Career Profile: Biological Science Technician

Little Details

 Grade Levels-03-07

College Required-Yes

• GS-3 At least 1 year of of post high school education
• GS-4 At least 2 years of study in related field
• GS-5 Completed 4 year degree in related field
• GS-6 Completed 4 year degree and at least 1 year experience at a lower grade level*
• GS-7 Completed 4 year degree and at least 1 year experience at a lower grade level*

* Further education at the graduate level and be substituted for experience. 

Pay- Averages around 30,000 but can vary with agency and experience.

Full Time/Seasonal- Both

What Do They Do?

A biological science technician is one many facet of the lower level workers.  They clear the hiking trails, do wildlife and plants surveys, mark trees, collect scientific data. clean equipment etc.  Essential they are the most important part of any land management agency as they are ones that actually are on the ground doing the work of managing and conserving natural resources.

Where Can You Find Them?

 Depending on the season you can find them everywhere you find seasonal government employees.  If budgets are friendly they will be at your local National Forest or Parks, at your local BLM offices and pretty much anywhere the land management agency has a presence.

When To Look For Available Positions?

Typically you will position in this area beginning to pop on around the 1st of the year.  In January and February is when most of the hiring is done for these agencies and that's is when they are looking for qualified candidates.  A good place to look for positions with this job description is on USA Jobs or the special filtered job search engine provided on this site.

      

Education Vs Experience

The world is my oyster...
wait do I like oysters?

I bet many of you out there were like me growing up.  Every adult in your life was telling you the same thing about your future.  That if you go to a good good school and get a degree whether that be a associates, bachelors or beyond that you will land a good job and everything you ever wanted will come true and you will have a good life.

Maybe for some you that is completely true.  You went out, got that degree and now you are living the good life.  But for most of you I would imagine things didn't exactly work out as you were told they would.  Instead you found yourself in world full of college debt, bad jobs, rent and the realities of being a adult.   

yay paperwork

This smack to the face with the real world can leave you pondering all sorts of questions about whether it was worth getting that degree and getting in debt.  The average student debt in 2012 was around 29,000 dollars which was a 25% increase from the year before.  

The average unemployment rate for people fresh out of of college ages 20-29 is around 9% when the average rate for the country is now down to about 6.7%.  So basically if you look at it this way the unemployment rate of the 20-30 demographic is still as high as it was during the depths of the recession.  I would also place money that if you surveyed the 20-30 somethings and asked them if they are working in the field that went to school for a lot of them would probably say no.  They took whatever work they could to pay their bills and now they are trapped in what I like to call the,

EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE PARADOX 

If you are not painfully familiar with what this is already I will explain how I understand it.  Taking my life as a example,

• I have a Bachelors degree in Natural Resources Management 
• I also have many years seasonal and full time experience in my field.

But despite my credentials I can't seem to land any full time position in my field that does not start as a internship/training program.

Why is that?

I have come up with a theory that is as follows, despite that fact that everyone in my life has told me that a education is the key to success.  My first hand experience with that does not pan that out.  You have to have a mythical combination I call EDUCERIENCE, which is both education and experience mashed up into one.  If you want a full time job in your field you better have been either volunteering or seasonally working in your field while you were in college in order to have a chance at landing a full time job.  

But wait that's not all what if I told you that a Bachelor's degree is now worth about as much a high school diploma.  Now don't misunderstand my meaning in that you will make more money with a bachelors degree most of the time.  What I mean by it being worth as much as a diploma is that a lot of people have them or are getting them as time goes by.  It is no longer the sign of higher achievement or ambition it is simply the next step in your mandatory education.  This perception that a bachelors degree doesn't have meaning is hurtful to new grads with limited job experience.  I have seen this perception hurt my chances and those of people around me time and time again.

So how does this EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE PARADOX work?  

