Navigating Marine Science Careers: Building Your Resume Beyond Courses and Internships

A few episodes ago, I talked about the breakdown of sort of the marine conservation and science careers, you know, of what I've been through, through my experience and through my eyes and how I'm helping my daughter become a zoologist and a wildlife biologist by sharing my experiences and prepping her before she goes off to university of the types of things that she should prepare for, you know, and

do before she gets to university or when she's in university. And then even after she's in university to get a job and build her career, in wildlife biology, whether that be oceans or land. She's more of a herpetology nerd instead of an ocean nerd like myself. But that's great. It's always good to see your kids do great things and follow their passions and their dreams and what they want to do. So I've been talking to my daughter about this. I've

been talking to other people. And I've got some great feedback from the last episode that I sent. And it was great, again, it's great to hear from people, whether it be on LinkedIn, whether it be on Facebook, whether it be on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean when they DM me. But it's great to hear the feedback from people that they have. And I have a colleague and a friend, Erica Moulton, who is a dean at a college in Florida. She

hit me up after listening to that episode, and she's like, hey, I really liked your episode. I have a suggestion for you, something that you could mention to people in the next episode whenever you're covering careers. And that has to do with all of the extras. you could put on your resume to show what you've done instead

of just the courses and maybe some internships and things like that. All very well, you know, you know you need to have an undergraduate degree a lot of the times, you know potentially you need a graduate degree for certain

aspects of what you wanna do with your career. But we don't talk a lot about the extracurriculars that you do, whether it be in high school or university, or even beyond, that kind of show that you're involved in, you know, ocean conservation and that you have a passion for this and that you are going above and beyond what you can normally do instead of

just finding a job, you're actually looking for opportunities. And that could be volunteer ships that could be going on a board of directors, which we'll talk about in a second for a small nonprofit or local organization, or even like being a volunteer coordinator, you know, as a volunteer to do some cleanups or things like that. in leadership roles essentially, but also participating in local, you know,

committees and politics and things like that. There are so many ways that you can beef up your resume, but not just for the beefing up your resume, but also for the networking opportunities and also for just getting more involved. in marine science and conservation. And this is what we're going to be talking about in this case. I might mention wildlife biology every once in a while, because that's what I talk to my daughter about. But that's really what it comes down to.

It comes down to how can you help yourself not only build your career in the future or even presently, but how can you really forward on and follow those passions? Follow those areas where you can augment your career, but also like get to know the, you know, the feel that you want to go into, get to know, you know, what areas you really want to go into. Because oftentimes, like Eric and I, we talk about it, Erica and I, we talk about it all the time, where

we'll get messages from people. And I have a Marine Facebook group, a Marine Science and Conservation Careers Facebook group, as well as on LinkedIn, Marine Biology Jobs. And a lot of times we hear, first of all, Anybody know of any jobs in marine science and conservation in the UK or in Europe or in? The US or in the Northeast or in the west coast of Canada or you know wherever you are People like anybody know anybody looking for a job. That's not how you get

jobs Right? You have to know where you want to go to be directed. The first question I always ask, like, what area do you want to go into? And it's like, I'll do anything at this point. It's like, no, you have to figure out what you want to do. Because if you're doing the wrong thing in the field, like the wrong path, you're not going to be happy. And you're going to hate your job. Trust me. These are not easy jobs to take on. They require a lot of thought. A lot of times they require a

lot of physical activity if there's a field component to it. And you have to be in your right mind, right frame of mind to be able to do it. You want to have that passion to do it. That was your dream. So figure out your dream, figure out your niche or a couple of niches that you would like to pursue, especially at the beginning of your career, so that you can really narrow down that path. Right? And then you can start looking at, okay, let's see what kind of extras, but you're always

trying to do extras. And I was just, I was actually just talking to my daughter about this recently. She's in high school. She's going into grade 12. They have this, uh, this thing that they do at the beginning of every year is to help welcome

the freshmen or the great nines, uh, in high school. And it's called the linked crew and you do two days of training and then you, you go in and you, you know, you're kind of like a mentor and you kind of help them around the school and, have programs and stuff like that, especially at the beginning,

the first few days of school, they do programs and stuff. We have an ISTEM program and so she'll probably participate as well in those activities and get to know some of the great nines to kind of get the great nines to feel comfortable. It's a big step, you know, going from middle school or elementary school into high school, right? So she's doing that, and at first she wasn't sure if she really wanted to do it. I said, it's a great opportunity to

do extras. In fact, I mentioned Erika on it, and I was like, you know, a colleague of mine, a friend of mine saying, hey, this is what we need more. We don't see this enough on resumes where people are taking leadership roles or getting leadership training in different aspects so that they can use that on resumes later on. When you wanna go from like a field person to a manager, or to a supervisor of some sort in that area, you need to have those leadership skills and this

could help. It's not going to be the be all and end all of it, but this could help and get you other jobs on your way to the career that you want and the job that you want, your dream job. So, you know, doing these types of things in high school, doing these types, being camp counselors and all these kinds of things is great. Now, let's start talking more about when you're in university. and you're going down

