Transitioning from cultural resource management (CRM) archaeology to academia has not been as easy for me as I’d already spent a decade doing CRM before getting hired by a university. This means I’d already gotten used to the rough and tumble world of contract archaeology—going to the field at the drop of a hat, living out of hotel rooms, having clearly defined project areas, budgets, and scopes of work. Sometimes I had to teach co-workers the ins-and-outs of my employer, but most of these folks had already had some sort of field experience. Most had already sacrificed several years of their youth in university classrooms and were trying to prove the world wrong: Yes, you can get paid to do archaeology.
Until getting hired as an assistant professor, I’d never given much thought about all the things we all had to do to get to the point where we’re professional archaeologists. I knew my own story and I knew the stories of some of my close co-workers. They were usually similar in that we decided we loved archaeology enough to bet our livelihoods on it, we ground it out in college, and we were now grinding it out in the CRM industry.
Now, I am an undergraduate archaeology advisor tasked with helping some of our brightest youth figure out if they want to do archaeology for a living and how they can make that dream a reality.
Doing student advising is one of the things I like most about my job because it gives me a chance to encourage folks to go for their dreams. Archaeology is a rare profession. There are not many of us and there are not enough jobs to absorb all the archaeology hopefuls in the United States. Transitioning from college to CRM is not easy and most university professors have never had to make that transition, although that is slowly changing. CRM is where most archaeology students are going to work once they finish college, so I do my best to help them get prepared to go into that field, especially at the undergraduate level.
Undergraduate anthropology students are the grist for the CRM industry. They are where the vast majority of all archaeologists in the United States come from. This is where the pathway towards being an archaeology careerist begins. When I talk to undergraduates, it seems like universities are not doing a good job at career placement in for anthropology students. It’s almost as if universities don’t know what anthro majors do after graduation. And, the career center is woefully deficient at getting students placed with CRM companies. That’s where I come in.
Over the past couple years, I’ve met with dozens of students, many of whom are trying to figure out how to break into CRM because they’ve heard that this is where most American archaeologists work. There are several tips I give them based on their individual life circumstances and education goals but I thought I’d like to write an open letter to undergraduate archaeology students who are interested in doing archaeology as a career:
Dear esteemed student,
It’s great to meet you and to learn that you are interested in becoming an archaeologist. I meet so many adults who tell me they wanted to become archaeologists when they grew up but they never did it. I guess they never grew up.
Archaeology is an interesting career but it is not like you probably think it is. There are benefits and drawbacks to pursuing a career in archaeology; however, if you’re anything like I was when I was an undergraduate, you are probably not going to heed any warnings and will only listen to the advice that will help you become an archaeologist. This is because you are following your dream. I hope my advice will help you on your quest.
Before we get into the whole creative visualization exercise I ask all aspiring archaeologists to do, I’m going to focus on how you can get through your college degree and position yourself to get a job as an archaeologist. Most archaeologists in the United States work in the cultural resource management industry, which means they work for government agencies or private companies helping clients comply with historic and environmental preservation regulations. CRM is a complex industry. There are lots of different things CRM archaeologists do for a living that do not involve digging or artifacts. I’m not going to lie—it is not easy to make a living doing CRM but, as I write while sheltering-in-place during the COVID-19 pandemic, I think we can all agree that no job is sacred or permanent. If you want to be a professional archaeologist in the United States, I believe it is best to position yourself to get a job in CRM.
You will have to get a college degree for any CRM company or government agency to take you seriously and hire you long-term. A Bachelor’s degree from an accredited university is the base education required to get an entry-level position in CRM. A Master’s is pretty much required for a long-term position. This means you need to complete your undergraduate education in a position that you can either get hired to do CRM or successfully get accepted to a graduate program (I recommend a Master’s for most undergraduate students. Going for your PhD is a whole other ball of wax).
Traditional universities are set up in four-year structure, meaning students fall within four principal tiers based on how many classes they’ve completed. This roughly corresponds to years spent in college but there are always outliers who finish faster or take longer to complete.
What you have to do to put yourself in a good position to become a professional archaeologist after graduation? That’s a good question. Here are some suggestions for what you can expect and what you should be thinking about based on my own experience as a former college student, CRM archaeologist, and college professor:
Freshman Year: Learn how to be an adult, deal with bureaucracy, and get sh*t done
In case you haven’t learned, American universities are public-private corporations. A basic education is free in the United States, but you have to pay for the education that comes with a college degree. Universities get some of their money from the government, some more from wealthy donors, and more of it from students. The state-donor-student ratio differs widely between institutions. Public universities are not supposed to make money, but they definitely take money.
