparable to what I was making at the animal shelter. I was sure I wasn’t even going to get an interview but I applied anyway. I got the interview! But I didn’t get my hopes up, I couldn’t. I had been through dozens of interviews and no job offers. I showed up to the interview with my new mask that matched my blouse because that matters in a pandemic-era interview. I also mistakenly had on new heels - since it had been so long since I had an in-person interview and silly me, I had not been in a museum in a while, somehow I forgot about historic buildings and their brick walkways and slick wooden floors. I stumbled my way through the interview. A few weeks later, I found out that I got the job!
Amanda Ward, Education & Engagement Coordinator at Palmetto Historical Park — It has a nice ring to it! I started work in April 2021 along-side the new Registrar & Collections Specialist. We’re basically BFFs now with the rest of the Historical Resources Department. The Palmetto Historical Park is a hidden gem in Florida. Before my interview I had never been there, and really never heard of it before I applied — it’s a good thing those job boards exist! If you should ever find yourself south of Tampa, take a trip to visit the Palmetto Historical Park and “step back in time with a guided tour of our historic buildings. Stroll along brick pathways lined with old-fashioned street lamps and beautiful gardens. Relax on park benches and enjoy the tranquility of the past. Children will enjoy discovering the tiny doors throughout the park and finding the tiny keys left behind by our magical residents.” Our property features 6 historic buildings, 1880’s Heritage Station Post Office, 1914 Palmetto Carnegie Library, 1900’s Cottage, 1936 Kindergarten Building staged as a one-room schoolhouse, 1930s Cyprus House opened as a military museum in 2004, and our Replica Heritage Chapel.
I wanted to write this article for all the EMPs and recent grads, or even those soon to graduate, to say that yes, we have our work cut out for us on the job hunt but it’s not impossible. Every day I see multiple job listings in the museum field pop up on my newsfeed. And yes, there are hundreds of people applying for these jobs along with you. But, when the right job comes long — it will all work out. Be flexible, be patient, and most importantly — be active! Jobs are out there, you just need to go find them!
