Mastering the Job Hunt in the Arts—Event Recap
The arts job search in New York City—it can be intimidating, exhausting, and sometimes seemingly never-ending. And though you can do absolutely everything right in pursuit of your dream job, there are often so many external factors that also need to line-up perfectly in order to land it. Knowing where to start, how to maximize your time, bolster your application, and ultimately, manage your sanity, are crucial tactics as you begin your search and are all topics we discussed at YPA’s Jobs Hunting in the Arts panel co-hosted at Sotheby’s Institute of Art on June 18, 2019.
Ashley Robinson, Moderator and Director of Career Services at Sotheby’s Institute of Art-New York, sat down to discuss the daunting job search with art leaders, Hillary Burchfield, founder & president at Hillary Burchfield LLC Fine Arts Executive Search and Recruiting, Tim Cynova, COO at Fractured Atlas, a progressively structured arts organization that prioritizes equity from the inside out, Josie Hines, co-founder of Art Frankly, an art’s job search portal that matches member profiles with their database of job listings, and Molly Martin, the senior manager of advertising and data strategy at NYFA Classifieds, the largest national database of arts jobs in the country.
The conversation was delivered to a packed house and included an hour-long networking opportunity, and delivered so. much. useful. advice! Below, the YPA team pulled out a few of the highlights and tips from our expert panelists:
On the job search:
Think about what you really want before you quit or start looking for a new job. Research shows that a pay raise only makes you happy for 15 days. If you are unhappy at work think about how you can do the work differently. There is some value in bouncing from job to job but it’s worth taking the time to examine the culture of a place and ask is this somewhere I really want to work?
Go through the classifieds, find your dream job, look at the skills and experience listed and think about how you can begin gaining those skills, even in transferable ways, now. Molly Martin, the power behind NYFA Classifieds, was candid about her own career journey, which included stepping out of the arts sector into the marketing and business world to work for a for-profit agency. There she learned the technical skills needed to step back into the arts as a stronger, more experienced force and was able to find a role that married her two passions and met her career goals.
Resume and job vocabulary. Understand what you are applying for. Is your resume matching the job listing? Are you encapsulating what you do in a way that is understandable and where it truly speaks to the organization and the job they need done? Is the tone and vocabulary used right? Josie Hines shared a story about the value of having peers, specifically peers with a marketing background, review your resume.
Write an original cover letter - don’t just find and replace. All the panelists (except Josie—who does not believe in cover letters) emphasized how important the cover letter can be. Think of it as a commercial for your work and interest in their company, and as a way to get them interested enough to have a conversation with you.
Don’t forget about transferable skills! Often you have the skills, you just may be talking about them in a way that is not immediately obvious. Use language that speaks to the job you are applying for, not necessarily the job you had.
There should not be one single mistake on your resume. Directly from Hillary Burchfield’s, “I can’t stress enough, there should not be one single mistake on a resume or cover letter... And it happens to the best of us, we all make typos, we all make mistakes, but a resume is just one place where it’s so easy to just send it off to a few people and get a second opinion and have no errors. I don’t work with anyone who would give a resume a consideration if it has a mistake.” Pretty strong words, so proofread, proofread, proofread!
Reframe what the term “networking” means to you. Try to think of networking not as a professional transactional exchange, but as a way to connect with others on any level. Don’t get intimidated by the jargon—networking is essentially an opportunity to meet people and get social! You can be selective with events and curate how you want networking to look for you. (Hot tip: drinking groups/meetups count! Tim Cynova shared that he has FIVE different curated network-related drinking groups he keeps up with, but don’t worry he assured us they don’t all meet weekly).
Networking results aren’t always immediate. As stressed above, networking does not have to be transactional and you shouldn’t feel like you have nothing to bring to a networking event just because you aren’t where you want to be in your career yet. Often networking connections don’t have a work-related impact for 3-4 years or longer, so let go of the pressure and just think of it as meeting your peers and connecting over shared interests.
On finding the right match for you:
Set your parameters for what you want! This can be as big or narrow as you want, from ’do you want to work on a small or large team,’ to a list of non-negotiables for what you are looking for in a job - asking questions and knowing what you expect from an employer can indicate that you have direction and a vision, and aren’t just looking for “any old job in the art world.”
In the art world you have to be willing to put the work in, no task is too small for any position. Saying yes and doing what is needed to get the job done not only shows you are a team player, but will open you up to experiences and skills you never knew you wanted or needed.
Don’t get hung up on job titles. They are important but not always transferable from one organization to another. A director at one place could be at a manager level at another organization. Job titles aren’t meaningless per se, but they are not as important as you may think so focus on building experience first at a place that fits you.
Want to learn more? Watch the full conversation on Sotheby’s Institue of Art’s facebook page for a full live-stream of the program!
This article was written by Jacque Donaldson and Hayley Ferber for Young Professionals in the Arts - NYC. Images by Sarah Kearns and Jacque Donaldson, ypa nyc.