Your university provides a space for you to demonstrate some of your abilities. Your grades are considered a proxy for your intelligence and the degree is a proxy for your ability to continue working towards a single goal through all the difficulties you will face inside and outside the classroom. Perseverance and a demonstration that you have above average intelligence is why employers are willing to hire you after graduation. This is what a college degree shows them.
The biggest thing you need to learn from the college experience in your freshman year is how to navigate a needlessly complicated, expensive, illogical bureaucracy to get something you want (i.e. a degree). To do this, you will need to do hundreds of assignments delegated down from professors, lecturers, and graduate student teaching assistants who will evaluate your ability to follow instructions, deliver the product they expect, and do it without too many complications. Your grades mainly reflect your ability to do this. If you do this well enough for long enough in the right sequence, you will get an undergraduate degree.
It is very true that college prepares you for life but it is untrue that college will prepare you for the specific positions you will take in the working world. The ability to get sh*t done on time within the expected parameters without too much complaining and making too many mistakes is what your employer will expect after you finish college. It’s what the government and society expects from you. This is what you will face every day of your life after graduation. This is part of what it means to be an adult in the United States.
This does not mean you should not push for change. I believe the meaning of life as a human being is to help others live fulfilling lives and to live in equanimity with each other and with the natural world. The world is full of injustice. There are millions of people that could use our help and there are myriad ways we can help others. It is our duty to devote at least part of our lives to productive change that helps someone other than ourselves. All of us thrive with just the right amount of adversity in life. Trying to help others can give you that adversity and help you feel like you are living a worthwhile life. You can do some of this in college, just don’t expect the university to give you a degree for it. The outside world respects leadership, advocacy, and ability. If you accomplish something extraordinary as a college student, the world will take notice. It might not reward you, but someone will definitely take notice. I can only hope what we notice makes a positive change in the world.
College says its about making change but it’s really about making a little bit of change. The massive changes we need as a society will come from ordinary, everyday people and businesses all around the world. Universities will only be a part of what we all need to reach equanimity, fight climate change, and address inequality. How many college professors and university provosts are building life-changing technologies, innovative businesses, or leading cultural movements that are making substantial change in the world? Some are. Most aren’t. That’s just reality. You will be trying to please both the impact-makers and the bureaucrats to get your degree.
ProTip: Is college for you? Your freshman year shouldn’t really even be about archaeology. You should be thinking about whether or not college is for you. Can you do this for the next 4-5 years of undergrad? Are you willing to spend $60,000+ going after a degree? Can you take even more this as a graduate student? Are you the kind of person who can even be an employee?
If you don’t think you can handle college, drop out. College will be there when you’re ready. You could always go to technical school or start your own business. You could live in a van or yurt until you achieve FIRE. Perhaps, you’ll be the kind of person who can live an excellent life without a college degree. Try it and if it doesn’t happen go back to college and get a degree.
You can do whatever you want with your life but CRM companies and government agencies are probably not going to hire you to be an archaeologist without a college degree. But, you don’t have to be a professional archaeologist to do archaeology. You can always volunteer at archaeology sites and visit museums to get your archaeology fix. Like I said, if college is not for you, go serve others and make change in the world some other way. It’s better to figure that out sooner rather than later.
Sophomore Year: Do you really want to be an archaeologist? Okay, you’ve decided you will keep going to college. After the first year, it’s time to get serious about school. If you come back for more, you will need to be serious about pursuing your degree. The university will keep taking your money for as long as you can keep raising it. Once you decide you’re going to get a degree, it’s best to plow through as efficiently as possible because every hour in the classroom is costing you hundreds of dollars.
This means you will need to start giving some serious thought about finishing your university’s anthropology or archaeology program. What classes will you need to take to finish your degree? What’s your timeline for finishing them? Don’t overload yourself unless you absolutely have to because that leads to burnout and an unfinished degree. Likewise, don’t put off required courses to a later date because that date may never come. Sketch an outline of the courses you need to take and when you plan on taking them over the next 3–4 years.
