Want to Work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History? Now's Your Chance.

This week, I'm celebrating three years on the job as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. This spring marked a big conceptual shift for me and the museum. We are now squarely out of turnaround and into growth mode. In three years, our attendance has tripled, we've built a solid financial footing, and our involvement in the community has increased. But there's still plenty of work to do.

We spent three years doing more with less. Now, we're ready to make the investment to do more with more.

What does that mean? Most significantly, we are adding three full-time positions to our team. That's a big jump for an existing staff of twelve.

We are now hiring three new positions:

• Curator of Exhibitions, to animate our exhibitions in partnership with artists, community organizations, and residents
• Community Programs Coordinator, to deepen our partnerships with diverse organizations throughout Santa Cruz County *must be bilingual (Spanish)
• Director of Development and Communications, to build resources for this work and accelerate our impact 

Each of these people has an important and complex problem to solve. Our Curator will lead the way in bringing together professional artists and non-artist participants in the development of powerful exhibitions. Our Community Programs Coordinator will deepen the one-off relationships we form with many different visitors and groups throughout the community, bridging connections among them. Our Director of Development will be a close partner to me and a strategic weaver of inclusion, participation, and fundraising.

It's really important to us to find amazing people, and we know they can come from anywhere. For us, staff diversity means variation in work background and perspective as well as demographics. We've found the best way to attract diverse people is to change the way we approach necessary job qualifications. We try to minimize requirements of very specific degrees or experiences that might block talented people from applying. Instead, we focus on qualifications that are based in how you approach your work and what you are able to do.

To assess these less resume-friendly qualifications, we develop tailor-made job applications to the attributes and abilities needed for particular roles. Applications demonstrate how you respond to diverse scenarios and tasks. We've found that these applications give us much better information than a resume and letter alone. It helps us understand a bit about how you work and think. And it demonstrates your committed interest in the role.

If you think that you are the right person for one of these jobs--or if you know the right person--I hope you will check out the job descriptions and consider applying. Also, today's the last day to apply for summer internships. Thanks in advance for spreading the word.