Jump me to the good part, where I can see veteran Archivists giving good advice!
Recently I have become concerned about my economic survival.
At age 24, and having finished grad school in the end of December, I took two months off before seriously starting a job search. In this time off I cleared my head from the intense schedule I had gamed in the two years before. Not only had I taken a full time courseload (something I actually regret now, not due to the difficulty but because it meant less time to get practicum experience) but I also was involved in a number of internships, and it was time for a break. I also wanted to try to establish a revenue stream by other means, namely by starting a new business.
I applied to a few jobs here and there during that time, but mostly just relaxed and tried to reflect on my vocation to be. A bit over two months ago I began a focused search and began to apply to dozens of jobs, mostly informed by the immensely invaluable I Need a Library Job. The result of the search thus far has been fruitless. Not only did I recently realize that the dozens of federal jobs I had been applying to were being rejected because I was not following an unrequested Federal Resume Format, but I also encountered a complete wall of silence from other private and academic listings I applied to. What came to mind after over a month of this perpetual failure was: I am obviously going up against hundreds of over-qualified applicants per job and I am probably doing something horribly wrong. Perhaps, just as I had made a major misstep in using the wrong resume format for Federal jobs, I was also failing in some other unknown capacity in my application process to other types of listings.
This quest takes a lot out of you and is extremely stressful. The worst part is writing the actual cover letters. If you write a good one, it takes at least a half hour, and many listings have redundant, proprietary application forms which take at least as long to fill out. I applied to all sorts of jobs: librarian positions, archivists, technicians, assistants, analysts, researchers, museum techs, museum curators, directors, writers, copy-editors etc etc while keeping in mind I would really prefer to work with special collections or history. Not hearing back from any of these people, I began to look into teaching English overseas. For those who might be interested, I recommend it: there is an insane abundance of jobs and you will have a job within a week. It’s still my backup plan if my business or library career doesn’t take off.
With my failure in mind, my first student loan payments coming due, seeing my savings dwindle, the threat of being kicked out of my house looming overhead – and in a state of desperation/despondency I decided to email the Society of American Archivists “Archives” listserv for guidance. What follows is that correspondence.