This is also the time for you to start thinking about which faculty you want to build a relationship with. Which professors or scholars are doing research that excites you? Which professors do you think are cool (They don’t have to be archaeology profs)? Is there a site you read that you want to know more about? Is there an archaeologist somewhere in the world that is studying that site? If so, how can you get in contact with them? You don’t need to know what you are going to do with the rest of your life but you should start thinking about what aspect of archaeology fascinates you and what do you need to do to wrestle a degree out of your university’s hands.
ProTip: Go into the field, get into a lab. If you’re really serious about doing archaeology, I think you need to get some experience doing it as soon as you can. You should be thinking about doing an archaeological field school or working in an archaeologist’s lab by your sophomore year because it would be a travesty for you to get multiple years into a degree in something you discover you hate.
Field schools are competitive and are not all created equal. You need to know if your university does a field school, when it’s happening, who’s teaching it, where it will be, and what they will be researching. If they don’t have a field school, is your university willing to accept college credit from field schools administered by other institutions. If they don’t accept the credits, you need to think about whether or not you want to pay for something that doesn’t count towards your degree. It is also a good idea to think about finding a way to intern in a professor’s lab. Working in an academic lab is a good way to learn what archaeologist do when they’re not digging (FYI: Outside of CRM, 95% of archaeology is data/artifact analysis and writing).
You do not need a field school to work in CRM, but most CRMers went to field school. It is still considered a training ground for archaeologists and a rite of passage. Many CRMers consider field school job training so it’s something you need to seriously consider.
I recommend students start looking into field school and lab internships as sophomores because there is no guarantee you will be accepted the first time you apply, so applying early in your academic career so you have time to reapply to the field school you want. Also, you still have multiple years of college in case you want to change your major without it impacting your finances too heavily. Finally, a good field or lab experience can be the fuel to keep you going for years to come. You will need inspiration to get past all the naysayers who will try and dissuade you from going into archaeology.
Junior Year: What is it like to be a professional archaeologist. By your third year in college, you should be more than half way through an undergraduate degree. Barring any major life changes, your junior year is where you might start seriously thinking about pursuing a career in archaeology. You should have started connecting with some professors on or off-campus or reached out via email and Skype/Zoom/Google etc. to learn more about their research. There should be some burning question, archeological culture, site, author, technology, etc. that you are really keen on learning more about. And, you should thoroughly understand what its like to go to college— the bureaucracy, professors’ expectations, capriciousness of grad student TAs, how you can get by without buying books, how deeply you need to skim read each article to make it seem like you did your homework… You know, all the tricks of being a college student.
Your junior year is when you really need to start shifting your mindset towards getting a job after graduation. I mentioned before that CRM isn’t easy to break into. It takes a lot of effort to get your first jobs in CRM. The sooner you start working towards this goal, the sooner you will land a job after graduation.
There are two main factions that hire CRM archaeologists— government agencies and private companies. Due to the way these two factions are administered, you will need to take different approaches to get them to hire you.
Getting hired by the government: It is a long, tedious, and complicated process to getting hired by a government agency. Federal agencies like the National Park Service and Forest Service hire archaeologists through their online portal USAJobs.org. State and local agencies hire through their own individual online portals. For example, CalTrans, the state of California’s Department of Transportation, hires archaeologists through their own online hiring website, as does California State Parks.
Each government agency will clearly state the required qualifications for each applicant on the job posting. They will only interview candidates who have those qualifications because they have very structured hiring restrictions. Once a job post is created, candidates need to hire folks who meet those qualifications. There is little wiggle room for friends and acquaintances. Also, government agencies use applicant tracking software that will weed out any application package that doesn’t clearly list all the required qualifications. In some cases, agencies will also require archaeologists to pass some sort of test and the score of that test, in conjunction with your qualifications, will be used to determine if you even get an interview! All of this takes time, so don’t expect to get hired by the government in a hurry.
While it takes a lot to get hired, government archaeology jobs are among the most stable. The most successful career archaeologists in the government took advantage of internships and other programs designed to get new recruits. Government archaeologists also tend to get their start in an undesirable unit, like a small, remote park, and work their way up throughout their career making lateral moves until landing a position in a more desirable forest or park.
The key to becoming a government archaeologist is learning what qualifications you need to get the job you want. It will be a combination of education and experience, so your junior year is a good time to get “in the know” so you can get where you want to be. To get this information, read government archaeology job postings to see what they’re looking for and reach out to some government archaeologists so you can learn more about what type of folks they’re hiring and what the job outlook is in their agency.