more towards your niches. You're starting university or in the middle of university, maybe you're at the end of university and you're like, hey, you know what? I know the coursework. I know the marks I need to get and maybe I need certain marks and do your GRE if you're in the US or whatever equivalents elsewhere to get into grad school and all the things you need to do for grad

school, which we'll cover on another episode. You know those things. But you don't know about, hey, how can I get the work experience that I need? You have, if you're at college or university, you have all the tools in front of you. You don't even realize it. You have professors that are looking for volunteers. Sometimes they hire students, right, undergrads. You know, you have accesses to laboratories. Like when I went to University of Guelph here in Ontario, they

had a marine program, but they have a hydro lab. They had a lab. That was all on like keeping fish so that we can do aquaculture studies, we can do different type of scientific studies and behavioral studies. We had a whole lab full and I volunteered in my last year, unfortunately it was only in my last year, to be able to take care of those animals and look after the systems and learn about the computer systems and the alarm systems and the work that goes into it to help me

direct like, do I want to go the aquarist route? Do I want to look after fish or even help, you know, people with their experiments and, you know, feed the fish and do some like, you know, record some of the data that they're looking at if they can't be there and stuff. I got to do all of that just by volunteering. I think it was like six to eight hours a week. It wasn't even that much, right? Two hours a day or I did a whole Friday that I

would get like an eight hour day and it was fun. It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot and it reignited my passion because a lot of times when you go to school and you're going to the courses and you're doing the exams and the assignments and midterms and field labs and lab midterms and lab finals and lecture midterms and lecture finals for the same course. It's a lot. It's a lot and you kind of lose that focus of what you got into the

program for in the first place, right? It's like, what job am I going to do? Where am I going to go? Where am I going to live? What am I going to do? I have no idea. And I had no idea when I started, when I was graduating, but I started to have an idea of the possibilities because now I was volunteering in a lab. Then I'm talking to, you know, the head, the, the, my boss, like my supervisor, who was a graduate student talking to the lab manager about all

the stuff that. they do when they go out for us they went out east to collect animals every year and they would do field courses and all that kind of stuff and talking to them and hearing their stories and getting some of their advice as mentors and you know sometimes getting in crap if you're not doing your job properly you get all that you get that work environment you start to see okay this is where I could go this is what I could do and then you start to get introduced like

when I was working in a lab where a lot of professors had you know studies going on and so you're you're interacting with their labs and those professors and you start to learn more you start to hear you know of them and they start to like you because you're helping them with their studies and so they're interacting with you and you know for me I got a really great program and I had really great professors and and you know we would go out for beers after or you know hang out

in the lab and talk stories and stuff and I would just sit there and listen you know you hear comedians all the time I listen to a lot of comedians I love I love stand-up comedy and you hear about how they they What do they call it? They had they think it's like they take house or something like that And essentially what that is you get the the more like the popular? Comedian or like the person the comedians been around doing it for

decades. They sit down. Oh, they hold court I think is what they call it and they sit down and they talk to all the other comedians who are trying to get their careers going and their comedy sort of career going and and they may have struggles and stuff but they listen to them and they listen to their stories and they listen to the advice and they become their mentors and stuff like that and that's what it was, that's what I love and actually that's

how I got into podcasting, had I known earlier I probably would have been doing it earlier but that's what I fell in love with, it was those stories, those field stories and you know how people are interacting and the stories that they had and the good times and the bad times and the challenging times and so forth and you hear all of that stuff and that's what you know, what made me fall in love and reignited my passion for marine science and conservation as I was about to graduate. You

can do that throughout your entire career at university. Just think about that. If you want marine biology so bad, whether you want to go the academic route, the non-profit route, the private consulting,

all your skills are right in front of you. The ability to get the experience and skills are right in front of you as a volunteer, but you're already on campus, you're probably taking their courses, you're probably learning, and it'll reaffirm the learning that you're doing in your courses by doing a lot of the stuff that, like helping out with their studies, or maybe helping out in the summers with their field work and things like that, getting paid for it. Think about that.

Just think about that. You know, you may have to do some volunteer, but you're already taking courses. You're already on the campus. And why not? It's a

little bit more work. but you are there to do everything you can so that when you graduate, people know you, you have the opportunity to get jobs, you have the skills, you've been in labs, you've been working with teams, you can get references and all that kind of stuff and maybe direction of here's some graduate schools you can go to or maybe you collaborate with a different professor at a different school or even within the same school and they

wanna take you on as a student because they loved working with you so much and they have some ideas that you've been you know, talking and exchanging ideas back and forth throughout your career at your undergrad. You know, just imagine that scenario, right? I'm not saying for everybody it's going to work, but for a lot of you it can work and you

have more direction after. Now, the other thing that you can do that I'm really, really excited for people to do is, and I've talked about this before, but is participate and volunteer to be involved in societies. Scientific societies and conservation societies are your networking tool. But there's a lot of work and collaborations that can come from that. A lot of people talk, hey, we go to conferences in person,

