Curate Your Career

Curate Your Career
  • 5.0 (15)
  • Arts

Curate Your Career is a podcast for museum pros who are staying, leaving, and everything in between. Hosted by Elin (Deaccessioned Career Coaching) and Alli (Your Museum Career Coach), we dig into the real, messy, hilarious, and hopeful parts of museum careers. From burnout and bad bosses to career pivots, salary jumps, and rediscovering what you actually want. 

  1. 2d ago

    39. Gab Bag #1 | Museum Job Red Flags, Professional Development & LinkedIn Premium

    Welcome to our first Gab Bag episode. It's a collection of career questions, situations, and slightly chaotic conversations that come up in our coaching work, our texts to each other, and around the museum field. This time, we’re digging into three very different questions that all come back to the same thing: being more strategic about your career instead of assuming the system knows what’s best for you. In this episode:What to do when your new museum job isn’t the job you thought you accepted. We dissect one real job description and talk about misleading titles, “occasional” weekend work that turns out to be every weekend, and why you may need to get very specific with your supervisor about how your hours are actually supposed to be spent.Questions to ask before accepting your next job. What does a typical week look like? How much time is actually spent on each responsibility? How often does “occasionally” really mean? You’re interviewing the organization, too.How to spend a professional development budget strategically. Instead of automatically choosing the biggest or shiniest conference, start with where you want your career to go next, identify a skill gap, and ask what kind of training would actually help you close it.Why your professional development doesn’t necessarily have to be museum-specific. Project management software, leadership training, marketing, digital tools, database skills, and other transferable competencies can make you stronger in your current museum role and give you more options later.Whether LinkedIn Premium is worth it. Our answer: start by asking, worth it for what? Premium may have a useful feature for a specific moment in your job search, but paying for it does not automatically make you a more serious (or more successful) job seeker. We also discuss avocado toast, DC dating culture, chocolate croissants, and our respective inability to eat lunch on time. “Shia LaBeouf” Live: Rob Cantor Yes, this is the video Elin promised to put in the show notes. It features the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, and we will provide no additional context. Staying in museums? Alli Schell of Your Museum Career Coach helps museum professionals navigate job searching, career growth, application materials, interviews, and professional development. Explore Your Museum Career Coach Exploring careers beyond museums? Elin Filbey of Deaccessioned Career Coaching helps museum, arts, and culture professionals translate their skills and build careers outside the field. Explore Deaccessioned Career Coaching Submit a question for a future episode here. Follow @CurateYourCareerPodcast on Instagram.

  2. Sep 16

    38. Go To The Thing: Nancy Harmon on Museum Tech, Museum Skills, & Parallel Planning

    What if the skills you’re learning in museums could take you somewhere you haven’t even thought of yet? Nancy Harmon went to museum studies school thinking she wanted to develop exhibitions. She interned at the Field Museum, worked on visitor research around museum apps, and later found herself experimenting with mobile technology during an internship at the Neanderthal Museum. Then she went to a hackathon. She couldn’t code. She didn’t have a software background. She was working retail while finishing graduate school. She had an idea. That idea eventually became Encurate, a museum technology company that works with museums and cultural destinations to create mobile visitor experiences. In this episode, Nancy joins Elin and Alli to talk about: Her museum origin story (including a sixth-grade Ancient Egypt exhibition)What she learned from realizing her dream museum internship wasn’t quite what she expectedHow visitor research introduced her to museum technologyWalking into a hackathon as the only museum person in a room full of tech and marketing peopleBuilding a tech company without being a software engineerThe museum skills that turned out to be incredibly valuable in business and technologyWhy the ability to “figure it out with little to no resources” is a legitimate professional skillHow museum work develops research, problem-solving, attention to detail, visitor experience, and communication skillsWhy leaving a traditional museum role doesn’t mean losing your museum identityNancy’s work with museum studies studentsHow early-career professionals can parallel plan by building museum experience and transferable skills at the same time Nancy’s advice to emerging museum professionals is simple: stay curious, meet people outside your immediate field, learn the vocabulary other industries use, and go to the thing. Museum people may use different language, but many of the underlying skills are the same. And maybe most importantly: pursuing museums doesn’t require making museums your only possible future. You have options. You already have skills. You may just need to learn where else they can take you.