Getting hired by CRM companies: CRM companies are a comparatively easier nut to crack. Some of the largest CRM corporations use applicant tracking software but it is much easier for you to circumvent those systems by building a good relationship with folks who work for that company. It is not easy to land archaeology work with a CRM company without a college degree, but CRM companies are the only places where I’ve ever seen this happen. On CRM projects, I’ve worked with a few archaeologists who only had a high school diploma and were excellent in the field. I’ve never seen this happen with a government agency.
CRM companies value archaeologists for their skills, abilities, and knowledge, regardless of how that individual got those attributes. Every company has qualifications they are looking for in their dream candidate but they are more than willing to settle on someone they think will help them with their primary goal— completing projects on budget. A CRM company will want someone who knows their sh*t at GIS even if they don’t have a Bachelor’s degree in geography. They will let projects be led by someone with a Juris Doctorate degree (JD) rather than a Master’s in anthropology as long as that individual has proven themselves in the field and for the company. This means you can do side projects that demonstrate your abilities and make connections with CRM archaeologists that could actually lead to getting you a job before you’ve finished your degree. You will need a degree to keep your job but it is possible to get a start before you’ve completed that degree.
The problem with CRM companies is the work is fickle, especially at the entry-level. Companies need new-hires when they need them and aren’t afraid of letting them go when they’re no longer needed. While it is easier to get hired in commercial CRM, it is harder to keep your job long-term until you’ve built up your resume and professional network. Even then, there are no guarantees. I recall getting laid off several times even though I had a Master’s and more than 5 years professional experience. Feast or famine is truly the commercial CRM mantra.
The key to getting hired in commercial CRM is being able to convince hiring managers that you can do the job. This isn’t easy without a college degree or evidence of your abilities but it is not impossible. Don’t be afraid to connect with commercial CRMers at conferences or over the internet. Do what you can to make a sincere, friendly connection by telling them you’re a student and want to know what you should do to get hired by a CRM company. Ask them about their career path. How did they do it? What is it like? What’s the market outlook in their area? You should also think about being active in a local archaeological society because that’s where most CRMers can be found. Go to your state’s archaeology conference and start connecting the names of folks who work for CRM companies to their faces. Introduce yourself, watch and listen. This exposure is going to help you later on down the line.
ProTip: You’re gonna need graduate school. If you’ve dedicated this much of your life towards a degree that will help you become an archaeologist, your junior year is when you should start thinking about graduate school.
I can hear you now: “What? Grad School? But, I’m just an undergrad. You just said I don’t even need a degree to do CRM. Now, you’re telling me I need a grad degree? (Insert another panicked statement here).”
It is true you don’t need a college degree to get an entry-level job with a CRM company but you will definitely need an undergraduate degree to keep getting hired. There may be a day when a desperate CRM company gives you a temporary job before you get your Bachelor’s but that’s a long shot. You cannot rely on luck to build a career.
Eventually, you will need a graduate degree in anthropology or a related field to have a solid chance of maintaining a career in CRM archaeology. Why? Because the United States Secretary of Interior has published standards for being considered a professional archaeologist in the United States (https://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/arch_stnds_9.htm). This means companies and government agencies are more willing to keep an archaeologist on staff that meets those requirements because they are officially considered a professional archaeologist and can be permitted to lead projects on state and federal lands. Also, writing a Master’s thesis or PhD dissertation goes way beyond demonstrating that you have above average intelligence. Completing original, independent research project and writing it up in technical format is a major part of every professional archaeologist’s life. It commands a certain level of respect. Finishing grad school is not easy, which is a major reason why CRM companies want folks with that additional tenacity. This is one of the things they do value.
Getting into graduate school is also not easy, which is why I recommend undergrads who are truly committed to a career in archaeology start thinking about it before they finish their Bachelor’s. You will need to have good grades (It’s hard to get into a MA program with less than a 3.0 GPA. Most PhD applicants have a 3.8 or higher from their previous institution). Most importantly, you will need to think about what sort of research you would want to pursue in graduate school. This will shape which universities you apply to and which faculty you’d like to work with.
You do not need to know all of this in your junior year but I recommend it at least be in the back of your mind. Eventually, you will hit a glass ceiling in CRM with your Bachelor’s degree and will need to seriously think about going for a grad degree, staying where you’re at, or getting a grad degree.
