If you’re thinking about leaving museums, there’s a good chance the first question in your head isn’t actually:
“How do I write my resume?”
It’s:
“What the heck would I even do instead?”
This is one of the biggest sticking points I hear from museum professionals considering a career change.
You open LinkedIn. You open Indeed. You stare at the search bar.
And then imposter syndrome (and her evil twin, analysis paralysis) join the chat.
Every job title either seems completely unrelated to your experience or like it belongs to someone who has spent the last ten years building an entirely different career.
So you go back to searching “museum jobs.”
Not necessarily because you want another museum job.
Because you know what to type into the search bar.
I hosted a free workshop, Beyond Museums: Finding Your Next Career Direction, specifically for museum and GLAM professionals who are stuck in this exact place.
The goal wasn’t to magically identify everyone’s Perfect Forever Career™ in an hour.
It was much more practical:
How can you identify two or three realistic career directions outside museums that are actually worth investigating?
If you want to watch the webinar and get all the resources you can find them (for free), here.
First: You Are Not Starting Over
This is the most important thing I want museum professionals to understand about changing careers.
You may be new to an industry.
You are not new to work.
Your museum experience already includes skills that exist far beyond museums:
project and program management
research and analysis
writing and communications
education and training
customer experience
records and data management
operations and logistics
event coordination
relationship management
leadership
systems and process improvement
The problem is that museum job titles are often terrible translators.
“Curator.”
“Registrar.”
“Museum Educator.”
“Visitor Experience Manager.”
“Exhibitions Coordinator.”
Those titles make perfect sense to people inside museums.
A hiring manager outside museums may have absolutely no idea what you actually did all day.
So if you’re trying to identify careers outside museums, I don’t recommend starting with your job title.
Start with the work underneath it.
The Career Direction Filter
In the workshop, I walked participants through a five-part process I call the Career Direction Filter:
What do you want to keep?
What do you want to leave behind?
What functions have you actually performed?
What job families use those functions?
What search terms will help you find those jobs?
You are not trying to build a life plan.
You are building a research path.
That distinction matters.
You do not need to know exactly what you want to do for the next twenty years before you can take your next step.
You just need a few promising directions to investigate.
Step 1: What Do You Want to Keep From Your Museum Career?
Leaving museums does not mean throwing your entire career in the trash.
There are probably parts of your work you still genuinely like.
Ask yourself:
What kinds of work give me energy?
What tasks make me feel competent?
What do coworkers consistently come to me for?
What impact still matters to me?
What do I want to continue doing even if the setting changes?
Maybe you love:
teaching and facilitating
research and writing
organizing information
coordinating complicated projects
building programs
improving systems
mentoring staff
working with communities
solving logistical puzzles
making complicated information understandable
Write down three to five things.
Don’t overthink this.
You’re collecting clues, not signing a contract with your future self.
Step 2: What Do You Want to Leave Behind?
This part matters just as much.
A career direction cannot simply fit your skills.
It also has to fit your life.
If your museum career has become unsustainable, pay attention to why.
Maybe you want to leave behind:
low pay
evening and weekend work
constant public-facing work
chronic understaffing
unclear expectations
limited advancement
emotional labor
geographic limitations
instability
wearing 14 hats forever
You may also know what you need more of:
higher compensation
better benefits
remote or hybrid work
a clearer advancement path
stronger boundaries
predictable hours
more stability
opportunities to specialize
This is not being negative.
This is data.
Knowing what you do not want helps you avoid changing careers only to recreate the exact same problems in a different building.
Step 3: Stop Thinking in Museum Job Titles
Now we get into the actual translation.
Instead of asking:
“What jobs can a museum educator do?”
Try asking:
“What functions have I performed as a museum educator?”
That might include:
facilitation
curriculum development
training
program coordination
audience-centered communication
community engagement
translating complex information
Those functions exist in many industries.
The same is true across museum departments.
Museum Education
Museum educators may have experience in:
Training, facilitation, curriculum development, public engagement and program coordination.
Those skills could lead toward job families like:
Learning and Development
Training Coordination
Customer Education
Community Engagement
Educational Program Management
Senior Living Enrichment
Collections, Archives and Registration
Collections professionals may have experience in:
Documentation, database management, compliance, asset tracking, quality control and logistics.
Those skills could connect to:
Records Management
Digital Asset Management
Asset Management
Compliance Coordination
Data Integrity
Knowledge Management
Curatorial, Research and Art History
Curatorial and research professionals may bring:
Research, writing, editing, knowledge synthesis, source analysis and content development.
Those functions can show up in:
Content Strategy
Research Coordination
Knowledge Management
Editorial and Publishing
Grant Writing
Communications
Visitor Services and Front of House
Visitor services is one of the most underestimated areas of museum work.
If you’ve worked front of house, you may already have significant experience in:
Customer experience, conflict resolution, accessibility, scheduling, operations, staff coordination and training.
