The Muggle Résumé

I heard a great expression the other day on the Twitterverse. Muggle résumé. In the Harry Potter novels, a non-wizard is called a Muggle. Living costs money, so sometimes we ~~wizards~~ musicians have to get Muggle jobs where we apply some of our non-wizard skills. Our music résumé will be full of wizardry like species counterpoint (that’s our version of Defense Against the Dark Arts), and our Muggle résumé … won’t.

At first, the idea filled me with panic. What would happen if I ever needed to make a Muggle résumé? I can’t do a single useful thing!

Then while reading Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’s bestselling book, Designing Your Life, I was surprised to learn that only 27% of people end up in the field they majored in at university.

27. That made me feel a lot better about the statistics for music graduates.

It turns out I’d naively thought that a degree in a STEM field was a pipeline to a job in that field, but a quick conversation with some STEM faculty friends confirmed that it doesn’t. “A degree in computer science is still a liberal arts degree,” one friend told me. “You have to be really good at the subject to be considered for a good job, and having the degree certainly doesn’t guarantee anything.”

I felt very foolish. Then I resolved to store up this information for the next time I’m talking career choices with the worried parents of potential music students. (“But wouldn’t it be more sensible for Jayden to study mechanical engineering?” “Well, according to the experts, only 27%….” etc. etc.)

As I read further and further through this incredible work, I found myself wishing that it had existed when I was an undergraduate, passionate about music but a little lost in terms of career-building. By applying the principles of design to career counseling, Burnett and Evans show us how we can find new passions and unexpected pathways in our professional lives. This is a seriously exciting worldview.

Burnett and Evans helped me realize that musicians have all sorts of Muggle skills. Quite aside from the practical and theoretical aspects of music-making, a Muggle résumé could include the following:

Events administration (venues, schedules, equipment, personnel)
Business administration (all those hard sums, spreadsheets, and tax returns have made us pretty much business skills ninjas)
Project management (organizing your own concerts and recordings, anyone?)
Mediation and negotiation of all kinds (all those years of figuring out how to talk to people in rehearsals in a way that makes them not hate you forever!!)
Public speaking
Communications (we’ve all written press releases, copy for our websites, program notes….)
Social media management (from our years and years of relentless self-promotion that some might say bordered on narcissism, lol)
Technology (recording technology, video technology, all the software and hardware we have to know how to use for our jobs)

When you think about it from a different viewpoint, you realize just how many skills, both “hard” and “soft,” we all amass on our career journeys. My own career has changed a lot over the nine years I’ve been in my current position, and quite a lot of the changes happened because of my own discoveries of new interests, such as (shameless plug) coding, directing a kids’ music program, writing articles for Strings, and directing an early music festival. None of those things were in my job description when I showed up in 2010. None of them directly involve playing the cello. And I love every minute of all of them, even the part where I have to send out millions of documents and emails, because that involves nerdy software and I find that sort of thing fun.

It’s quite freeing, really, to realize how many paths and options you have, and that you aren’t stuck doing same old same old. If you haven’t read this amazing book, buy it right now. This minute. You’ll be happy you did.