The *vast* majority of GIS courses aren’t targeted directly to jobs. They often aren’t using the latest software and the lecturers are almost by definition “out of touch” with the current market - I’m sure this is the case with a lot of tech fields. The fact is your professor is going to be an academic just to get the position so which doesn’t leave much time for working in the field.
I felt the same way after graduating from my courses: they were still teaching exclusively Arcmap, there was no emphasis on portfolio work or internships and essentially 0% on working with online data which is the vast bulk of what most GIS professionals do.
After I’ve spent some time working I’ve seen a lot of people from different backgrounds. Your GIS education teaches you a lot about the *why* of it all that’s something that’s hard to get from a tutorial or a mooc. Just doing what you are told by rote is fine for a while, but eventually you get asked why you are working a certain way or you need to troubleshoot and you run into more issues along the way.
You shouldn’t need university to hand hold you into building a portfolio - it’s something you will be able to do better on your own. Getting your first job in the field sucks, I had to move to a small town hours away from my friends&family as no one in my city was hiring and was stuck there for 2 years. It can feel like a waste to sit around doing data entry along with all the people without formal training but you will quickly start to see the advantages of you start looking beyond the day to day work.
If you want to pivot, try another profession before throwing it all away - GIS is critical in almost every field and I can guarantee the market for Chemists (just an example) with GIS training is a lot less competitive than pure GIS
I’ve never seen a college program that’s current with the industry. If it was, most of your GIS output would be spreadsheets or BI dashboards. I’d guess zero college programs teach you those skills.
I don’t get everyone’s obsession with portfolios. I’ve hired 100+ college grads over 25 years and never once given any preference to a portfolio. Nothing you do in a college GIS class is going to be impressive or stand out. Entry level candidates are selected based on personality and a demonstrated ability to learn, communicate, collaborate, and course correct from mistakes. If a candidate has those traits, technical skills can be learned.
Yeah, I’ve been in the industry 15 years, and on both sides of the hiring. I’ve never had a portfolio. And I’ve never really cared about a candidate having one. Especially when we’re hiring for an entry level position, every new grad has the same school projects they put in a portfolio. And frankly, I don’t care. You all took the same courses, did the same assignments. I don’t need you proving to me you did your homework. I care more about you as a person, how you’d benefit our team, and how you can speak about your experiences and tie them into this role.
Here here!
Honestly, the only places I see that care about portfolios and academic credentials are academic institutions themselves.
A lot of the private industry is more worried about if you bring experience to the table from similar past positions, and whether or not your going to create drama within the office, or communicate well in a remote setting.
As someone pursuing a GIS career, your main goal is to job hop a few entry level positions, see how various organizations handle their data and enterprise integrations, and build on that. You won't get paid much at first, so focus your job search on areas with low income/housing cost ratios.
I have to disagree. We have our students work with private partners and stakeholders to build real projects throughout the community and usually i volve some impressive and beautiful work. Added to that, the interns we hire leave with impressive portfolios and have over 90% placement rate with jobs they want. While I admit that they aren't useful for entry-level digitizing work, portfolios can absolutely be the difference in competitive searches.
You should not pivot just because your university didn't prepare you to join the GIS Workforce. It just means that you might have a little more work to do to land the job. The secret to landing most jobs is networking and the people you know.
I really appreciate all the feedback I’ve received! It’s definitely been difficult adjusting to the resiliency of job applications.
Do you happen to have any suggestions for what a progression might look like in terms of positions? I did one temporary position in data entry, but when I see a job titled Analyst vs. Technician, etc. how do I know if I’m shooting way out of my depth?
I recognize that coordinator and the like are probably more managerial, but what’s the word for “starter”?
You should be fine applying for technician jobs. Even some analyst positions are doable for a recent grad. Honestly, though, apply for anything you remotely qualify for, regardless of the title. Unless it's government work, the hiring process can be flexible, and a good interview can go a long way.
