Career Growth
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Introduction[edit | edit source]
In the ECPN Webinar Beyond the Portfolio: Your Conservation Career, Conservator Suzanne Davis offered advice on applying for fellowships and jobs, developing your career after graduate school, and negotiating salary.
Finding Opportunities[edit | edit source]
The Wiki page on Internships and Fellowships has an overview of how to find employment and training opportunities. This includes a list of websites and email listservs where positions are posted.
Negotiating Compensation[edit | edit source]
It is important to understand the complete compensation package for an employment opportunity, as well as the potential for advancement (e.g. position title and salary increases may be regulated by the institution). Compensation includes monetary and non-monetary components, such as salary and bonuses; vacation, sick leave and holidays; health insurance; and other benefits, such as access to or discounts on specific services, contributions to retirement funds, parking and transit, financial support for professional development opportunities, etc. Some components of a compensation package may be negotiable, while others are standardized across an institution and non-negotiable.
The overview report of FAIC’s 2014 Compensation Research is a useful resource for emerging professionals who are searching for employment opportunities or entering salary negotiations. Since 2015, the ECPN Officers have been compiling and generating ECPN Compensation Spreadsheets on fellowships and internships to supplement the FAIC's research survey. The purpose of collecting this data is two-fold: to increase transparency about typical fellowship/internship earnings and to provide a useful resource for early-career professionals.
Other ECPN initiatives include the "Making the Ask: Developing Negotiation Tactics in the Field of Conservation" workshop, "Professional Advocacy through Museum Unionization" webinars coordinated in partnership with the Philadelphia Area Conservation Association (PACA), and "Your Conservation Career: Negotiating Your Next Salary" blogpost by Suzanne Davis.
Additional Resources[edit | edit source]
The ICON blogpost "Things I Wish I Knew in My First Year as a Conservator" by Leanne Tonkin includes a personal perspective and lessons learned in the first few years out of graduate school. For additional reflections on this topic, check out ECPN's article "Changing Horizons: Observations from Emerging Conservation Professionals," found in the Introduction section of the Getting Started in Your Career page.
