Illinois Association of Museums - Finding Your Unique Edge — How to Stand Out in the Museum Job Market

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Finding Your Unique Edge — How to Stand Out in the Museum Job Market

21 May 2025 8:23 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

By: David Bellm, Illinois Association of Museums Volunteer

Museum careers typically aren’t the kind of thing people just stumble into. They require focus, discipline, and patience to build the right skills and credentials. While that can be said about many professions, museum jobs often attract a disproportionately large number of energetic, motivated, and highly talented candidates.

In this competitive environment, it’s not enough to simply be qualified. You need to find a unique way of standing out, going beyond the basic requirements. To do so, you must develop your "edge" — a set of strengths, qualifications, values, and experiences that make you unique and, therefore, potentially more valuable to organizations that require such qualities.

In this article, we’ll explore ways you can cultivate your own professional edge and apply it to not only strengthen your career but also to shape a trajectory that brings you more satisfaction and joy from your work.

Identify Your Strengths

Start by taking an honest inventory of your own strengths. What skills do you have that stand out? Don’t limit yourself to broad categories or standard industry labels for this assessment. It’s often hard to objectively see where the gold lies in your own day-to-day work, so a great place to begin is by asking yourself the following questions:

What do others often ask for your help or ideas on?
What aspects of your work feel “effortless” to you?
What do co-workers most often compliment or praise you for?

Next, think about how those strengths can be sharpened and enhanced for greater impact in your role or department. This is a good time for some brainstorming. Consider all the possible ways you could apply those unique strengths to specific situations that arise in your organization.

Image Credit: RDNE-Stock Project

Combine and Focus for Specialization

Many organizations, particularly smaller ones, rely heavily on people who are known for doing a lot of things well — generalists. However, these renaissance men and women were likely hired for a very specific role and then expanded their work after they joined. In nearly every field, specialists are more respected, valued, and sought after than generalists.

A great way to begin identifying your unique specialization is by looking at what you do. Inventory your interests, experiences, and training, then combine those with skills that align with the needs of museums. This can be expressed as a formula. For example:

Digital media + art history = tech-integrated curation
Public programming + social media = digital community engagement

Either of these could evolve into valuable specialties. The possibilities are endless. As long as you keep an eye on the needs of museums and work towards those demands, this approach can be extremely effective.

Refine Your Edge Through Passion and Enjoyment

While brainstorming possibilities for your strengths and specialization formula, it’s also important to consider what you genuinely enjoy doing. It can be easy to talk yourself into pursuing something that sounds valuable but doesn’t excite you. While it’s great to find a specialization that’s in demand, it won’t matter much in the long run if you don’t enjoy it.

Don’t dismiss enjoyment as a frivolous aspect of your career. Getting pleasure and satisfaction from your work boosts performance, creativity, and energy, all of which are crucial for building a strong career edge.

Enjoyment is also one of the best indicators of what you excel at. When was the last time you truly cherished doing something you struggled with? It usually doesn’t work that way. Instead, you’ll likely find that the tasks you enjoy are the ones you have an innate gift for. So, eliminate any possible specialties or combinations that don’t excite you.

You can’t talk yourself into this. It has to come from the heart.

Build a Personal Brand That Aligns with Your Edge

The goal of branding is to create an instantly recognizable impression that people will associate with you and your work. As any marketer will tell you, branding isn’t just about self-promotion. At its core, it’s about building a sense of trust and dependability in the people who encounter you. They’ll know what you stand for, remember it, and reach out when they need that particular combination of attributes.

Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to communicate your professional brand. Start by sharing content, opinions, and ideas online. Social media is the obvious place for this, but don’t overlook blogs, email newsletters, and other platforms. Additionally, participate in relevant conversations by engaging in public forums like panels and conferences. If you’re comfortable with public speaking, in-person presentations at conferences are still one of the best ways to build your career brand.

Just make sure that the content you produce and share aligns with the niche you've developed. At the same time, work on your storytelling skills. They’re the foundation of so many things in the museum world, and this is no exception.

Image Credit: Henri Mathieu-Saint-Laurent

Be Authentic in Your Approach

As you begin to develop and refine your career edge, you may feel tempted to try and perfect it. But discovering and nurturing your unique skills, experience, and specialty is a lifelong process. It’s never truly finished. Besides, perfection isn’t as ideal as it may seem. When people, organizations, or brands become too polished, they can come across as aloof and unapproachable. Today, people often distrust things that are too perfect, wondering what truth is being hidden behind the squeaky-clean image.

Instead, aim to create authentic, deeply honest expressions of who you are. This isn’t about being perfect; it’s about being yourself. By doing so, you invite others into your world, confident they’re seeing the real you.

Seek Out Mentorship and Feedback

As you progress, it’s important to get feedback from others. Ideally, you’ll have built a solid core of confidants and collaborators who can be invaluable in helping you find and refine your career edge. By considering others’ perspectives — especially if they don’t always align with your own — you’ll gain tremendous insight into how you’re perceived and what colleagues see as your strengths.

Mentors and colleagues can also open doors to a variety of opportunities to apply your career edge. Stay connected with them and continue sharing how your unique specialty is playing out in your work.

Image Credit: Cottonbro

Continuously Evolve and Adapt

Careers are dynamic journeys. Your edge will evolve over time. New experiences, shifting needs and preferences, and changes in the field will all play a role in shaping your career. This is a good thing. It brings freshness, vitality, and new opportunities.

Keep honing your edge by seizing opportunities to expand your knowledge and credentials. Workshops, industry events, certifications, and advanced degrees are still effective career enhancers. You can further strengthen these efforts by adopting a mindset of lifelong learning, emphasizing open-mindedness, reflection, and adaptation. When combined, these strategies can give you a unique edge that will help you stand out in a crowded field, enabling you to create a career that brings both accomplishment and the rewards you truly deserve.

Sources:

American Alliance of Museums

“Curator Core Competencies”

https://www.aam-us.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/CURATOR-CORE-COMPETENCIES.pdf

Museums Association

“Skills for the Future”

https://www.museumsassociation.org/careers/entering-the-sector/skills-for-the-future/

University of California, Berkeley

“Discover Your Unique Edge to Land the Job You Always Want”

https://hr.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/discover_your_unique_edge_to_land_the_job_you_always_want_now_2021.pdf

Northeastern University

“How To Build a Personal Brand: 10 Tips”