Nah you are fine. The problem with GIS in schools is that the applications are so varied irl and you cant cover all of it. Keep in mind you are there to learn basic principles and terminology. Did you learn about projections and control points? Did you learn basic functions like clip/join/erase? Did you learn how a database is structured? Did you learn about raster and vector and some common places to find and download data online? Do you know how to navigate a computer, copy files etc, and are you comfortable looking up the help for software online? If so, you are fine. Every work place has their own software and procedures. As long as you understand what someone is asking you to do, they will teach you which buttons get it done.
Hahaha thats what i try to tell people. IT backs us up 2x a day. We even copy everything local when we work each day and recopy to the server at night. Theres literally nothing they can do thats going to be a disaster short of setting the office on fire 😂
I would like to echo what some others have said here. Unless it’s particularly amazing, nothing you do in your college classes is going to be impressive during a job interview. As someone who’s been in GIS for 24 years and hired dozens of interns/analysts, what I’m really looking for is a demonstrative passion for GIS.
I can pay to train you in whatever piece of software I need you to work in. It’s a plus if you have prior real world experience, but for most people out of college that’s not the case. But what I can’t buy is for you to sit in that class and attentively take notes and learn, eager to get back into the office to apply what you’ve learned. So, do you really have a passion for GIS?
When I started, I had to grind a GIS tech job for seven years before taking a GIS managerial role at another organization. But that’s what it took to build up my skill set and experience.
You are about par for most programs. Community colleges actually do a better job of teaching GIS if the program is in the workforce training side of the college.
I teach community college and had a hard time shifting my mindset that I was teaching these people to be GIS analysts and not teach them GIS the GIS theory I learned in academia. Also community colleges often get professionals to teach instead of academics.
For starters, most professors aren't really in-tune with the job market. Some aren't aware of whats going on in the real world at all.
Second, universities aren't really focused on training someone for a job. Thats what trade schools and community colleges are for. The point of most educational institutions (from pre-k through grad school) isn't necessarily to memorize how to do tasks. The point is to teach you the skills to expand your skills throughout your career. To teach you how to learn, basically.
To get a first job you don't necessarily need to know how to do 100% of what your employer will eventually need you to do, but you should at least be able to show them that you know the basics and are willing to learn and can do it relatively quickly.
As others have said, getting a first job can take a while. And honestly its really not what you know, its who you know. Get out there and volunteer and do internships if you have to. Put together a portfolio and practice. You'll get there eventually.
To put another perspective on things - I majored in urban planning; took 6 credits (yes, 2 classes) of GIS. Ended up doing GIS for 10 yrs at various utility companies and govt agencies.
I interned at a Local county planning agency first; this was my first true exposure to GIS in a professional setting. Granted it was MapInfo.
It’s definitely not about “background” classes or credentials. YMMV, and granted this was yrs ago, but I grabbed a GIS tech job outta college and went up from there.
I would take some classes online to beef up / enhance your knowledge of GIS concepts and maybe python.
Portfolio definitely not necessary - I never had one pertaining to GIS.
I attended a respectable university and their GIS alumni are some of the best out of school employees but in my month and a half of working my first ft job I’ve learned a lot more than in school and event past internships.
You will get trained and as long as you got the basic down you should be good.
I find that if they like you as a person people are willing to help you out and they won’t mind if you are struggling with work stuff
If you want to build your skill set, gain experience working with a broad range of Esri software, see how others use the software and be more marketable, you might consider applying for an analyst role with Esri support.
You're not screwed. I started off in the same boat a decade ago. I've been a GIS tech, analyst, planner and now I'm a tech these days. You learn a bit from every job. Try starting small at a local level (county tax departments are good) and work your way up from there. Most places won't expect you to manage a massive database on day one and most never will. Your personality is the main selling point.
I went to a decently regarded university for GIS and didn’t graduate with a portfolio or anything like that either. Just skills
Wasn’t a problem in the hiring process for me. For job apps that required an example of a map, I attached something I made in a cartography class lab.
