 Thanks for coming. I thought it was probably one of the most interesting panels for the question of employment options. There's no shortage of enthusiasm here today elsewhere, right? In the subject of history, the question is how to live in it. My own experience is one foot and learning about history and humanities and museums and so forth, and the other in technology, where there's no shortage of demand for developers. And so, you know, I'll see a mailing list post that will say, we need Rails developers. You know, we'll pay you a whole bunch of money. And I'll see another post that says, I've been, you know, two years after my graduate degree, and I'm still, you know, kind of doing something without time. And so hopefully, through some insights today, that individual and others will have a better shot at living for the passion in every regard. So why don't we do quick introductions now? I've got a microphone. I'm just going to pass. I'm just going to yell. Please use the microphone. You're not here. I'm right here. I think you're on. I think you're on. Please. I'm sure that was great. I hope so. Oh, now it's on. It's on. It's on. Okay. So what do we do this? Let me just do a quick rundown. And if you get, you know, what the person does now and maybe kind of what they did before to get there. We know what it's hoping we can do. It's been a few minutes and just filled out on, you know, getting pretty much further than things like network, right? That's the way we do it, is network. So we get kind of some nuts and bolts, insights. That would be much appreciated. And then we'll do questions. So let's start down there. Hi, everybody. My name is Mark Barnard. And I am, like Lee, I have my feet to different worlds too. I'm a public school teacher and I do a lot of stuff with education and history. I'm also in public history and things with historical societies and preservation and stuff like that. So. Hi, I'm Allie. I am also in a much different place at the same time. I volunteer at the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum up there, Chestnut Hill. I also work at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. The whole stops down the red line. And I also go to school at Harvard having here a way to graduate with the museum studying student MA. So. Yeah, that's really good. I'm Eric Ballard. I'm the archivist for the PVD Institute Library of PVD. Pretty much. I come from a historical background. And what I can say in terms of how I got here was mobile and just being willing to move and move around the country. Hi, I'm Matt Wilding. And I'm the... So I'm Matt Wilding. And I'm the content director of the Freedom Trail Foundation. I've been there for about four years in that capacity. Before that, I was a tour guide for Freedom Trail from my college for history and stuff. The university under Bob Allison. And I'm finishing my master's in history right now at UMass Boston. So we have the most traditional possible group to do a history job. My name is Link Hallowell. I'm a National Park Service Ranger at Gateway National Recreation Area in New York. Gateway, real quick description of the park, is a collection of natural and historic areas located at the entrance of New York Harbor. And I deal mostly with the history side. And I have been with the National Park Service this will be my 20th year. And I got my job by accident. Let's share that story with you real quick. Hello, I'm Thomas Ketchel. I'm half English, half French. And I'm a historian. But I'm also an entrepreneur. And so I've set up a company with just 38 plus in the last month. And we're bringing history to the digital industry. So I'm going to share my story with you later. All right, so here's what I propose is the first question. And if people feel like it feels like a few words, we'll do that. Otherwise, let's take a question from the audience. My suggestion is we talk about what is the most important thing a person needs to do to get a job where you were a writer associated with writing. Just a quick background. I had a conversation with someone at a major historic site in Boston, the Boston area. And she had all of these insights that were just fascinating, including things like people will take off the resume, and things like that are kind of sheer. So with our facility, almost everybody has to handle money. So it's actually really helpful for that to be on here. So somebody who feels like an elevator that waters down my history credit instead would find a better shot than somebody who didn't have that experience. And that's something that surely nobody would know unless they actually talk to that person. So I have some insights on what it takes to get a job where you work with my knowledge or career associated with it. Well, the job that actually pays money to me, I teach high school history. I had to get a bachelor's or a science degree in education. I once I had that, I had to get a master's degree and I got a master's degree in history. I grew along with that. You know, when I was an undergraduate and my initial intention was to go right on to grad school and break from there and teach at the college level. But after doing my student teaching, I found that I actually enjoyed teaching high school kids. Sometimes I ask questions about joys, but you know, my undergraduate mentor, when I told him that I actually was getting a lot out of the experience of student teaching and I liked it. He said, you know, you might want to go with that. This might be the only time you like it. You will actually make some decent money in history. And he's right because, you know, when I am at it now and looking at, like, if you have adjunct positions and things like that, it's, the cost of it is that the jobs are really difficult and don't pay a lot. Just right up front, there's not, you know, you're not going to have a really good living at all of these adjuncts. We're all, you get out of the experience of the immersion of being in history as an intellectual venture, you know. And there's some of that with being an high school teacher, too. So I'll take that for a break and get it. And everything else that I do is really just a matter of having a volunteering, just putting myself out there, someone willing to help out. Like, I'm on a board of directors at Historical Society, and that is kind of because I