   

It works like this,

Its vicious cycle that is all to easy to be trapped by if you are not careful and whether or not to go back for more education is a tricky proposition no matter how you look at it.  More education can help you stand out from the pack but you have to weigh it against the time that could be spent getting experience or paying off your existing debts.

I personally advocate the experience track unless you truly have the desire to obtain a Masters or PHD in your field.  If you want to do it have at it, but if you are the least bit ambivalent then perhaps you should just focus on experience in the real world.

Good Luck on the Job Hunt

Working for the Earth

  

Sources:

http://projectonstudentdebt.org/files/pub//Debt_Facts_and_Sources.pdf

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat03.htm

Working for the Earth Job Boards

Have you checked out the jobs boards we have available here on Working for the Earth?

Well if you haven't you should, the job boards that I have created are dedicated to specific aspects of the natural resources, renewable energy and green construction fields.  They basically have a pre-search applied to them that saves you time when it come to searching for jobs.  If you can't find something right on the first page use the search bar to narrow it down even further.

I am always looking for new ideas for job boards so if you find that the ones I have already do not meet your job search requirements let me know and I will do my best to help you out with that.  The job boards can be found either by clicking at the links on the top of this blog on my main site in various places throughout the pages  

Don't be afraid to fly far from the nest.

That just a fancy way of saying that when you are looking for work in the natural resources field you should not focus one area.  It will severely limit your options that you have for both seasonal and full time work and you wont get the networking that sometimes lead to the full time jobs that everyone is looking for.

But looking for jobs all over the country can lead to exhausting hours sitting at the computer looking for sites and job search engines.  This is something that is really not that fun and it can lead to many people limiting themselves on where they search.  They limit themselves simply because they don't have time to look or because they don't feel it is necessary.

Well to get a good job in this world it sometimes in necessary to look way beyond your comfort zones and away from your home state to get the jobs and experience you need to advance in your career.  It has been demonstrated that going and working somewhere not ideal for you for a couple years is a great way to get you foot in the door back in your home state.

Here on Working For The Earth we have many resources available to the job searcher looking outside his or her local area.  You can use our dedicated search engines to look for work in the fields of,

• Renewable Energy
• Green Construction
• Biological and Environmental Sciences       

Or use many of our other pages that provide links to many companies and jobs site that are looking for skilled employees in many natural resource fields.  You can find all the pages on the site by clicking on the main site button on the top of this page and navigating from there.

The moral of this story is that you shouldn't be afraid to branch out and try to find work in new and sometimes very interesting places.  

Good Luck on you Job Hunt.

Working for the Earth

Volunteering the Dreaded V Word

I know that volunteering is not something that crosses the minds very often of people that are trying to get work in the natural resources, environmental science or biology fields but, sometimes you got to bite the bullet and do it.

It can be sometimes a very hard thing to do depending on your location and financial status and what opportunities you have available to you.  I used to have a job that payed me very well, but it provided me nothing in the way of experience that I needed to advance my career.  Not only was my job not helping me in the direction I wanted to go it was actually hindering me by denying me the time I needed to broaden my skill set.

So I made a hard choice and I resigned and moved across two states to end up in a area that provided a diversity of opportunities for work and volunteer opportunities.

Maybe you are luckier than me and you already live in a place with a plethora of opportunities and you can skip the hard decisions about moving or quitting a job.  If that is the case you can get right to finding opportunities to expand your skills.  There a a few ways you can find volunteer opportunities for what you are looking for, for example many government agencies have volunteer programs like VIP (Volunteer in Parks) or the Natural Resources Conservation Services Earth Team.  But there also more informal ways you can find volunteer opportunities too, by going to local agencies both state and federal and simply asking about volunteer opportunities.

Also consider private organizations like the Sierra Club or The Nature Conservancy as they too may have offices in you area and a lot of the time they look for as many able bodied people they can get to complete projects.     

