Geographers and Sustainers,

It must be spring because my inbox is filling up with questions about jobs, internships, and requests for reference letters. Two pieces of advice for all of you pursuing opportunities:

1. Be sure to do some research on opportunities outside of Knoxville and East Tennessee. For those of you without mortgages and family responsibilities, this is a great opportunity to try out new cities. A quick search on LinkedIn resulted in over 700 GIS summer internship opportunities throughout the US; SimplyHired has over 300; and using the Google Jobs search, I found a variety of companies in the Southeast looking for GIS Interns, Planning Interns, GIS Analysts, etc. Combine this with NSF funded REU opportunities, and there are a lot of options.
2. When working on your resume/CV, don’t just list your relevant courses and software. Potential employers reviewing your documentation may not know that Geography 311, Geography 411, and GIS in the Community require projects. Use these opportunities to highlight specific skills and accomplishments. Employers also like to know how well you can communicate. Recent grad Dani Dami says it best:

 

Best advice I have for students looking for jobs, treat your education as a job. Never just list the classes you have taken, instead list the class as if it was a job and add a description. We work on a lot of projects in the department that are perfect to showcase. For instance, instead of saying you took Intro to GIS and Remote Sensing, list the final project that you worked on in those classes and include bullets about what you did. I know how intensive the course work is, but I’m not always going to be the person who sees the resume and know what that class entails.

We get too many resumes that have all this other experience and then lists their courses. Sell your GIS skills if you want a GIS job. Bridgette sent us her resume and it was by far one of the best resumes we have ever received so I definitely recommend people taking a look at that.

Another tidbit, after your in-person interview, write a handwritten letter to the person you interviewed with. Old fashion but goes a long way.

Bridgette was kind enough to let me share her resume.

 

Good luck,

 

Michael Camponovo

GIS Outreach Coordinator

Geography Department

209A Burchfiel Geography Building

UT Knoxville

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(865) 974-5348

https://geography.utk.edu