Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Geography: Class to Career

Our department capstone course -- Seminar in Geography -- includes research and writing components, but it also a partnership with BSU's Office of Career Services (see the intranet and extranet sites).

Geography is a discipline that helps to develop a lot of skills with such general applicability that geographers can succeed in any field. As the What Can I Do With This Major? page makes clear, though, geography also relates to quite an interesting array of specific careers.

Transferable skills -- O*NET allows users to look up work or hobbies they have already done, to see what emploment-related words might be associated with things we already know how to do.

Indeed is a recommended search engine for jobs, as are Simply Hired and Glass Door.

Our Career Services colleagues also suggest looking at the Boston Globe 100 for ideas about specific firms to work for in Massachusetts.

School Spring is a search engine specifically for teaching jobs. Some districts in Massachusetts use it exclusively.

In addition to these resources, Pamela Hayes-Bohanan, the department's library liaison maintains a GEOG 490 Maxguide -- a mini-portal to relevant library resources. It includes databases for identifying graduate programs.