Things No One Told Me About Becoming a Professional Genealogist
Hello there! In case you’re new here, I’m Meryl and I’m a full-time, board-certified professional genealogist. This is my second career; I used to be a writer. Genealogy has turned out to be a wonderful overall fit for me and how I work.
I’ve been hearing from a lot of folks lately who are interested in becoming professional genealogists. Some are unhappy with their current jobs, some are graduating from college, and others have gotten super into genealogy during the pandemic and are wondering about how to turn their hobby into a career. If this is you, welcome!
Before jumping in, let me just say as a caveat, all of the below things are my opinions and based on my personal experiences. There are other genealogists who may—nay, probably—disagree with my opinions or the way that I state those opinions, and that’s understandable. I was inspired to write this post because of similar discussions that are happening in other industries, and that have ultimately been beneficial for a lot of people. I want to fill what I perceive to be a void in the information publicly available to people who are contemplating genealogy as a career.
With that said, read on!
The Good Stuff
Since you’re here, you probably already know many of the good things about being a professional genealogist:
Genealogical research is really fun
It feels nice helping people learn more about their families and, depending on your specialty, themselves
It’s a cool feeling reaching an expert level at something that you began as a hobby
There are a few other good things that you might not know about, like:
If you run your own business, you can set your own work schedule
You work (mostly, but not 100%) from home
Your Ancestry World subscription is a tax-deductible business expense(!)
There are no office politics (again, this is if you run your own business)
The Less Good Stuff
But you’re not here to hear about the good stuff. You wanna know the bad stuff. The stuff no one on the internet will tell you (I should know, I googled it before I wrote this blog post.)
So here it is, the stuff that no one told me about being a professional genealogist (or stuff that people told me a little, but really should have emphasized). My point in this section is not to scare you or dissuade you, but to make sure that if you decide to move forward, you’re going in with some essential information.
Entry Level Doesn’t Exist
When I started thinking about becoming a professional genealogist, I was coming from the film and television industry. Film and television production has a clear organizational structure:
You begin as an intern
Then you hopefully get hired as a production assistant (entry level)
Then promoted to production coordinator and manager (mid-level)
Then finally to production supervisor and/or fully-fledged producer (senior level).
When I finished my genealogical pre-professional program, I expected to find some kind of apprenticeship structure where I could gain proficiency while being mentored by a more experienced genealogist. But there was a problem:
There is pretty much no entry level or on-the-job training in genealogy.
With the exception of a handful of places—the New England Historic Genealogical Society comes to mind—there aren’t many genealogy companies that are going to give you much in the way of on-the-job training. It kind of makes sense: there are so many hobbyists out there, and so many people who want to be genealogists, companies are able to find plenty of highly competent researchers who can hit the ground running from the get-go.
If your goal is to become a professional genealogist, your first task is to bring your research skills up to a professional level ahead of time. You’ll be much more likely to be hired, if you want to work for an employer. You’ll certainly be more successful if you start your own business because you’ll be, you know, competent, which is especially important when you don’t have a more experienced boss looking out for you.
There are great programs to hone your research skills. One of my personal favorites for folks who have done a lot of research and are toying with the idea of going pro is IGHR in Athens, Georgia. It’s a weeklong intensive institute where you take one course for about eight hours a day. Some folks call it summer camp for genealogists.
Course 1 is the best option if you’re anywhere from a total newbie to feeling you’ve mastered Ancestry, but haven’t taken your research into brick-and-mortar repositories yet.
Course 2 is good if you’re familiar with Ancestry and other sites, as well as some offline record types like vital records, but you haven’t dipped your toe into things like probate, land, or military records much. (It’s okay if you’re a little familiar with one or two of them, though.)
By no means will either of these courses alone get you to the point of being at a professional level—that takes years of study!—but they are good starting points if becoming a genealogist is your goal. They teach good research habits, and will introduce you to how the pros do things.
How Much Do Professional Genealogists Make?
Ah, the money stuff. This doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.
An important thing to know about working as a genealogist is that nearly all of us charge by the hour. Hourly rates vary substantially across the country, with genealogists in cities charging more than those in rural areas. Ongoing business expenses are baked into hourly rates; they range from health insurance and sick time to essential work purchases like an Ancestry subscription. If you want to give yourself extra savings for retirement, the way an employer might have a 401(k) program, that comes out of your hourly rate, too.
The average income nationwide for a professional genealogist in the United States is $40,000 per year.
Sounds a little low considering it has to cover all of that baked-in stuff, and it is. Even as a genealogist in an expensive city (NYC), I agree with that general figure. It might even be a little high for rural genealogists.
So how does anybody make a living doing this?
Most people don’t.
How Do You Make a Living as a Genealogist?
A few years ago, one of the industry’s professional organizations did a survey asking how many genealogists have at least one significant source of outside income. “Outside income” could be a spouse’s income, another full-time job, retirement income, investment income, or even something like major rebates or other decreases in living costs (i.e., they don’t pay rent or a mortgage), you get the idea. Almost 100% said yes.