virtual, virtual is a little harder to collaborate and meet new people. But when you go there, you network, you meet new people, your professor go, they bring the lab or as many people, hopefully, you get to present a little bit, you get to meet some people, they introduce you to their colleagues, their friends over those years. And, you know, and like, you know, I talked to Dr. David Ebert, Lost Shark Guy. He's my co-host on the Beyond Jaws podcast. A lot of his students, they

either came from somebody else that he knows. So if they were an undergrad at a particular school where he had a colleague or a friend that he trusted in you and they said, hey, I have a student for you. They're very interested in lost sharks or discovering species. This person's got a great work ethic. I can give you a strong reference. Why don't you talk to this person, he, her, or they, and be like, hey, let's talk and let's go. He gets a lot of people from there.

And he also suggests a lot of people from his labs to go on and do PhDs. So there's that camaraderie among these networks, whether it be sharks, marine mammals, or fish, or anything. There are all these communities out there that they all talk and they all exchange and be like, hey, I've got a student for you. You should check this person out. They're great. I'm going to suggest this person. That's how it all works. That's how it all works. When you

know what they talk about, it's not what you know, it's who you know. still works for marine science and conservation. You just have to put yourself out there. And sometimes getting to conferences is not easy. It's expensive. They're often far. Like, unfortunately, I'd like to go to the International Marine Conservation Congress. It's just not in the books for me this year. It's in South Africa. I live in Canada. It's really far to get to. It's expensive to get to.

I just can't do it this year. And so hopefully, next time, I'll be able to participate and go to that conference. But I'm going to be watching every other people like tweet and all that kind of stuff to see what it's like and to see what people are doing there. But, you know, it's if you can't do that, you can still participate in the planning of those conferences. Right. You can get on committees and volunteer. One time I was the chair of the funding committee and

I had people helping me out. We were all trying to get funding to fund that conference. There's other ways where you can be on the social committee, or you can be on the student committee if you're a student, or you can be on the communications committee and help out with all the different tasks there. Then you're building a rapport with other people who are also in the marine science world, not all students. Some of them are graduate students. Some of them are managers and hiring

managers. You just never know who they would suggest or be like, hey, I've got somebody here. Andrew's great. He can help you with this. You know, people don't really know him. He's trying to get into this new area. I think this would be a perfect opportunity to pick him up and work with him. Like, that's how it works. That's the great part. If you show what you can do and you show how hard you work, people are going to be like, all right, this is cool. Like, I'm really going to enjoy this, you

know, and I'm going to enjoy working with this person. So, you know, Erica had the great suggestion of talking about the extracurriculars that you have. And it could be a different things too. It doesn't always have to be within marine science and conservation societies and all this kind of stuff. It could be other societies that you're part of. It could be a board of directors that you're part of, like a non-profit organization. They're always looking for board of directors

to help them out and help manage those non-profits. Then you get to see it from a different aspect. You get to see how hard it is to run a non-profit organization and all the different intricacies that go in to putting together and running it and making sure you're abiding by all the charitable laws in each country that you're in.

It could be a lot, but it could be fun. And then again, you're networking with other people who may be a part of other jobs or other organizations and they might be like, hey, this person is looking for a job. I have a perfect job opportunity for

you. there's a lot of things that can come out of that you just have to put yourself out there and I know you know looking for a job is hectic looking for a job is emotional it's draining you can't do it full-time you can't do it each and every day all days of the week you have to start getting into doing other things networking Joining societies a lot of the times they're really, you know, I think it's like 50 bucks a year or something like that The Society of Conservation Biology

is one that's really really great Estuarine Society has one as low which is the I think it's American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, I think as low is a FS which is American AES, Elasmo Brank Association, ESA, Ecological Society of America. There's all these different organizations to be a part of that you can join. You don't have to join all of them. I suggest joining one and really putting all your effort into

that and joining that and participating where you can. And then, yeah, that's the way you go about it and you start to learn what

it's all about. Hear different research that's going on you get to you know participate in planning these conferences that go on Sometimes they have work groups that you can be a part of and work group meetings and stuff like that It's all great a lot of its virtual these days to make it easier for everybody And it works out really well and it helps not only just drive your passion for what you want to do But it helps networking and

it helps build up your resume So when people see that, it's like, oh, this person gets involved, like this person knows what to do. Don't take on too much, make sure that you get good references from those. And then you've got a great CV and a great resume. So that's my advice to you. Thank you, Erica, for bringing that up. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate you guys for listening each and every time to these episodes. I'd love to hear your feedback. What societies do you join? Have you

joined one? What are you considering? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Hit me up on Spotify as a comment, on YouTube as a comment, or hit me up on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean. And if you have stories that you want me to take a look at and cover on this podcast, I'm looking for original stories. If you have calls to action or petitions and things like that, feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn or email me or through the website speakupforblue.com or

hit me up on Instagram at howtoprotecttheocean. Lots of calls to action today. But anyway, thank you very much for listening. Really appreciate it. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. This has been Speak Up How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next