This week, I started earnestly building my professional virtual network of contacts on the social media sites I frequent. There are dozens of big social media websites out there, each of which is inhabited by a tribe of archaeologists. I really don’t like spending time on social media because, like most of the other archaeos I know, I think it can be an enormous time suck. Facebook is like a mesmerizing time vacuum that can easily devour a half hour without you even knowing.
However, I’ve realized that there are thousands of other cultural resource management professionals at all levels that troll social media outlets from time to time. I’ve also realized that a few minutes each week spent on social media, specifically LinkedIn, gives me a chance to reach out and “connect” with industry peers, co-workers, and professionals I haven’t yet met in person.
(This post is drawn directly from the materials I prepared for the upcoming online course “Paths to Professionalism” that will be launched on the Landward.org Campus in the next few weeks. Networking is essential for having a successful career in archaeology, historic preservation, and heritage conservation. For those of us that don’t like the word “networking”, it may help to think about it as a form of friendraising. Here’s an introduction to using friendraising concepts to build your professional network.)
Introduction to Friendraising for Archaeology Networking
Some archaeologists get their jobs in some interesting and amazing ways. I know:
An archaeologist that got his first job by holding his boss’ hair back while she threw up at a party.
A friend that got her first job by being the only person that showed up for an archaeological site tour on a rainy day.
A guy that volunteered with a local preservation group and met his future boss who hired him to work at a national forest the next year.
A former farmer that couldn’t find a job in her home country so she moved to the United States, told an archaeological technician she met at a bar that she was also an archaeologist, and got hired on a trial basis for a nearby project. That was over 20 years ago.
A graduate student from the United States that gave an appalling presentation in the United Kingdom. The collapse was witnessed by a cultural resource management (CRM) company principal investigator (PI) who was surprised when the student gave an excellent presentation 2 years later. With a recommendation from a common acquaintance, the student landed his first job with the CRM company soon after graduation.
(That last story was my own)
While hiring stories like those sometimes happen, the most likely route to landing work as an archaeologist is through connections made in college, during a field school, or from contacts in the archaeology community. After landing their first job, almost all archaeologists stay employed through professional acquaintances. The most successful archaeologists are able to leverage the contacts in their networks to learn about open positions or potential job openings and to get referrals. It is much easier to circumvent the usual job application process with insider information about where and when the jobs are going to be.
I came across this video and couldn’t have created a better summary of how to use LinkedIn to find a new job in cultural resource management archaeology, historic preservation, or heritage conservation using LinkedIn. In case you’ve been living under a bridge somewhere (0r in a very deep excavation unit), LinkedIn is THE social media website for business professionals. it’s a hub for vendors, clients, and business professionals.
If you’re one of the thousands of job seekers looking to work in archaeology, you need to stop wasting your time on Facebook and start learning how LinkedIn works.
Check out the following video if you want to learn the basics of how you can use LinkedIn to find the people with the power to hire you (which is integral to landing a job in CRM archaeology):
If you have any questions or comments, write below or send me an email.
“Resume-Writing for Archaeologists” is now available on Amazon.com. Click Here and get detailed instructions on how you can land a job in CRM archaeology today!
Small Archaeology Project Management is now on the Kindle Store. Over 300 copies were sold in the first month! Click Here and see what the buzz is all about.
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In the last few weeks, I’ve been contributing to course materials for a new online class on Landward.org called “Paths to Professionalism.” This is the class I wish I had taken in college; and I’m not just saying that because I’m one of the teachers.
Here is a section from Résumé-Writing for Archaeologists explaining the similarities between the most of the résumés archaeologists write and toilet paper. Enjoy.
What would our lives be like without toilet paper? We don’t think about it most of the time, but toilet paper is an absolute must in American households. Other countries live without it, but most Americans would not be comfortable without it. I shudder to imagine a life without TP.
Of course, toilet paper is the epitome of disposable materials. We literally flush tons of the stuff down the toilet each year without a second thought. This disregard for toilet paper’s importance is similar to how companies think about and treat crappy résumés. Most companies can flush a bad résumé using their applicant screening software. They can get rid of the bad ones without even having to touch them, which is something we can’t do with real toilet paper no matter how much we may want to. For companies that don’t use screening software, hiring managers have other ways to discard bad résumés. Résumés with incorrect formatting, misspelled words, incorrect punctuation, and outdated information are tossed quickly; even if the applicant is experienced or skilled. If you do not have a quality, job specific résumé, you can be assured that your information will be “lost.”
In May, the CRM Archaeology Podcast continued to tackle important issues for people working in CRM archaeology, historic preservation, and heritage conservation. In case you didn’t know, the podcast is produced bi-weekly by Chris Webster, Principal Investigator at DigTech, LLC in Reno, Nevada (http://www.digtech-llc.com) and features a cast of young CRM professionals from around the world. Regular commentators include Doug Rocks-MacQueen in Scotland, UK (Doug’s Archaeology), Russell Aileen-Willems in Seattle, WA (Diachronic Design), Serra Head in Indianapolis, IN (Archy Fantasies), and Bill White out of Tucson, AZ (Succinct Research).
Chris Webster tells me that the number of listeners has continued to increase at a rapid rate since March,when the podcast was downloaded over 2,500 times. Chris has actually become a minor CRM archaeology celebrity and, evidentially, he can be recognized by other archaeologists from the sound of his voice alone.
