One of the biggest hurdles for people looking to break into an environmental career is skills gap. It doesn't matter if you are a recent grad or looking to change careers, skill gaps are a plague nearly everyone looking for a job faces. It's important as it always is to see challenges as opportunities. Regardless if you believe that your skill gap is because your university program didn't prepare you or if you spent too long being comfortable in the first era of your career, or if you just woke up one morning and decided it was time for a change. Having the need to fill a skill is an opportunity. Here's what I mean. 

You see the skill gap as a hindrance, and it is, for now. It will only continue to be an obstacle if you don't do anything proactive about it. It's only when you decide to do something about it that it becomes an opportunity. The opportunity can come in many forms such as: 

• An excuse to network - you'll now have a valid reason to seek persons of...

Keep Hope Alive

I hope that you and your family and friends are well during this uncharted time. I wanted to share some encouragement and suggestions for staying productive and shifting your career search at this time. 

Many of you may have been looking when things started to shut down, others may have had jobs and are fortunate to still be working - be safe out there! If you know someone who could benefit from this info please share. 

Suggestion #1

Use this time to fill gaps in your resume, explore new skills, read, or take a course. We're offering 50% rebate back for anyone who completes the Online Job Search Action Plan Course. We are not making it free because it has been shown that free courses have a 90% drop in completion rate due to lack of incentive. Finish the course and get rewarded for your effort!

START COURSE NOW

Suggestion #2

Focus on networking. People are seeking connection at this time. It is the perfect excuse to invite a stranger to a video chat....

I occasionally receive messages like this: “I am currently studying environmental policy. I've done research with elephants, noise pollution, and ocean studies. I want to make a positive impact for global climate change. There's so many paths I could take, how do I know what to do?” 

Career seekers struggle with a few areas more than others. One of those struggle areas is coming up with an answer to the seemingly simple question, “What do you want to do?” Some struggle with the fear of making a choice. Once the choice is made the pressure of making it happen causes a high amount of anxiety from fear of failure. Others struggle with being interested in too many things. No one environmental-related degree equates to a single career path so even if your degree is in policy, you might find your interest crosses over into conservation or ocean science. 

Your career search will go much smoother if you have an idea of the direction you want to go in....

You may have noticed lately that we made some changes to our brand to more consistently infuse the word ENVIROlocity™.

You may be wondering what exactly does this mean?

At first, this was a word that we felt personified the phrase Work Worth Living and Environmental careers. It is a combination of "Environment" and "velocity". We personally feel that any work worth doing is going to have to include an environmental aspect. Ever since we chose the word it has expanded to mean all the things we consider valuable at The Environmental Career Coach including: 

• Seeking Work Worth Living
• Work with meaning and purpose 
• Passion for environmental careers
• More than just jobs, we focus on careers 
• Finding your spark to accelerate your career search
• Mastering the fundamentals of the job search to land your next job faster

From our experience, work that is just a job will always lead to frustration and feeling imbalanced as there is no way to find work/life balance when...

You had it! For one shining moment you were so sure the next position you applied for was yours! Then you didn’t get that one. Ok, that wasn’t “the one” but this next one this is it! I’m perfect, this is so right for me. And then you don’t get that one either. This can put you head first into a downward spiral very fast. You must have systems in place to intercede and keep you on track. How do you keep carrying that confidence, courage, and momentum forward when you keep getting punched in the guts?

“You can’t fail if you don’t quit” - Grant Cardone, Be Obsessed or Be Average

There is a huge drop out rate for STEM careers. Especially for women. It’s still a male-dominated industry and it’s tough to balance life and work in a STEM or environmental position. There are many reasons people leave before they reach their full potential in these roles. One reason is that it’s hard to get the exact job you want...

No one wants to hire someone who isn’t capable of getting the job done or who needs their hand held all day. Although this is generally true in any market, it is particularly evident in the environmental industry. Environmental jobs come with hefty responsibility. It isn’t ok to drop the ball or wait for someone else to pick up after you because the environmental - habitat, conservation, or other - mission is at stake. Field days are hard to reschedule, scientific data can’t be recouped if it was missed or messed up, and sometimes things just don’t go as planned. Environmental jobs require people who can improvise and think on their feet.

There are three key characteristics wrapped up in self-reliance including:

1. Resourcefulness - the ability to find a way around obstacles and create or find solutions
2. Reliability - the ability to show up and follow through when expected
3. Resilience - the ability to bounce back when things do not go your way or...

I have only hyperventilated once in my life. Up until then, I thought panic attacks only happened to extreme worriers and overly-dramatic types. I was just about to graduate and had been working in a temp position at an environmental agency and I had a shot for a permanent job. I had applied to hundreds of jobs in the past but something was telling me this was the one I needed and on the morning of the interview - I went to the wrong location. When I realized I might be late and blow my chance at the job that is when I learned how very real hyperventilating is. 

A couple of things led to this extreme reaction - 1) I had convinced myself that I needed this job, 2) it truly felt like the universe wanted me to get this job, and 3) from what I knew about interviews if you were late you were out.  So I started to panic.

Eight years later, I experienced a different panic. I needed out of this job that I had been convinced I needed so badly before. Over the...

Are you the type of person who is constantly going back and forth when trying to make a decision? Especially when it comes to spending money or making long term choices? Do you second guess decisions or purchases after you’ve made them? I am here to tell you the flip-flopper affliction is not going to get better on its own and it can be very self-defeating in your job search.

The job search is all about making decisions. Big decisions that will affect every aspect of your future. How much money you’ll make, who you’ll spend most of your time with, and how satisfied you’ll be in life in general. The key is that its the little choices you make now that will ultimately affect those larger decisions. Which companies should you apply to? What training should you take? Where should you spend your time networking?

If you can’t seem to nail any of these down, take a look in the mirror and a look down the road. Who are you? What is important to...

Networking! You love it or you hate it but I would guess since you’re reading this that you lead more towards that second one.

Creative Networking is the most effective way to network and consists of 3 parts:

• Mindset
• Creative Strategy
• Connection Integrity

You can learn more about Creative Networking and how to put it to use in this webinar. In this article, we’re focusing on 5 truths about networking that once you realize them you can start improving right away.

1. Networking is the best way to get from the road you're on now and into the career lane that you want. The sooner you swallow this truth pill, the sooner you can get things moving toward your awesome networking outcome. This is a truth in any industry but even more so in the environmental world. You'll find after spending a few years building your networks that you'll have an incredible amount of overlap and 1 degree of separation connections. 

2. You need a LinkedIn Profile. 

   We...