This blog series is derived from live question-and-answer interactions during our running webinar series on career exploration in ecology, hosted by Aaron Stoler and the Private & Public Sector Ecologists Section.
Q: Do you have any tips for getting your foot in the door in the environmental consulting world after graduating from undergrad?
Aaron Stoler: Nowadays, a bachelor’s degree does not qualify you for a job. Instead, a bachelor’s degree qualifies you for minimum-wage internships that give you on-the-ground and in-the-field experience. Those experiences are what qualifies you for a job.
Take a hard look at your career history. Do you have internship experiences? If not, then you need to spend some time doing those lesser-paid internships before launching yourself into a full-time career. I wouldn’t worry too much about advanced degrees right now … focus on the experience. If you do struggle to get internships, then you might consider going back to get a master’s degree. An MS degree is often considered the equivalent of field-experience (most job descriptions will actually say “XXX number of years in the field; may be substituted for a master’s degree).
Aerin Jacob: I agree that the degree alone doesn’t make the qualification, and I’ll add that there are some ecology-related jobs that don’t need a degree – or it could be a non-science degree. Some of my best colleagues in conservation have undergrads in literature, communications, engineering, finance, etc. — it’s how they apply those skills for their particular realm of conservation. If you don’t have direction about where you want to go/what you want to do (which is not unusual!), then in a way you are free to try a whole bunch of stuff and reflect on what you do/don’t like. Join a birding club or a mushroom natural history group, help an ENGO talking to people at a farmer’s market or write a guest blog post about a local area.
Rese Cloyd: There are several positions within local or state government that are open to (even encourage) applicants with not much experience beyond a bachelors. These aren’t the highest paid positions, and some of them may be seasonal rather than year-round, but they are a gateway to getting the experience you’ll need to get a higher-level job (or to figuring out if you want or need to pursue additional study).
Catch the recording of this webinar and plenty of others in the series on our YouTube channel!