Knowing that the annual income nationwide is only $40,000—which is an entry-level salary in the NYC publishing industry, and is not considered a living wage here—it makes sense that most genealogists do not rely on genealogy alone to support themselves because they literally cannot.
The industry has not been, in my opinion, completely honest with itself about this issue. Literally there used to be a column in one of our industry’s major magazines called, “Yes, You Can Make a Living Doing Genealogy!” It featured a different genealogist who made a living doing genealogy, just to show it was, you know, possible. This was presumably because people who call themselves genealogists were having a hard time believing that you could make a living at it, and to that I say, yeah. (The column didn’t even appear in every issue, for reasons you can probably guess.)
That’s not to say that it isn’t possible to support yourself entirely on genealogy. I do it, and I know a few others who do. It’s a lot of work, and it’s definitely harder in an expensive city, but it’s possible.
I’m mentioning all of this because, when you’re thinking about making your passion into your job, I think it’s good to go in with your eyes open. In the pre-professional program I completed—and loved, by the way!—I was never told that I could work like crazy and only make $40k/year. But now you know!
Legal Stuff
It might not seem obvious—it certainly wasn’t to me—but genealogy comes with a bunch of legal liabilities. I know that might sound boring, but it’s really important if you’re thinking about doing this professionally. (You also have to learn how not to skim large blocks of text in genealogy, because there is usually important stuff in there, so this section is good practice for that.)
I think some things are best explained with examples, so here is a fictional one to get this point across:
A person died, leaving a multimillion-dollar estate and no surviving spouse or children. You are hired by the attorney for the estate to identify the legal heirs, who stand to inherit a lot of money. You identify three living cousins who are entitled to inherit. You write up your findings, present them to the court, and the three cousins split the inheritance.
There is just one problem: there was actually a fourth cousin, and you missed them in your research.
The fourth cousin sues you for being left out of the estate—something you are definitely guilty of—and you lose everything you own.
Again, this example is a real thing that can happen if you embark on a career in genealogy and don’t know what you’re getting into. (There is a version of this example with DNA where someone with not enough experience could potentially identify the wrong perpetrator of a crime and send an innocent person to prison.)
Genealogists who work on estate cases and in investigative genealogy for law enforcement—they are called forensic genealogists—have insurance policies to protect them in case of errors or omissions like in the example I described.
The above are just two of many liability issues that professional genealogists must be aware of and mitigate in their work. There isn’t time to go into liability in-depth here, but if you’re serious about becoming a professional genealogist, there are pre-professional programs that will teach you how to prevent and mitigate situations like the ones I described.
The Other Stuff
I wouldn’t categorize these next few things as bad, just that they are value-neutral, but important things to know.
Licenses and Taxes
Every jurisdiction is different, but it’s important to note that some jurisdictions require genealogists to have Private Investigator licenses and/or collect sales tax. Read up on the regulations in your area before hanging your shingle.
You Can Work For a Larger Company
One way to mitigate some of the issues I described, like legal liability, is to work for a larger company. There are companies (perhaps you’ve seen their commercials) that hire genealogists to work on staff. You still need to be at an expert level research-wise, but you don’t have to concern yourself with setting a livable hourly rate, keeping books, getting your own health insurance, or other administrative stuff that comes along with running a business.
Working for a larger company is an especially good option if you live in a less expensive area, as even salaried genealogists don’t make a ton of money in the United States.
What’s Next
Thank you for getting to the end of this blog post! If you are interested in moving in a pre-professional direction with genealogy, here are a few things I recommend doing before ordering your business cards:
Continue building your research skills at programs like IGHR. After you’ve completed Courses 1 and 2 (or the equivalent), you can move up to Course 3 or programs like the Boston University Genealogical Certificate Program, and after that, one of the industry’s remote study groups. I took both Course 3 and the BU program, and found both to be essential, and many of my colleagues loved their study groups. All three are most beneficial when you’re at an advanced level of study, so don’t skip the prerequisites.
Join a local genealogical society and read the industry’s peer-reviewed journals. These include published examples of some of the best, most complex proof arguments being written today. Get to the point where you can comfortably read and understand articles, including the footnotes.
Read a little book called Genealogy Standards, which outlines the standards for both research and professionalism in the industry. I think it costs about $7, just make sure you’re getting the current edition.
Build good research habits. (The above courses will get you off on the right foot.) Practice your skills by doing free research for friends and extended family. I say “free” and “friends and family” only because “paid” and “for strangers” opens you up to some of the liability issues I mentioned earlier.
See how you like it! A lot of folks find that they feel differently about doing research for others versus themselves. You are not any less talented or capable as a genealogical researcher for not making your living as one. There are professional credentials, like board certification (which I have), which you can pursue, whether or not you ever take clients. I am a (biased) fan because, along with publishing, certification is a great way to see how your skills measure up against the standards of the industry.
Again, this isn’t an exhaustive list of what you need to do to go pro, but your to-do list before going pro should absolutely include all of the above things (with the exception of certification, which you can do at any time).
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