  3. Sep 9

    37. The Museum-Library Career Crossover Episode with Alison King

    Museum people and library people might have more in common than we realized. In this episode, Elin Filbey and Alli Schell are joined by Alison King, librarian-turned-career coach and founder of King Career Services, to talk about the surprisingly similar career challenges facing library and museum professionals and what we can learn from each other. After landing her childhood “dream job” as a children’s librarian, Alison eventually realized she had reached a career ceiling much earlier than expected. She shares how that realization, combined with difficult schedules, limited advancement opportunities, and growing resentment toward her work, eventually led her to make the leap from libraries into copy editing—and later, career coaching. Together, Alison, Elin, and Alli dig into: why reaching your “dream job” doesn't necessarily mean you've found your forever careerthe similarities between museum and library work, from low pay and limited advancement to being asked to do a lot with very few resourceswhat “vocational awe” looks like in libraries and why museum professionals may recognize it immediatelythe skills librarians often underestimate, including research, understanding user needs, communication, programming, and cross-functional workwhy translating your experience starts with understanding where you want to go, not simply rewriting everything you've ever donehow to “connect the dots” between your experience and what a new employer actually needswhy there isn't one magical list of jobs librarians, or museum professionals, can transition intowhat museum professionals should consider before assuming libraries are the escape hatch from the museum fieldwhy identifying the point where your job search is breaking down can help you figure out what actually needs fixing Plus, Alison joins us for a rapid-fire round covering resume mistakes, LinkedIn, networking, interview prep, feeling stuck in the job search, and the career-management hill she'll die on: You have to own your career. Your employer isn't going to do it for you. Mentioned in this episodeKing Career Services & Leaping Librarians – Job Search Pro https://kingcareerservices.com/ Alison helps librarians take the next leap in their careers—whether that's advancing or moving within libraries or making the leap into something entirely new. Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves – In the Library with the Lead Pipe https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/ Alison recommends Fobazi Ettarh's essay on “vocational awe,” which explores what happens when libraries are treated as inherently good or sacred institutions—and how that framing can contribute to burnout, being under compensation, and unhealthy expectations for the people who work within them.

  4. Sep 2

    36. Mailbag #5: Salary Ranges, Early-Career Stability, Internship Networking, & AMM Conference Recap

    We’re back with another mailbag episode, answering listener questions about some very real museum career situations. In this episode, we talk through what to do when a posted salary range turns into an offer at the very bottom, how early-career museum workers can think about financial stability, and how students can approach internship outreach more strategically. We also end with a recap from the Midwest Museums Association conference, including why smaller conferences can feel more manageable, how regional conferences can be great networking spaces, and why museum vendors can be an overlooked source of museum-adjacent job opportunities. If you’ve ever wondered whether a salary range is real, how to make museum work more financially sustainable, or how to reach out for internships without sending your resume into the void, this episode is for you.

  5. Aug 26

    35. August Job Search Reset: And Now We Wait...

    35. August Job Search Reset: And Now We Wait...Tips for Surviving the Job Search Waiting GameElin and I are taking a short summer break, so we’re bringing back a few episodes that feel especially useful as we head into late summer and the post-Labor Day job search push. And if your job search feels especially quiet right now? You’re probably not imagining it. July and August are often one of the slower times of year for hiring. People go on vacation, museums are busy with summer programming and application processes stretch out. You’re left refreshing your inbox wondering, Should I follow up again? Should I keep applying? Is this normal? What am I supposed to be doing while I wait? That’s why we’re revisiting And Now We Wait..., an episode all about navigating the frustrating in-between periods of a job search. Because while you can’t control how quickly an organization moves, whether someone responds to your email, or when the next opportunity gets posted, there are still things you can do to keep your job search moving forward. In this episode, we talk about: why hiring processes can take so long—and why the silence isn’t necessarily about youwhen you should follow up during an interview processwhy you shouldn’t stop applying just because one opportunity feels promisinghow to use the waiting period to prepare for potential next-round interviewsways to organize and refine your job search systemswhy keeping a workplace diary can make future resumes and interviews much easierhow to reconnect with and expand your professional networkhow to identify skills you may want to intentionally buildways to use courses, volunteering, shadowing, projects, and other opportunities to fill experience gapshow slower periods can give you space to strengthen your professional visibility and explore new ideasand why sometimes the most productive thing you can do is give yourself permission to rest The waiting game is one of the hardest parts of searching for a job, especially when so much of the process is outside of your control. If August has you hearing crickets, use this episode as an opportunity to reset. Instead of asking, “Why isn’t anything happening?” consider asking: “What’s one thing I can do now that will make me more prepared when things start moving again?”