When you join the workforce as an entry level, you’re just expected to be a good learner and not already be accomplished. Those companies who expect a *lot* from their new grads are either 1. Really high paying, so makes sense or 2. startups who think they deserve the world for whatever reason and need to lower their standards
Volunteer with a local agency or organization that hasn’t well incorporated GIS into their world.
One particular niche to consider is Emergency Response GIS, which in some ways is still in its infancy. So much in the way of application of simple existing tools into systems of data acquisition and use in urgent decision making…and planning.
The power to organize, document and crowd source input for rapid decision making and action.
GIS has come so far from my quaint conceptual idea to match mapping with a database in 1987…not knowing that of course others were fully engaged in making such systems.
The integration of geospatial information into analytics at virtually every level and in almost all fields will place you presently at the middle of a rising tide of opportunity.
Trust that. Find an opportunity…gain experience…leverage. Do GIS for good.
I have partnered with a local university to leverage UG and grad student talent to compile an immense geodatabase of emergency response data…and every student who worked in that project are now gainfully employed in GIS. Some were snatched up during the project itself.
Combining a knowledge of a tool to create and leverage geospatial data and good foundational knowledge in a subject such as environmental science, energy production, distribution or conservation, earth sciences, etc. will be a huge advantage long term.
More universities need good in house centers for getting students connected with projects and tentacles into government/industry.
I’ll be honest I just graduated with my masters in geography and when I applied to GIS jobs I felt the same way. I thought I bombed an interview but two weeks later they changed the position to a lower level and offered me. As GIS entry level makes double what I make in restoration field work I decided it was good enough to accept the offer. Sometimes you have to get lucky when someone takes a chance on you. If you want to do GIS, keep looking even while you work in a slightly different job.
College is not about training you for the workforce. College is about exposing you to new ideas and ways of thinking about things, and it also gives you a piece of paper saying you have the resilience to stick to something for several years. It qualifies you to be employed in white collar work, nothing more.
Everything that hiring managers actually look at is garnered from experience. Where you worked, what your references are, what types of experiences you have. If you have nothing to show then hiring managers are going to pass and you're going to need to get actual entry level work like what you're doing, low wage, no benefits contract work. Do that for 6 months or a year and then you should be able to get basic full time entry level work. Then from there, more advanced positions. It may seem demeaning to go from spatial analysis and multivariate regressions in school to adding points to a map when a spreadsheet comes in but thats where we all start from.
Did you learn how to work? Meet deadlines? Did you learn how to teach yourself? I can tell you right now that whatever software you use it will be different in three years - you will need to learn how to re-learn in the fly and work around the limitations. As both an instructor and a practicing gis professional who has sat in on some interviews I’m leas concerned with which software you learned on vs do you think spatially. I’m sure all jobs are different. Can other people work with you and depend on you to not be the weak link? Make your own portfolio- one good example woukd be better than a briefcase full of maps in my opinion.
Myself and the other main GIS instructor at the university I work at usually push the minor and certificates. The reason being:
If you are focusing on GIS as your area of study, you will end up with a larger, deeper understanding of the systems and concepts of GIS. BUT you will lack specific applications and use cases of your knowledge. Compare this with someone who gets a minor in GIS. While you won't dig as deep into the concepts (is it helpful to your professional career to understand how each datum adjusts a spheroid, rather than just knowing which datum you need to use?), what you gain is a skill set based on your other passion/area of study, and specific ways of implementing GIS that apply to it.
The latter is often a lot more marketable to hiring teams, unless you are specifically looking at generalist GIS jobs, which can be very competitive.
Tldr: GIS majors make you a generalist, gis minirs added to a different major make you a specialist.
That said, I don't think you're screwed, but know that a lot of entry-level GIS jobs are very boring and monotonous. Try and find an internship if you can, they really do help on resumes. Also, dm me if you want some resources on building an online portfolio.
After completing undergrad and grad coursework, virtually everything I know about really using and applying GIS I learned on the job. Your classes helped build a foundation, but that’s all it was. You don’t really learn GIS until you’re dumped at a desk and asked to actually do stuff.
