What to do after working for psychopaths

June 26, 2012 7:40 AM

I was made redundant at my company. I've had a few interviews, but I haven't found anything I'm really excited about. What kinds of jobs should I be looking at given my work history?

This was me here. Long story short, I was at a toxic work environment where I was blamed for my superiors' mistakes and told I was terrible at everything. A bunch of other awful things have happened between now and the time I made that post, but they're not important. I was (finally!) given a month's notice -- my supervisor told me she was given the choice to either keep me (the editorial assistant) or hire a new journalist, and she chose the journalist -- which I'm happy about, because working there was destroying my soul. But I feel really soured on the whole publishing/media industry and really don't want to find the same job at another organisation. This is made more complicated by the fact my company's insane policies mean I have no network to fall back on and although I'm an editorial assistant, I was given very little to actually edit. My job is mainly administrative and technical.

My background is:

4 months' (contract) university research assistant (admin work, no research)
2 years' university teaching assistant/tutor
1 year teaching English in Korea
Masters degree in Medieval history (research but no grant application experience)
Current editorial assistant role

I've been looking into university admin, but I feel either I'm over qualified or I don't have the specific admin-related experience they're looking for. I'm not eager to jump back into teaching, and I think I fall short of the requirements for most student services positions.

I'm interested in history/heritage but I have no museum, archives, or conversation background. I have some language skills but nothing good enough to use in a professional capacity. Likewise, I like research but with a Humanities background (and no math skills whatsoever) I don't know what possibilities are out there.

Finally, I don't have the money to go back to school or take an unpaid internship, and I'm in the UK and I'd prefer to stay in the country.

posted by toerinishuman to Work & Money (6 answers total)

Best answer: Look for an administrative job. In this economy it's sort of winsome to be dreaming of a perfect placement. What you want is something where your current skills get your foot in the door, and you have an opportunity to learn more stuff.

I was laid off from a very high paying sales job at The Phone Company in Dec 2008. The absolutel nadir of the recession. I got a job that paid peanuts, but I got to learn a hot new piece of software that made me very marketable. Now I have a great job in a great company, and while the 18 months I was at the other company were less than ideal (culminating in another lay-off) ultimately, I now have a fun job with people I really like.

Widen your horizons, consider working for a very large enterprise. When I first started at the Phone Company, I was a customer service agent. When I left, I was designing data networks for the largest corporations in the US.

You may or may not ever get to use your degree for anything in the world of work, but who cares?

I had to dumb-down my resume a bit to get the Admin gig (I left my MBA off). I recommend tailoring your responses to each position.

Sometimes taking a step or two backwards will propel you further in the long run.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 8:16 AM on June 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

Start a blog. Make it a really, really good one. Not a personal, here's-what-my-relationship-status-is blog — start a quasi-academic, but very voicey, very you blog that explores your interest in history/heritage, ideally on a topic that is very narrow but still offers a lot of room for extrapolation and exploration. Post every day — start small, with link aggregation, and then move bigger in scope (opinion, criticism, research, well-thought-out rants) as you become more confident in your thoughts.

I can't even begin to count the number of people I know who got their jobs thanks to their blogs, in industries ranging from magazines to book editorial to museum curation to fashion design to professional catering. Seriously, I think this is the greatest gift of the internet. You don't need to wait around for someone to show up and pay you to be great — you can go out there and demonstrate your greatness, and people will come to you.

This doesn't solve the making-money question. For that, yeah, go for admin. But this will solve the creating-a-career question — worst case scenario, it'll teach you more about what you don't like.
posted by firstbest at 10:50 AM on June 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have to tell you (from experience) that admin is soul-destroying too if you are overqualified for it. But if you need a paycheque right away, then that may be your best option. Just don't let yourself get stuck in a rut like I did.

If you change your mind about getting back into teaching, see if you can get a training bursary from the Department of Education. You could get up to £20,000 while studying toward a Postgraduate Certificate.
posted by Perodicticus potto at 11:17 AM on June 26, 2012

Another thought - Birkbeck College has an MA/MRES in Museum Cultures that you can study for in the evenings while working during the day. So if you do end up taking a crappy admin job, you could train for something better after hours.
posted by Perodicticus potto at 11:27 AM on June 26, 2012

Best answer: For a while, I was interested in working in museums, so I volunteered at two, and talked with a few people who had paid jobs. One was a small art/design museum, and one was a very large museum with both culture and science wings. Here's what I learned:

- Museums like people with education backgrounds, so the year you spent teaching in Korea might be useful to you, especially if you taught young children. It would be better if you had an actual degree in education, but that might not be an insurmountable obstacle. If you go this route, you'd be working with visitors (mostly young children), leading tours and delivering lessons about the artefacts. One of the museums I worked at hosted a yearly summer camp, and they would sometimes hire counsellors from the volunteering staff.
- This is a very competitive sector. The woman who supervised me at one museum worked part-time for more than ten years before they gave her a full-time job. Positions that were only advertised internally still got hundreds of applicants. If you want to get in through volunteering, you'll need to be a very dedicated, reliable volunteer - and even that's no guarantee that you'll move into a paid position, when one opens up. Pay is low, demand (for jobs) is high, and lots of people are willing to work in museums for free.
- Technically, you "only" need an MA to be a curator. But these days, you really need a PhD to be competitive. And you need to be willing to move where the work is. (Sounds a lot like the academic job market, doesn't it?) One curator told me that there's a big museum boom in Dubai right now.
- I didn't get the sense that "museum studies" degrees were all that valuable.

Anyway, I don't mean to discourage you, but it seems like a rough path to me.
posted by mellifluous at 3:22 PM on June 26, 2012

Response by poster: No, mellifluous, that's actually really useful. I suspected it was something like this but no one I know is in heritage, so I only had my suspicions (and the internet).
posted by toerinishuman at 1:51 AM on June 27, 2012