Open Forum

For all you directors and hiring managers out there, I am curious what you find desirable  when hiring people for museum collections?  What do you look for on résumés/CV/cover letters or what do you ask in interviews? I know experience is huge. But are their any specifics you look or desire for?

For all you directors and hiring managers out there, I am curious what you find desirable  when hiring people for museum collections?  What do you look for on résumés/CV/cover letters or what do you ask in interviews? I know experience is huge. But are their any specifics you look or desire for?

First, define "collection specialst." Do you need someone who has content expertise in the material culture of the home? Or the flora and fauna of your state? Or Ming Dynasty porcelains? If you really mean a collection manager, then I am looking for superior organizational skills, someone who actually enjoys putting things in order and maintaining that order--but without driving colleagues crazy. Someone who likes solving puzzles, of the kind that crop up all the time when there are no records associated with an artifact. Will they enjoy solving the mystery of how you came to have it, and whether you actually own it, or was it placed on loan a long time ago and its status remains in limbo? Or will they kick that can or worms down the road for the next person. Ask them to respond to the old adage: "Perfect is the Enemy of the Good." When was it acceptable in their past experience to say, "OK, that's good enough." How did they define "good enough" in the context of the situation?  And when was that not acceptable? When was the last time anyone ever said to them, "You're obsessing over that task like a dog worries a bone," and the only acceptable response was: "because it has to be that way."

For all you directors and hiring managers out there, I am curious what you find desirable  when hiring people for museum collections?  What do you look for on résumés/CV/cover letters or what do you ask in interviews? I know experience is huge. But are their any specifics you look or desire for?