Frequently Asked Questions
How long has the Museum Employment Resource Center been in existence?
What can you tell me about your site visitation?MERC has been posting jobs for museums and other cultural resource organizations since March, 1996. We are the oldest such service on the internet and received our three millionth visitor on January 5th, 2011.
MERC uses Urchin 5.7 to track its site visitation.
The information listed below is a summary of the 4 week period from October 2 through October 29, 2011.
Total Visitors (unique sessions) - 37,511 (1,339.67 per day)
Total Site Page Views - 79,378 (2,834.92 per day)
During the period listed above, visitors came to the Museum Employment Resource Center via links placed on 751 other job or cultural resource-related websites. (Over 1,300 website links to MERC exist, but only visits from 10/2 to 10/29 were counted for this summary.) Being a web presence for 15 years adds up to quite a bit of exposure.
Between 10/2 and 10/29, MERC was visited by people in 55 different countries. Most of our visitors were from North America and northern Europe. However, a large number of people from other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Australia, China, India, and Mexico, to name a few, also visited our site.
Why do you charge only $29 when other cultural resource job listing services charge up to $450?Love statistics? Okay, in addition 21.01% of our visitors were using Internet Explorer, 20.56% were using Firefox, and 12.60% were using Safari.
Why don't you have an office phone?To be honest, placing information on the internet is not rocket science. We believe the fee we charge is reasonable for covering staff time and current overhead costs. We also take pride in the fact that a small city or county museum with a staff of two can afford to list its job openings on MERC right next to a large urban institution with hundreds of employees.
Why don't you allow graphics in job listings?MERC communicates entirely through e-mail to keep our overhead down. With e-mail, we can receive and answer questions just about anywhere in the world and we don't have to pay someone to sit next to a phone. This allows us to charge a low posting fee and still make a profit.
Do you track how many jobs are successfully filled after being listed on MERC?The technology for placing graphics in ads is simple, but downloading graphics to your computer when you visit a website slows the process down - especially if you don't have high speed internet access. We don't post graphics in ads because we want all our visitors to have the quickest page download times possible.
Why do you use PayPal to process credit cards?We do not. Since job applicants communicate directly with employers listing jobs, we have no way of tracking such information. However, anecdotal evidence and feedback from those who post jobs with us suggest a very high success rate.
Do you make any of the information you gather in the course of business available to others?Again, it's all about keeping down our overhead. Establishing a secure website that can safely process credit cards can include several additional monthly fees. PayPal charges us one small transaction fee and no monthly fees. PayPal is the world's largest online payment service with over 56 million member accounts worldwide. It's also secure. The company uses 128-bit encryption with one of the best user information protection systems in the world.
Do you post more than museum jobs?No.
Still have questions? Let us know! questions@museum-employment.comYes, we have listed jobs for a variety of cultural resource organizations: visitor centers, zoos, arts organizations, archive centers, exhibit design firms, research centers, botanic gardens, and many others.
The last update to this page was 1-02-12.