volunteer to work on some exhibits and some writing that they have. And so they invited me on to the board. And that's been a very interesting experience doing that. The town that I'm in, they wanted to set up a historical, a local historic district. I volunteered for that. And I don't know why, but they asked me, well, how long have you chaired it? So I don't know how I had the time to do that, but I kept doing it. And I'm learning so much about preservation. And there's, like, free training that comes along with all that stuff. So, like, that would be the other side of it for me. It's just, you know, put yourself out there to volunteer. And there's all kinds of opportunities that come about from that. So to get a job at Harvard, I don't even know how I got one. So just try moving in at first. Because I'm not sure how I got one. The job that doesn't pay me, I just walked in and said, hey, I would like to volunteer for you. And just to add to what Lisa said about two things, like being a cashier on your resume. If you have customer service experience of any kind, put it on your resume. If you can interact with the public in any way, especially if you've been in it for eight hours, and by the end of the day, you're like, oh my God, I just need to get out of here. You have experience dealing with lots of people, dealing with a rush, dealing with the frenetic pace that is being in a retail environment. Don't take it off your resume. It's really important. But just for the museum career in general, volunteer. Volunteer and keep volunteering. Because it will eventually pay off whether it's in the museum you're currently volunteering in or in a different museum that you just have to apply for a job at. Because everybody in the museum field respects the job that the volunteers do. Because so many museums could not exist without their volunteer support. So just constantly volunteer, put out there that you are willing to do the work. And going being energetic about the fact that you're volunteering. That's the best advice that I can give. In terms of architects, at the institution that I'm at, I'm the owner of Ranger. I'm the only person in my department I have nobody else. One of the things that worked for my manage was when I lived in Los Angeles, I permitted a master's in humanities from my Mount Sanders college. After that, I wanted doing volunteering and training as an administrative department at one museum. I worked as a preparator. I did education. I moved out of here to work on my master's in history. I put myself out there and started to get into the things I really wanted to do through registration and archives. And so if I had all these wide-ranging patterns now that I'm at the institution that I'm currently at, it's my responsibility to put up all the programs. It's my responsibility to exist both in the library and also online. It's my responsibility to my responsibility to put all these wide-ranging pages. And so the biggest advice that I can say beyond just putting yourself out there volunteering is to just get a variety of things as possible because that was one of the keys to my diary was that I hadn't done all these other things. And just in terms of things that I didn't involve in my resume, I served in the airport for two years. So that I couldn't put myself out there doing public service in the library being a public institution that also worked my batch. So to get a job where I work, it kind of depends on what part of the job you're talking about. Because the pre-care foundation has two real sections to it. One of them is the one you've probably seen, which is the people running around town and going to college students probably walking you when you're trying to get a train. And to get a job in that, my best advice is to know somebody who works the pre-care foundation, frankly. I mean, that's the way most people get it. I'm not delighted it's live, it doesn't go on. You know, that's another problem. That people vote for people who they think will be good and usually they've been very good. But as far as being a person and walking in, one thing I will tell you is that literally every single person who applies to the job as a guy at the pre-care foundation gets an interview. Every single person who has ever applied, I've been there eight years, it's been hundreds of interviews. Hundreds of them. And Sam Jones is our creative director. He just doesn't interview anybody. And that's where you can shop. So going to an interview like that, know a little bit about the pre-care, know a lot about one site, not a lot of some time, they don't want to hear about that anymore. So know a good amount about the thing you're talking about, and be willing to confidently speak in public. That's a thing that I think is a real problem for folks who are who gravitate towards history. A lot of them are much more comfortable in an archive. They're a lot more comfortable talking to dead people. And that's really not our function. Our function is to talk to living people about things that have happened. So for a guy, that's my reputation. For the office, it's a little bit of a different thing. That's where I work now, that's where I do that. The way people have gotten jobs in the office has almost exclusively been working in our way. Sam Jones created the director who started out as a guide. I started out as a guide. Tavian Malone started out as an intern. And then Dan, a biologist who is our education coordinator, she just got lucky and her professor, Bob Allison, from Southern University, is on our board. And she's great. So that's how people get jobs in my office. They work their way up after totally killing an interview which you're guaranteed to get. So the opportunity is there. I also just quickly want to address what literally everyone else has said about volunteering. I want to disagree with that. Volunteering is a problem. You should do it if you want to do it. But I don't advocate for volunteering at any historical organization just for the sheer sake of that experience. Volunteer for an historical organization that is doing the thing you think is interesting and that you think might be beneficial to you. But don't just, you know, don't volunteer the your town historical society just to get history experience. They probably don't have the budget to ever hire you and if you