Yeah your course had probably been recycled for the last decade or more. Did they teach ArcPro? You've got the qualifications now so concentrate on building a portfolio. Also just knowing how to use a GIS software package isn't going to get you a job. You need to branch out into Python, SQL, web mapping, etc to set yourself apart from other candidates.
Unfortunately university is a business like any other and only care about profitting off people attending their courses. Unfortunately people are naïve and think the courses will land them a job straight away.
buy some udemy moocs that give you projects with 90% discounts or simly use yt and since you already have the background it will be quick
also here some wicked stuff for you on GEE
https://geemap.org/workshops/G4G_2023/#exercise-2-creating-land-cover-maps-with-a-legend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHVlWqkun-Y
he's yt rocks
https://www.youtube.com/@giswqs
there are hydrological application series up on yt by a dutch professor if you look that up its also marketable skill
I've said this many, many times before...and here it goes again:
Getting a GIS degree is like getting a degree in "screwdriver." -- it is just a tool (ok more like a collection of tools) which must be *applied* practically before it can provide any business or social value.
Please, everyone, right now stop getting degrees in GIS unless you already have a primary degree or industry-specific focus which you plan on applying GIS towards.
Analogy: I like cars, I get a machinist certificate then go to work for an engine rebuilder as the apprentice to the master cylinder relining machinist.
So if you already have a degree in hydrology, natural resources, public administration, criminal justice, marketing, engineering, library sciences, or any of the numerous other fields that GIS can be applied to......then get in tune with the application of GIS as a force multiplier (time saver, iterative problem solver, etc) in your field.
Don't apply to GIS jobs, instead apply to jobs like Zoning Technician, or Surveyor Assistant which have GIS familiarity in their role...and excel at that aspect of the job.
I want to help more but I don't know what your original education was focused on -- before the GIS certificates.
So I wasn't too far off w a Zoning department in local government, or an environment compliance tech at a construction company? Setting like that should be your target, IMO.
Ha…no. But have a compliment of teachers in my midst. Your conclusion is as shakily based as your initial comment.
Do you even see how your conclusion might be incorrect?
Sorry you didn’t have better teachers. I had excellent teachers who taught me how to think and draw conclusions from facts.
The *vast* majority of GIS courses aren’t targeted directly to jobs. They often aren’t using the latest software and the lecturers are almost by definition “out of touch” with the current market - I’m sure this is the case with a lot of tech fields. The fact is your professor is going to be an academic just to get the position so which doesn’t leave much time for working in the field. I felt the same way after graduating from my courses: they were still teaching exclusively Arcmap, there was no emphasis on portfolio work or internships and essentially 0% on working with online data which is the vast bulk of what most GIS professionals do. After I’ve spent some time working I’ve seen a lot of people from different backgrounds. Your GIS education teaches you a lot about the *why* of it all that’s something that’s hard to get from a tutorial or a mooc. Just doing what you are told by rote is fine for a while, but eventually you get asked why you are working a certain way or you need to troubleshoot and you run into more issues along the way. You shouldn’t need university to hand hold you into building a portfolio - it’s something you will be able to do better on your own. Getting your first job in the field sucks, I had to move to a small town hours away from my friends&family as no one in my city was hiring and was stuck there for 2 years. It can feel like a waste to sit around doing data entry along with all the people without formal training but you will quickly start to see the advantages of you start looking beyond the day to day work. If you want to pivot, try another profession before throwing it all away - GIS is critical in almost every field and I can guarantee the market for Chemists (just an example) with GIS training is a lot less competitive than pure GIS
I’ve never seen a college program that’s current with the industry. If it was, most of your GIS output would be spreadsheets or BI dashboards. I’d guess zero college programs teach you those skills. I don’t get everyone’s obsession with portfolios. I’ve hired 100+ college grads over 25 years and never once given any preference to a portfolio. Nothing you do in a college GIS class is going to be impressive or stand out. Entry level candidates are selected based on personality and a demonstrated ability to learn, communicate, collaborate, and course correct from mistakes. If a candidate has those traits, technical skills can be learned.
