Thursday Thirteen--13 Employment Strategies

Although I'm retired, there was a time in my life 25 years ago when I worked in the employment field. Yes, I was unemployed, couldn't find a job in my own field (libraries), so I went to work for the state government of Ohio, using federal funds (JTPA), helping other laid off or unemployed people find jobs. A sweet deal for me, although my colleagues and I in the program may be the only unemployed people who actually benefited. I loved my co-workers and the tasks--I did research, wrote publications, put on workshops, travelled, wrote speeches for bureaucrats, learned a lot about government, and was on a steep learning curve, something that has always been the joy of working in libraries. Your tax dollars and mine hard at work.

So when I saw this in today's Wall St. Journal in Sue Shellenbarger's column, I just couldn't resist. A recent graduate with an MA in Art History can't find a job in the Memphis art community. I immediately attacked the problem with my own on-the-job training of 25 years ago, plus my 23 years in the library field, and 18 years of hands-on parenting skills dumping loads of unheeded advice on my own 2 children.

1. Although it's too late now, don't pursue a degree in art history. And you certainly shouldn't have gone on for a master's. Do your parents have a money tree in the back yard? This degree is for rich kids who just want to say they went to college or average income, scholarship students who get bumped from their first choice when it's time to declare a major. This field employs no one except the faculty who teach it.

2. Move away from Memphis. If there ARE any jobs in art history, you have to go where the jobs are. They don't come to you. This also applies to librarians, lawyers and linguists. Just don't come to Columbus. We have a terrific art college here (CCAD), plus OSU, Franklin, Otterbein, Capital, and Columbus State, and their graduates are looking for work, too.

3. Whatever computer classes or skills you have now, get more. If you're lucky, the left and right sides of your brain are on speaking terms. If they're not, get used to hating this aspect of your career because it isn't going away. Deal with it. No one said life is fair.

4. Spend 40 hours a week looking for a job. That was the primary take-away I learned from my own JTPA contract in the employment field. Your job today is getting a job. If you can't bear the thought of one more interview or sending out one more resume, you're sunk. (Keep in mind, however, that most people get jobs through people they know who know people. So make part of that 40 hours telling everyone you know that you're looking.)

5. Research each place you apply to, and that includes the "culture," especially (if you're female) what they wear to work. Sounds trivial, but if you show up looking like a bank executive and the boss is in a t-shirt and ball cap, you won't put on your best performance, even though he probably won't notice your outfit. Green or purple hair and tongue studs almost never work on an interview. Drool is so tacky. Wouldn't hurt to know what they do to please their board of directors and donors, either.

The next suggestions are from the WSJ column, but I have to tell you, if these worked, no one would be getting the tougher degrees, they'd all have art history degrees. Shellenbarger suggests expanding the job search into these fields--

6. marketing and advertising
7. design
8. photography
9. web-site architecture

(these are all art related, but look what CCAD expects of high school graduates to have in their portfolio)

10. publishing
11. teaching
12. writing

and then

13. hiring a job coach to work on your interviewing skills.