don't know what you're doing, you're just going to burn yourself out. Volunteer, volunteer somewhere you like. Personally, I've never done an internship. I've never volunteered long term for a historical organization. I still got a job. So that's not a prerequisite. One would be kind of good. So if you don't have the experience of having a contact with an organization to be able to get a response. So these guys deserve credit. I'll say it again. That's quite a part of it. Thank you. All right. All right. With the National Park Service I'm actually going to recommend Yes, do volunteer. The National Park Service has the advantage of the national we are in every state of the union now. For years we had nothing to get out of there until last year. And also several territories. And in most of the properties that we manage are historic sites. So if you're interested in a particular site or you're interested in a particular area of the country or a particular area of the history go to that site and don't think you're interested in volunteering. And I'm pretty much guaranteeing that they will accept you. Now this gives you two advantages. First of all it gives you experience on site. Now that's different than just getting experience working in history. But the experience on site doing towards doing programs speaking to people about the particular site you've been working at, that's all great. The other thing it does is like a constant interview. Because chances are the person they were working for as a volunteer could very well be the person who's going to do the hiring when it comes to trying to get a job. Now in the parks there's sort of being met. It starts with volunteering and then you go from volunteer to volunteer and you don't have to work for a lot of agencies. Now seasonal but pretty much over the park, high-esum mostly for the summer in certain parts of the country they do hire winter seasonals. You can feel like you want to work in Hawaii for a winter. You get lucky enough to get a job with the U.S. and Sanار zone of the war. Actually, one of her volunteers who's become a seasonal job, and that's back here, is some of these work as great as they get into the system. So from there, from a seasonal job, they need to start looking for permanent jobs. And once you have a permanent job, that's your part of your career. And one of the things, again, I'd like to reiterate, is experience working with people. My first job with the parts of this was at Cassiflenn National Monument. Started in 1994. Cassiflenn is the old four in Battery Park in Manhattan, where you buy the tickets to get the statute for the referral. So it was constantly talking to people. Most of them wanted to know about the statute for the regain of the asylum. They were all that interested in the site itself, even though it has a great history on its own. So you needed to know the history of three sites. Well, the reason I got this job was because I was in sales, so the company had closed its New York office. So I was collecting the employment. And a very good friend of mine, I went to school with, said, well, listen, you have a BA in history for whom? Once you put the application in with the National Park Service for the summer, you get the job. I can stick with it if you don't want to do something else. But it gives you out of the house for the summer. And so I did. And you were in it 20 years later. So from there, my second season was the next year at the Statute Liberty in Al-Assama. I ended up getting a permanent status there. I was there for six or five years. And I've been at Gateway since September of 2000. So that's how I made it. So I'm coming from a completely different viewpoint. So I did my BA in history. I remember my parents, which I mean, why you can study history. And when I graduated, they were like, you're not going to find a job. Turns out they were right. I couldn't find anything I wanted to do really. So I decided to go traveling and work. So I worked in Australia. I worked in Kenya. I ended up in China. And I was working on all different things. So social media, I was doing renewable energy just for my BA in history. And I still have this passion for history. I wanted to go do something with it in my life. So I actually decided to create my own job. So I created my own company, which is called History, without the maps. And what I did is now we're in an organization where four full-time employees, two part-time, and very well looking for a job. I mean, what we really look for is people who are passionate about history. Like Eric and Addy said, we really look for people who've got different skill sets as well. So it has some experience of working in teams, working with people. So what I would really suggest is just get out there, get some work experience. It doesn't have to be great to history. You can always come back to history. And yeah, if you're looking for an internship for the summer, just come to the office. So my suggestion is we're trying to do one question and then just break. And that will allow people to ask specific individuals questions one-on-one. And then the next session doesn't begin until 1.15. And that is the speaker for the session. I'll pose a question. Everyone has one or the other here, let's see that. My question is, is the one thing you've seen at some point is build versus opportunity to get a job. So come to the control room, interviewers application, something like that. There's one thing that happens, and all of a sudden that says you're not done for it. Is that good question? Do you want us to do another question instead? Okay, let's do that one real quick. Go ahead. Well, I didn't do the question because the museum that I, the historical society that I'm on the board for, they, their executive director just, I think she got a much better job, not a better job, but working for, what was naturally known as Slater Milmo. So she left and now we have to fill the shoes. And so we had about 30 people applied for this job. And it was a wide range of people that applied. And, you know, we ended up having to say, well, some people's had absolutely nothing really on their resume applied. And other people did, and tangentially, and, you know, that, that paper that they sent to us with all their information on it was key. You know, they, they really need to sell