Senior: Wrestle a degree from your University’s cold, cold, uncaring hands and graduate into the professional world’s colder, even less caring hands. Your senior year is a time to celebrate. You are about to join the ranks of Americans who have a college degree. Not all of us make it here. In your reflections, I suggest you think about all the things you did to reach this monumental milestone because those are the things that have made you who you are today. I would like to be among the first to congratulate you on making it to the end of the maze.
Your senior year should be filled with finishing the checklist of actions that will improve your chances of getting hired to do archaeology:
- Did you get some sort of lab or field experience?
- Did you contact local CRMers?
- Have you looked at archaeology job postings? Are you aware of what companies and government agencies are looking for?
- Do you have any of the skills or abilities these employers are looking for? If not, do you have a plan to fill those gaps?
Your last year of college is a time when you cross all the “t’s” and dot all the “i’s.” Now is when you need to make sure you’ve fulfilled all your university’s requirements for graduation. Make sure your transcripts are in order and your department knows you’re ready to graduate.
Your senior year is also a good time to start connecting with professional archaeologists. Build on the relationships you made last year or start building them during your senior year. Regardless, it will be much easier to land a CRM job if you know the players in your area and they know you. You will also need to know when internships start, CRM companies will be hiring for projects, and what parts of the country have a decent outlook for CRM archaeologists. This information can be gleaned from your professional network and any professors at your school who have CRM experience.
NOTE: Job prospects, CRM job quantities, and pay rates are not equal across the United States. The western states have lots of federal land and lots of government jobs. States with good environmental and historic preservation laws like California, Washington, New York, and Virginia have more reasons to do CRM; therefore, there are more CRM companies and more CRM archaeologists. States that are provincial in who they hire (like California, Arizona, and New Mexico) are harder to break into but pay higher wages. The southeastern states are hardest to work in. They pay less and CRMers work under rough conditions (ticks galore, humidity, poisonous snakes, weak unemployment laws, etc.), but these might be closer to your home, have lower cost of living, and have very interesting archaeology. The Midwest falls between these extremes. Work conditions and opportunities vary widely between North Dakota and Nebraska.
There are benefits and drawbacks to working in all regions of the country. For example, California==Pros—Strong regulations, lots of companies, higher wages; Cons—Insane cost of living, very provincial hiring environment (i.e. Companies like hiring people from California and seem afraid of hiring people from “Red States”). You could be attracted to CA for the wages but find out you can’t even afford to live in your car in San Diego and the people in your company think you’re a rube because you’re from Austin, Texas. The variation in the CRM industry across the country is why I suggest you maintain an open mind as a student. Be willing to take jobs in several different areas before deciding where you’d ultimately like to settle down. My career took me from Idaho —> Virginia—> Washington State—> Arizona—> California—> the U.S. Virgin Islands. I never thought I’d work in most of those places. Your career is also going to be a braided, meandering path so do not limit yourself geographically when first starting out unless you absolutely have to.
A Note on Senior Honor’s Theses: You don’t need an honor thesis to get into graduate school. You don’t need one to get hired by a CRM company or government agency. An honor’s thesis is commendable, respectable, and an excellent thing to have, but you do not need an undergraduate honor’s thesis to become an archaeologist. I suggest you only do an honor’s thesis on a research project you started at the beginning of your Junior year at the latest. Writing a thesis takes time, especially in archaeology where you need to collect and process data before you can write it up. Don’t make your senior year harder than it needs to be. Don’t do an honor’s thesis unless you’ve already started the research months before your senior year.
ProTip: Start applying for jobs. I think students should start applying for CRM jobs in their senior year, especially if they’ve completed a field school or done some lab work. You will need to practice writing cover letters, resumes, and filling out forms on hiring websites. You might also need letters of reference and other documents to apply for internships. This takes time, so the sooner you start the more practice you will have and the better your reference letters will be.
The best thing about applying before you think you’re ready is you will probably get rejected often. In your career, you are going to hear the word “No” a lot. People are going to tell you no quickly and frequently. You will get turned down for more jobs than you get. Your application package will get lost. An employer is going to hire their unskilled son-in-law to an archaeology field project over other qualified applicants. Someone who applied to that internship on a whim is going to get it over you even though you spent 2 months on your application package. Life is not fair. This stuff happens and there is nothing we can do to control other people’s decisions.
I believe it is good for us to get rejected and turned down in our job search because it makes us resilient. With each “no,” we get tougher and it gets easier to deal with rejection. This is why I think you should apply for jobs you’re even tangentially qualified for during your senior year before graduating. The worst that can happen is they can say “no.” The best that can happen is they will hire you.
