geographers:

getting jobs
planning careers
at work

job search

and career development

... ideally

Ideally, "job search" is one small part of your life-long career development process, and you probably started it sometime before you decided on your major. Ideally, your choice of major is related to your goals for your life and work, as well as your strengths and qualities, and they are mutually interactive and supportive.

Ideally, you started at least the "backwards" thinking of this process as part of deciding your major. Sometime, ideally during your sophomore year or earlier, you continued the process by investigating jobs that contain the kind of work you want to do, to identify the skills and qualities necessary and to consider how they match with your own strengths and goals.

A little research will help you find job titles of other geography graduates, and then you may want to spend a bit of time among the employment ads, looking for similar job titles (but just the ones you are interested in), which will tell you what the requirements are for that kind of work. Ideally, you would begin shaping an idea of the coursework you would need in your major to get a basic understanding of the knowledge, skills and abilities you'll need to handle those jobs.

Ideally, you also will have investigated your own strengths, skills and goals, and will have started a portfolio collection that focuses on your learning within the geography major. (The sooner you start, the more examples of your learning-work you will have to show a potential employer and the better you'll be able to articulate your abilities.)

Ideally, you will have been looking around to see what organizations do the kind of work you want (a good test of your Web search skills). You might even have checked the Websites of some of those organizations to see if they employ people under the job titles you discovered. At least by the beginning of your junior year, you would (ideally) have contacted some of those organizations to tell them that you are very interested in that kind of work (and at least minimally qualified), and to ask if they have internships.

If they have internships, you would have asked for information on their application process (and you would have applied immediately, using a resume in which you matched your skills with their requirements). If they haven't had interns, you would have asked if they would like to consider setting up an internship, because you have a number of skills that could help them and you'd like an opportunity to test your skills, thus it could be a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Ideally, you would be prepared for the internship because you knew what skills would be needed (and you would have planned far enough ahead to finish the necessary coursework). During the internship, you would have reflected on and learned more about the work and about yourself (what you liked and what you didn't about the kind of work you are preparing for), and you would have would been able to make adjustments in your senior course selection to better prepare for your future work. Of course, you would have added more material to your portfolio collection.

Because of that planning and insightful preparation, you would be the ideal candidate for the organizations doing the kinds of work you want to do. You also would have developed solid relationships with professionals working in the field because, during your internship, you would have learned who is doing what kind of work in what organizations, and they would have come to know and respect you as an aspiring professional. Most likely, they would be pleased to help by telling you when jobs they knew of were coming open, and by telling their colleagues who have open jobs that you were available.

As part of the ideal process, too, you would have developed a resume that clearly shows the match between your skills and the requirements of the work you want to do. And, you would have developed a focused career portfolio, drawn from your larger portfolio collection, that clearly demonstrates that you have significant knowledge, skills and abilities in the kind of work that you want to be hired to do. Finally, you'll be able to articulate your skills and your goals to everyone (an interviewer, your 80-year-old aunt, your 10-year-old cousin and, most important, to yourself).

Geographers:

getting jobs
planning careers
at work