Look at areas like:
Customer Experience
Client Services
Member Services
Operations Coordination
Hospitality
Community Relations
Exhibitions, Programs and Museum Administration
If you’ve managed exhibitions, events or programs, you may have been doing:
Project coordination, timeline management, vendor communication, budget tracking, logistics and cross-functional collaboration.
That can translate into:
Project Coordination
Program Coordination
Event Production
Creative Operations
Content Operations
Nonprofit Operations
This is the shift I want you to make:
Separate your work from the museum container.
Your title tells people where you worked.
Your functions tell them what you know how to do.
Step 4: Look for Job Families, Not One Perfect Job Title
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make during a museum career change is trying to identify the job title.
There probably isn’t one.
Different companies use completely different titles for very similar work.
Instead, identify two or three job families worth exploring.
For example:
Learning and Development
Could include:
Learning Coordinator
Training Coordinator
Learning Specialist
Onboarding Coordinator
Customer Education Specialist
Project and Program Coordination
Could include:
Project Coordinator
Program Coordinator
Operations Coordinator
Implementation Coordinator
Production Coordinator
Records and Asset Management
Could include:
Records Coordinator
Digital Asset Coordinator
Documentation Specialist
Data Integrity Specialist
Compliance Coordinator
Community Engagement
Could include:
Community Engagement Coordinator
Outreach Coordinator
Partnerships Coordinator
Public Engagement Manager
Nonprofit Program Coordinator
Customer Experience
Could include:
Customer Experience Specialist
Client Services Coordinator
Member Services Manager
Guest Experience Manager
Customer Success Associate
You do not need to decide, “I am officially becoming a Digital Asset Manager.”
You can decide:
“Digital Asset Management looks interesting enough that I’m going to investigate it.”
Much lower stakes.
Much easier to act on.
Step 5: Research Before You Apply
Once you have two or three possible career paths outside museums, resist the urge to immediately start firing off applications.
First, collect some information.
For each job family:
Try three to five different search terms.
Save five to ten interesting job postings.
Look for repeated skills, tools, responsibilities and qualifications.
Notice what sounds exciting.
Notice what sounds boring.
Notice what makes you immediately say, “Absolutely not.”
You are not wasting time because you aren't applying yet.
You are doing market research.
You may discover that the scary qualification you thought every employer required appears in only one posting.
You may find that a tool you've never used appears in nine out of ten.
You might realize you've already done 70% of the work — you just called it something different.
Or you may discover that a career path that sounded great in theory is deeply uninteresting once you read the actual job descriptions.
All of that is useful information.
Do You Need Another Degree to Leave Museums?
Maybe.
But please don't enroll in another degree program before checking whether you actually need one.
Museum professionals are very, very good at acquiring degrees.
Sometimes more education is absolutely the right answer.
Sometimes it is an extremely expensive way to avoid the uncomfortable part where you start applying.
Before enrolling, look at real job postings and ask:
Is this credential actually required?
Is it preferred or simply common?
Would a certificate accomplish the same thing?
Could I learn the relevant software independently?
Is there a smaller skill gap I could address instead?
Build the evidence first.
Then decide whether education is actually necessary.
You Don't Have to Start at the Bottom
Career changers often assume moving outside museums means becoming entry-level again.
Not necessarily.
You might be new to an industry, but that does not erase your professional experience.
If you've spent eight years managing projects, supervising staff, resolving problems, working with stakeholders, managing budgets and making judgment calls, those years don't disappear because your next employer isn't a museum.
You may need new terminology.
You may need to learn a new system.
You may need some industry context.
But you are not suddenly a person with zero professional experience.
Separate your level of experience from your familiarity with a particular industry.
That distinction can completely change the types of roles you're willing to consider.
Your Museum Experience Already Counts
If you're considering leaving the museum field, your first task is not to find the one perfect career that proves everything you've done until now was worthwhile.
You don't need to know exactly where you're going.
Start smaller.
Ask:
What do I want to keep?
What am I ready to leave behind?
What kinds of work have I actually been doing?
Where else do organizations need those functions?
Then pick two or three directions and investigate them.
Your next career doesn't have to erase your museum career.
It can build on it.
You are not starting over. You are learning how to translate.
Ready for the Next Step?
Once you identify a few career directions, the next problem usually becomes:
“Okay…how do I make my museum resume make sense for these jobs?”
A resume written for another museum may not communicate your value to an employer hiring for project coordination, customer success, learning and development, operations, records management or another field entirely.
That's why I created De-Museumify Your Resume, my self-paced course and job search toolkit for museum and GLAM professionals.
It walks you through how to identify your transferable skills, dissect job postings, translate museum-specific language, write stronger resume bullets and tailor your resume without rebuilding it from scratch every single time.
👉 Learn more about De-Museumify Your Resume here.
And if you're still at the “I don't even know what to search for” stage?
Watch the Beyond Museums: Finding Your Next Career Direction webinar above and start with the Career Direction Filter.
You don't need your entire career figured out today.
You just need to know what you're going to investigate next.