Like finding a job finding a volunteer opportunity can be a job in itself, but it can provide invaluable experience to some one that is starting out or if you are considering a career move.  For more links to volunteering opportunities check out the new Volunteering and Internships link page.  The page is far from done and I always welcome new additions to it so let me know about and volunteering or internships that would be a good addition to the page.

Good Luck on your Job Hunt

Working for the Earth  

Announcement of A New Page

Finding a job in the modern world is a much more daunting affair than it was back in "good ol days".  You can't get a decent job in most cases with just a high school diploma and a four year degree might just get you a interview.

What a person needs today is either a Masters,a Phd or just the right amount of experience to get the job.  If you do decide to go on for higher education it is a good idea to have exactly what you want in a career in mind.

The other option of course is experience.  You can get this by either getting paid seasonal experience, internships or volunteering.  I have recently added a new page to the Working for the Earth Site called Volunteering and Internships.  On this page you will find links that will take you to state and federal volunteer pages for various agencies.

The page does not contain any links yet to internships as I wanted to get the page up and running with what I could.  I will be adding more links as times goes on and as usual I always welcome input from the job seeking community on where they have found sites that will fit on this page.

Good Luck on your Job Hunt

Working for the Earth  

Say What.... You want me to apply for positions below my qualifications?

Yes

I Do

I say this because in my short but varied career, I have yet to get a full time position that I was technically qualified for with my bachelors degree in Natural Resources Management.*  The natural resources field and the permanent full time positions that most of us are after has become much more narrow and competitive in recent years.

While I am not a economist it can probably be safely said that this is a direct result of the economic crash in 2008.  The crashed caused a ripple effect through this field that most people didn't see coming.  It did two things that really affected the job market in our field,

• Many current employees kept working because their retirements went POOOOF.
• The budgets for the agencies and private organizations shrank considerably and full time position were cut back. 

The shrinking amount of available jobs combined with the slow down in retirements from the field has put a choke hold on many of the existing full time positions.  The ones that are left are of course are highly sought after by the 25,000+ (OCED 2011) graduates that are in the natural resources field.

With the choke hold on the jobs and the increasing competitiveness of the field what can a fresh graduate do to stand out?  Well the options are limited to just a couple that I have discovered so far.  You can either volunteer to build up appropriate experience and do just a little bit of networking.  Or you can try your best to work seasonally in the part of the field you think you want to end up in.

Both options are not really savory to someone that is fresh out of college with OMG debt preparing to come crashing down on their heads, but it really is the only way.  If you can afford it volunteering can give you variety and a broad experience base depending on the agency and location.  But it also looks good to get paid doing something in your field as well, who would say no to a paycheck when they have student loans looming.

If you are really lucky sometimes you can work for one agency and volunteer for another at the same time to really build up connections and experience.  That unfortunately leaves no time for a funny thing called sleep or a life, but sacrifices must be made.  I myself worked for almost two years doing a job that didn't fit me well just so I could play off my student loans and put some money in savings.

So anyways back to concept of applying for positions lower than your qualifications.  With the need to have better qualifications than a degree to get positions, sometimes you need to sell yourself short.  For example in my personal work history I have worked a GS-3 Biological Science Aid position after I graduated with a Bachelors degree, which technically qualified me to be hired as a GS-5.  But because of the market and my previous not useful experience as a park ranger I couldn't get my application to hiring manger as a GS-5.  But because I also took the time to send in a application as GS-3 I was able to get hired and got a season full of great experience.  The experience has since lead to being hired as GS-5 Biological Science Technician for the upcoming summer season.  The step up is dramatic but it accurately reflects my current education and experience levels.  If all things go well I should be able to use the GS-5 credentials to rise even higher as time goes by.  

To sum it all up don't be to proud to apply low and volunteer to get the experience you need to get somewhere in your field.

Good Luck on you Job Hunt

Working for the Earth

* I did have a full time position in my field after graduating, but it was a training program position so I was hired with the understanding that I would need to be fully trained.

Sources:

http://www.oecd.org/