Welcome to our first Gab Bag episode. It's a collection of career questions, situations, and slightly chaotic conversations that come up in our coaching work, our texts to each other, and around the museum field. This time, we’re digging into three very different questions that all come back to the same thing: being more strategic about your career instead of assuming the system knows what’s best for you.

• What to do when your new museum job isn’t the job you thought you accepted. We dissect one real job description and talk about misleading titles, “occasional” weekend work that turns out to be every weekend, and why you may need to get very specific with your supervisor about how your hours are actually supposed to be spent.
• Questions to ask before accepting your next job. What does a typical week look like? How much time is actually spent on each responsibility? How often does “occasionally” really mean? You’re interviewing the organization, too.
• How to spend a professional development budget strategically. Instead of automatically choosing the biggest or shiniest conference, start with where you want your career to go next, identify a skill gap, and ask what kind of training would actually help you close it.
• Why your professional development doesn’t necessarily have to be museum-specific. Project management software, leadership training, marketing, digital tools, database skills, and other transferable competencies can make you stronger in your current museum role and give you more options later.
• Whether LinkedIn Premium is worth it. Our answer: start by asking, worth it for what? Premium may have a useful feature for a specific moment in your job search, but paying for it does not automatically make you a more serious (or more successful) job seeker.

We also discuss avocado toast, DC dating culture, chocolate croissants, and our respective inability to eat lunch on time.

“Shia LaBeouf” Live: Rob Cantor
Yes, this is the video Elin promised to put in the show notes. It features the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, and we will provide no additional context.

Staying in museums?
Alli Schell of Your Museum Career Coach helps museum professionals navigate job searching, career growth, application materials, interviews, and professional development.
Explore Your Museum Career Coach

Exploring careers beyond museums?
Elin Filbey of Deaccessioned Career Coaching helps museum, arts, and culture professionals translate their skills and build careers outside the field.
Explore Deaccessioned Career Coaching

Submit a question for a future episode here.

Follow @CurateYourCareerPodcast on Instagram.