themselves. And we, we need to do that through all of these, you know, how much time does someone have really to look at your paper and say, yes or no, okay. I'm sitting here one night after school. I've got a lot of work to do. I've got to look through all these papers to figure out who we wanted to see. And, you know, we ended up just out of all those 30 million to be six people. So in other people that we picked, again, wide range of experience, especially people that were really good at grant writing and working in money, people who had done a lot of different kinds of projects with lead things. My first year of, is we're gonna have to go through this and continue to do that, through and outside. Is there a two of them instead? There are the ones, you know, where there's one thing you saw in the scope, the title, position? Yeah, well that would be a very quick way for me to just say, I'm not going to do an abod. There's so many of these things to look at that show. Something like that that you're still in the bottom of the pile. Everyone else did, too. Okay. I don't know. I haven't had any experience hire anybody, so I can't really answer that question. Oh. Yeah, I'm sitting here, I mean, I've had interns, but most of them, the older ones I've had, I haven't been just phenomenal. So, but in terms of hire, that sort of thing, you know, that's a good answer. People who do not review their resume, do not dress like an adult, and do not know anything about the organization they're applying for will not get a job. When you show up for your interview, show up like you want a job. And this is something that I picked up from my previous sales diagram. Ask for the job. You know, be confident, say, listen, okay, when you, you know, I'm talking about when you're hired. But if, say things, put things in kind of that, in that frame, because that gets you confidently speaking about yourself and your vulnerabilities. And the more confidence that you portray for someone like me, I've seen that and I know that you're going to be comfortable in front of a group of people explaining the site. What I would say is don't copy paste your covenants of every single job you apply to. You know, really try to take care of it for the organization you're applying for, because, you know, we get so many, it's always, you can always just need for it, so be careful with that. I know it's time consuming, but it's really important. Okay, I'll add a quick note to that. Last several years, I've been a start-ups in for that large organizations, and in the type of community and start community, there are great opportunities to network and meet people at those companies, meet the guys that start the company, whatever. And so, while I started out the whole, you know, panel saying, we need to get the artwork, it's networking, and it's gonna be the answer. Certainly it's one piece, right, finding someone, getting some exposure, but having an opportunity to get further. Okay, thanks very much. Let's, why don't we take questions one-on-one? Is it okay? No, I just wanted to ask one more, you know, question. He said, you know, oh, cover letters, to make sure it's not copy-and-paste. As somebody who's written enough cover letters to basically make it like a part-time job, I would love to hear more about, when you look through the cover letters, what are you looking for? Because like, the hundreds of cover letters, I have said that we never get any response, or you never get any feedback, or there's never somebody saying, hey, Emily, your cover letter is great, I wish you'd talked more about this, then I would have hired you. Because it said you need to go black hole. So basically, for any of you who have got a hiring, if you're reading a cover letter, what are you looking for? Are you looking for somebody to say, here's my experience, or this is how complicated I am, or here I'm writing these skills? Do you understand what you're gonna make? He's like, here, I'm just gonna, that's really a good question. For us, on the technical side, we love cover letters, it actually goes through our application on our website, and then hundreds of inaccuracies, for example. We'll say, actually, this isn't very good, this isn't very good, we actually really enjoy that, it's actually taking a workable journey to give us critical feedback, so, and that's one of our writers that actually did cover letters with that. Talking exactly about your skill set, why it specifically relates to a problem that the organization has, solve a problem and then tell me why you're better than everybody else, because that's really what you're doing, don't like doing that, don't like saying how awesome you are, it feels weird. You really need to, you need to prove to me in a sheet of paper how great you are and how you're doing it. For a public institution, the one thing I can say is, look at the mission, what is the mission of the library, what's the mission of the city, and that sort of thing, you can tell me about that. When I get resumes from, or cover letters from insurance, that's the first thing I look at. I have to look at the website, have to look at our collection policies, you know, can they relate what they want out of it, to what we have on our website? And when they do, the times they do, they're the ones that I call for an interview, or you know, the ones that don't, or the ones that I just can't, you know, they really just, they take the time. Anyone else? Yeah, I would just repeat that, pretty much the people that apply, that have something about the society, or the work that they've done, or what our collections are about that, those that I think stood out, and the rest that you support are like a lot. With a government organization, it's an application process. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you, have you applied for a Park Service job? I can apply. Okay, did you send cover letters with them? They don't read them. Okay. I need to be that one truthful with you, but they're going through, for many of these positions, thousands of applications. People like Park Service jobs, they get lots of applications. Give them exactly what they're asking, it makes Park Service job you apply for, give them exactly what they ask for, no more, no less. They really like. That was worth the price of admission. Okay, thanks everybody. Thanks.