MAJOR TIP: DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO GET REFERENCE LETTERS!
DO NOT APPLY FOR A JOB WITHOUT INFORMING YOUR REFERENCES!
A crappy letter is worse than no letter and you are going to get a crappy letter if you ask for one only a few days in advance. I ask for at least 30 days to write a letter and I won’t write one unless I see what the student is writing for their own application package beforehand. Basically, if you aren’t ready to apply 30 days in advance, you’re not really serious about getting this internship. If you’re not serious, why should anyone else be?
Similarly, you are going to get a crappy recommendation if your references don’t even know you’ve listed them on your application. Even worse, you might not get an endorsement at all.
Picture this: A company calls your current boss—the professor managing the lab you’ve been interning at for a couple semesters— looking for a glowing review. They really want to hire you but want to hear from your boss first. The smartphone rings. Your boss doesn’t answer because its an out-of-state number. She blocks the strange number thinking it is another robocall. The employer doesn’t leave a message but calls back again only to see that their number has been blocked. Your key reference never helps you out. You don’t get the job.
Do not let this happen to you. Tell your references when you list them on your application so they can help you out.
That’s a lot of information but you just need to breathe
This letter was written to help you have some sort of path towards achieving your dream job of becoming an archaeologist. I know it sounds like an instruction manual but I want you to think of it as more like a series of well-thought suggestions. The job you are trying to get is very rare and can be very rewarding, but every archaeologist takes a long, braided route along their career path. Archaeologists do not have a single job in their professional lives but, rather, we take a series of different positions at different companies at different times. This is particularly true in cultural resource management where most government archaeologists worked in commercial CRM before landing their agency job and a commercial CRM archaeologists can work for a dozen different companies in different states throughout their career. Most of us also work in other industries when times get tough in CRM.
I wrote a whole book on career-building in CRM (https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Archaeologist-Crafting-Cultural-Management-ebook/dp/B01G4F2RIC). You can read it for free on Kindle Unlimited or pay $8.00 to own it yourself. This book devotes significant time discussing building a career after you’ve gotten into the industry but it doesn’t really talk about what you can do as an undergraduate to prepare for breaking into that career. The excellent book The Anthropology Graduate’s Guide: From Student to Career by Carol Ellick and Joe Watkins is another resource you can use to transition from college to the workplace (https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Graduates-Guide-Student-Career-ebook/dp/B01M0638BC/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Anthropology+graduates’s+guide&qid=1588787623&s=digital-text&sr=1-1). This book can be rented as an ebook for less than $7.00 on Amazon and will go a long way to helping you prepare for entering the CRM archaeology job market.
Now that you’ve read these suggestions, I want you relax. Take a deep breath. If you’re feeling anxious, I want you to focus on those feelings. Where do you feel them in your body? Are they based on imaginary speculation or real observations in the current moment? Are you projecting scary thoughts that you think could happen in the future? Those thoughts are not reality. Are you worrying about things as they are right now or the way you imagine them to be? Focus on the present and be mindful of where your thoughts take you when you do nothing to control them. Panic, worry, and anxiety are all parts of being a human being but so is calmness, introspection, and reflexivity. Focusing on what is happening right now in the present moment will help you minimize the effects of anxiety and help you be more aware of reality rather than the imaginary world in our own minds.
No matter what happens, you will need a job when you finish college. I’m absolutely confident you will find a job because you will need some way to feed yourself and provide shelter. These suggestions were created to optimize your pathway towards getting a job in CRM archaeology, which is a non-traditional industry and will require unconventional thinking to survive. A job is going to happen for you. I just wanted to help you get a job in CRM.
Consider this letter advice from someone who has been in your shoes and has achieved their dream job—someone who wants to help you achieve yours. I didn’t follow any of the advice I gave you in this letter because nobody gave it to me when I was an undergraduate. I had to figure all of this out on my own. I wrote this to encourage you and to let you know it is possible.
Being an archaeologist is your dream. It is your goal. The realities of working in CRM are different than what you think it’s going to be like which is why I suggest you talk to as many CRMers as you can before you graduate. The realities of mixing your dreams with your vocation also complicate the way you think things will be as a professional archaeologist; another reason why you should talk to other archaeologists. As a university student, you should be doing what you can to make the university help you achieve your career goals.
Sincerely,
Bill White
Write a comment below or send me an email.
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