When attending the SAA conference in Honolulu this year, Chris and Russell Aileen-Willems visited a nearby Starbucks to order a coffee and recharge for the upcoming symposia. While ordering his coffee, another conference-goer and archaeologist heard the sound of his voice and asked, “Are you Chris Webster?”
“Yes.”
The conferencer replied, “I thought so. I heard you talking and recognized your voice from the CRM podcast.” The two struck up a brief conversation before heading back to the conference.
Too bad Chris isn’t famous enough for other archaeologists to buy him a coffee. Maybe he will be after a few more podcasts.
This week I finished addressing the comments from my editor on my newest eBook, Résumé-Writing for Archaeologists. It’s an upgraded version of Résumé-Writing for Scientists that focuses entirely on the job search issues faced by archaeologists, historic preservationists, and heritage conservation specialists. I never thought I’d be saying this, but, this book would never have gotten written if it hadn’t been for all the companies that furloughed me or laid me off. The skills I learned while prowling for work resulted in a book that I hope can help anyone looking for a job in archaeology.
Résumé-writing is a skill that few of us learn while undergrads or in graduate school. I doubt they teach anything that useful in high school. While I’ll admit, a résumé alone is not the only thing it takes to land a job, a quality résumé in conjunction with good networking and company-specific research will quickly move you to the top of the heap. There are dozens of places where you can get résumé -writing tips. Most of these resources are bad or too generic to be of much help.
I have compiled a series of 13 résumé,CV, and cover letter writing slideshows from www.slideshare.net. These are among the best of the hundreds of résumé-writing slideshows on this website. Each one has at least one kernel of information that is useful for anyone preparing a résumé for a job in historic preservation, archaeology, and heritage conservation. If you want detailed information on résumé-writing, networking, and other aspects of job searching designed specifically for archaeologists, grab a copy of my Kindle eBook from Amazon. It goes live on May 31, 2013.
This is the third and final post in a 3-part series on three articles written by Lawrence E. Moore. These three articles focus on the decline of CRM archaeology, the future of this industry in the United States, and they were published in the SAA Archaeological Record in 2005 and 2006.
All three articles are available for free on the SAA website:
Once again, thank you Mr. Moore for writing this article series. It is a difficult task to predict the future of an industry that employs so many passionate professionals. Articles like these open the author up to criticism, but they must be written in order to initiate a dialogue about the future of our profession.
In his article “Going Public: Customization and American Archaeology” (2006b), Lawrence Moore suggest that CRM archaeology should expand into public archaeology and archaeology tourism as a means of fighting off the eminent collapse of our industry due to the retirement of the Baby Boomers. He states that customization of our services is paramount to the survival of CRM. This customization, he suggests, should focus on serving the entertainment needs of the communities in which we work; basically, we should focus on doing work that the public finds interesting. Archaeology should also be a means of promoting heritage tourism. Moore describes several instances where this type of work is already being done– situations where communities have incorporated archaeological sites into their parks and instances when subdivisions included considerations of archaeological resources in their homeowner association bylaws. According to Moore, the expansion into local heritage management and tourism will replace many of the jobs lost by the Boomer retirement and may even create additional jobs for archaeologists.
I wholeheartedly agree with Moore when he says that CRM archaeology needs to expand into local heritage conservation. This is largely an untapped resource (primarily because CRM companies don’t really know how they can capitalize on this market). Who cares more about heritage and historic preservation than the people that live near historic sites? Local communities have, or should have, a vested interest in the protection of their towns and neighborhoods. Historic preservation raises/maintains property values and adds character to cities. Historic sites can be a source of public pride. Locals stand to gain the most from the intangible and tangible benefits of historic preservation.
Just like I did in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I disagree with most of the rest of this article.
This is the second post in a 3-part series featuring three articles written by Lawrence E. Moore in the SAA Archaeological Record. His focus is the future decline of CRM archaeology and how that will affect the future of our industry.
The articles are available for free on the Society for American Archaeology website:
I may sound antagonistic against Mr. Moore’s views in these articles, but I actually respect him for writing them and would love to talk with him about this topic some day.
Lawrence Moore paints a pretty negative vision of the future of CRM in his article “CRM: Beyond its Peak.” The basic theme of this article is, “as soon as the Baby Boomers retire, CRM archaeology will be done.” As he hinted at in his 2005 SAA Archaeological Record article, which I discussed in Part I, the retirement of the Baby Boomers will create a drop in the United States economy that will trigger a decrease in tax revenue, increased taxation, and an economic depression. These strains are predicted to destroy CRM archaeology.
“…CRM, the most industrious part of American archaeology, is an aged industry that has worn out its welcome. American society values historic preservation, but is also increasingly resistant to standardized federal compliance.” Lawrence E. Moore, CRM: Beyond its Peak (SAA Archaeological Record 6[1]:30–33).
I love it when I read something about CRM archaeology that initially makes me mad, then, makes me think.
This week, I started earnestly building my professional virtual network of contacts on the social media sites I frequent. There are dozens of big social media websites out there, each of which is inhabited by a tribe of archaeologists. I really don’t like spending time on social media because, like most of the other archaeos I know, I think it can be an enormous time suck. Facebook is like a mesmerizing time vacuum that can easily devour a half hour without you even knowing.
