{"id":20804,"date":"2025-05-27T19:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T19:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=20804"},"modified":"2025-05-29T13:19:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T13:19:19","slug":"ecology-careers-qa-skills-to-build-to-be-competitive-on-the-job-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2025\/05\/27\/ecology-careers-qa-skills-to-build-to-be-competitive-on-the-job-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecology Careers Q&amp;A: Skills to Build to Be Competitive on the Job Market"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>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 &amp; Public Sector Ecologists Section.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Q: What specific skills should I focus on developing during my time as a graduate student to be competitive in environmental consulting?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lara Pomi-Urbat:<\/strong> I would focus on the skills that are translatable. GIS is a great example that is used across all areas of ecological expertise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rese Cloyd:<\/strong> How to collaborate and work with other people! So much of grad school is finding ways to elevate yourself above others and make a project your own, but outside of academia, it is teamwork and collaboration that make things work. Everyone wants \/ needs to be able to get credit and show that the work they are putting into a project will reflect positively on the agency or organization they work for, so being able to negotiate and build something together is key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Aerin Jacob:<\/strong> Lots of practical things like how to take a great big idea and break it into component parts, then action each one of them (like simple project management). How to decide among competing priorities; having \u201cdifficult conversations\u201d and resolve conflict; the motivation and celebration of other people who care a lot and are trying hard to make a difference! How to communicate clearly, engage with media, figure out what I wanted to do and was good at, not just what I was good at and other people asked me to do. Check out resources by TREC: <a href=\"http:\/\/trec.org\">http:\/\/trec.org<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.compassscicomm.org\">https:\/\/www.compassscicomm.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9\" data-video-type=\"youtube\"><iframe class=\"embed-responsive-item\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-Bx8jSQnws8?modestbranding=0&amp;rel=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;iv_load_policy=3&amp;enablejsapi=1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Q: What specific skills should I focus on developing during my time as a graduate student to be competitive in environmental consulting?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":20805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1929],"tags":[1610,538,1937,1938,1940],"class_list":["post-20804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ecology-careers","tag-careers","tag-ecology","tag-skills","tag-transferable","tag-translatable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20804"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20816,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20804\/revisions\/20816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}