  6. Aug 19

    34. August Job Search Reset: Stretch, Match, Mismatch

    August Job Search Reset: Stretch, Match, or Mismatch?Elin and I are taking a short summer break, so we’re bringing back a few episodes that feel especially useful as we head into late summer and the post-Labor Day job search push. This week, we’re revisiting our episode on one of the biggest questions museum job seekers face: Should I actually apply for this job? It’s easy to look at a job description, recognize a few responsibilities, and think, “I could do that.” But knowing how to do something isn’t necessarily the same as having done it at the level, scope, or responsibility the organization is looking for. That’s where our Stretch, Match, or Mismatch framework comes in. In this episode, we talk about how to look beyond job titles and percentages of qualifications to more honestly assess where your experience aligns, where you might be ready to stretch, and when a role may be better treated as a future goal. This episode focuses on: how to recognize your strongest-match or “anchor” applicationswhat makes a role a strategic stretch versus a mismatchwhy years of experience can signal scope and responsibility, not just timethe difference between participating in, assisting with, and owning workhow to assess your level of responsibility and autonomywhy job titles don’t always reflect the work you’ve actually donehow to identify skill and experience gaps you can intentionally buildwhy both overselling and underselling your experience can hurt your job searchand why applying more strategically can be more effective than simply applying to more jobs Not every job you could apply for deserves the same amount of your time and energy. If you’re getting ready for the fall job search season, this is a great episode to revisit before you start hitting “apply.”

  7. Aug 12

    33. August Job Search Reset: Cover Letters

    August Job Search Reset: Cover LettersAlli and I are taking a short summer break, so we’re bringing back a few episodes that feel especially useful as we head into late summer and the post-Labor Day job search push. This week, we’re revisiting our episode on cover letters. Love them or hate them, cover letters can be one of the most helpful places to connect the dots between your experience and the role you want next... especially if you’re applying outside museums, changing lanes, or trying to explain work that doesn’t fit neatly into one job title. In this episode, we talk about what cover letters are actually for, how they differ from resumes, and why a strong cover letter should not just repeat everything in your resume in paragraph form. We cover: why cover letters still matterwhat a cover letter can do that a resume cannothow to explain why you want this role and this organizationhow to connect your experience to the job descriptionhow to avoid generic or overly formal languagehow to write about transferable skillswhat to include when you’re changing fields or job familiesand how to make the whole thing feel a little less painful If you’re refreshing your application materials before the fall job search season, this is a great episode to revisit.

  8. Aug 5

    32. August Job Search Reset: Why Your Resume Isn’t Working

    August Job Search Reset: Why Your Resume Isn’t WorkingAlli and I are taking a short summer break, so we’re bringing back a few episodes that feel especially useful as we head into late summer and the post-Labor Day job search push. This one is all about resumes... because before you start applying to everything, it’s worth asking whether your resume is actually doing its job. In this episode, we talk about why museum resumes often don’t land the way people hope, especially when applying outside the field or trying to communicate complex experience clearly. We cover: why your resume is not your full life storythe difference between a resume and a CVwhy formatting matters more than you thinkhow to write for the person actually reading your resumewhy museum jargon can get in the wayhow to focus on outcomes instead of taskswhy tailoring mattersand how to make your experience easier for a hiring manager to understand If you’re planning to refresh your materials, get back into the market, or apply more intentionally this fall, this is a great episode to revisit.

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About

Curate Your Career is a podcast for museum pros who are staying, leaving, and everything in between. Hosted by Elin (Deaccessioned Career Coaching) and Alli (Your Museum Career Coach), we dig into the real, messy, hilarious, and hopeful parts of museum careers. From burnout and bad bosses to career pivots, salary jumps, and rediscovering what you actually want. 

Information

  • Creator
    Curate Your Career
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    39
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Curate Your Career

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