Well, they’re gone again… All my students are back in their respective classrooms, and we miss them a lot. A big lot. Once again, we were very fortunate to have attracted some top notch applicants, and it was really brutal to try and whittle the numbers down from well over 100 applicants to around 15 to interview.
Resumes look completely different now as compared to what they used to look like when I was the same age as these students are now, much more abbreviated and yet containing much more information. After that initial step, we met with some of the most spectacular applicants to date. It was really difficult to choose, it actually felt really ridiculous to have to cut applicants based on ludicrous things like one tiny single spelling error, but they were all that good. The exceptions to the rules were the applicants that were not on the dean’s list or who hadn’t worked in some magnificent job previous summers. The odd one showed up looking like they’d never seen an iron in their lives, and one applicant smelled so bad from smoke that it made one of the staff break out in a five hour asthma attack, but really, most of these applicants were ridiculously suited for the job.
The most popular mistake was to not read the instructions for how to submit an application, i.e. sending it to us without cover letter, in the wrong format and/or addressed to the wrong person with the wrong title, and on occasion, to the wrong museum. About 25% of the applicants could be weeded out right off the bat based on that, because if you cannot take very simple instructions that basically are only two sentences long, chances are, you’ll have a hard time mastering our cataloguing programs and other computer programs. (And really, by the time you address your letter to Dear Mrs. Executive Director Dorothy Van Der Ree, how are you supposed to fit the rest of your cover letter on one page?) Most of the resumes were stellar. Generally, it was the cover letter that made our lives easier by making the selection process quicker. Note to self: Do not start your cover letter with “Hi! Sorry for the late reply. I’ve been away on vacation with my parents for two weeks”. Also, if you really want us to consider your resume, please type your name in some sort of English script so we can read it. Oh and include your name, and preferably your contact information, somewhere on the resume. And don’t call me two hours after you press the send button to ask why you have not been contacted yet, and if I tell you that we will contact prospective applicants after May 10th, don’t call me May 4th and ask why we have not called.
At the end of the day, those rather humorous mistakes were the exceptions to the rule. The applicants that got the jobs had a winning combination of stellar resume and a personality that fit in with the permanent staff. They really put their noses to the grindstones for us, and so, all I have to say is Harpreet, Sarah and Pam: Thank you, thank you and thank you for a great summer!
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