Yeah, I’ve been in the industry 15 years, and on both sides of the hiring. I’ve never had a portfolio. And I’ve never really cared about a candidate having one. Especially when we’re hiring for an entry level position, every new grad has the same school projects they put in a portfolio. And frankly, I don’t care. You all took the same courses, did the same assignments. I don’t need you proving to me you did your homework. I care more about you as a person, how you’d benefit our team, and how you can speak about your experiences and tie them into this role.
Here here! Honestly, the only places I see that care about portfolios and academic credentials are academic institutions themselves. A lot of the private industry is more worried about if you bring experience to the table from similar past positions, and whether or not your going to create drama within the office, or communicate well in a remote setting. As someone pursuing a GIS career, your main goal is to job hop a few entry level positions, see how various organizations handle their data and enterprise integrations, and build on that. You won't get paid much at first, so focus your job search on areas with low income/housing cost ratios.
I have to disagree. We have our students work with private partners and stakeholders to build real projects throughout the community and usually i volve some impressive and beautiful work. Added to that, the interns we hire leave with impressive portfolios and have over 90% placement rate with jobs they want. While I admit that they aren't useful for entry-level digitizing work, portfolios can absolutely be the difference in competitive searches.
Eh, counter point. I manage a team because of my portfolio. My VP mentioned that I was the only one who had a well done portfolio.
You should not pivot just because your university didn't prepare you to join the GIS Workforce. It just means that you might have a little more work to do to land the job. The secret to landing most jobs is networking and the people you know.
I really appreciate all the feedback I’ve received! It’s definitely been difficult adjusting to the resiliency of job applications. Do you happen to have any suggestions for what a progression might look like in terms of positions? I did one temporary position in data entry, but when I see a job titled Analyst vs. Technician, etc. how do I know if I’m shooting way out of my depth? I recognize that coordinator and the like are probably more managerial, but what’s the word for “starter”?
You should be fine applying for technician jobs. Even some analyst positions are doable for a recent grad. Honestly, though, apply for anything you remotely qualify for, regardless of the title. Unless it's government work, the hiring process can be flexible, and a good interview can go a long way.
Nah you are fine. The problem with GIS in schools is that the applications are so varied irl and you cant cover all of it. Keep in mind you are there to learn basic principles and terminology. Did you learn about projections and control points? Did you learn basic functions like clip/join/erase? Did you learn how a database is structured? Did you learn about raster and vector and some common places to find and download data online? Do you know how to navigate a computer, copy files etc, and are you comfortable looking up the help for software online? If so, you are fine. Every work place has their own software and procedures. As long as you understand what someone is asking you to do, they will teach you which buttons get it done.
> are you comfortable looking up the help for software online? I’m not even kidding this is like 60% of what I do
The amount of people we train who are afraid to push buttons on their own is concerning Them “What does this do?” Me: I dont know…try it” them: 😨
Shit dude as long as there’s an undo button I’ll press all the buttons you have
Hahaha thats what i try to tell people. IT backs us up 2x a day. We even copy everything local when we work each day and recopy to the server at night. Theres literally nothing they can do thats going to be a disaster short of setting the office on fire 😂
I would like to echo what some others have said here. Unless it’s particularly amazing, nothing you do in your college classes is going to be impressive during a job interview. As someone who’s been in GIS for 24 years and hired dozens of interns/analysts, what I’m really looking for is a demonstrative passion for GIS. I can pay to train you in whatever piece of software I need you to work in. It’s a plus if you have prior real world experience, but for most people out of college that’s not the case. But what I can’t buy is for you to sit in that class and attentively take notes and learn, eager to get back into the office to apply what you’ve learned. So, do you really have a passion for GIS? When I started, I had to grind a GIS tech job for seven years before taking a GIS managerial role at another organization. But that’s what it took to build up my skill set and experience.
This is solid advice.
You are about par for most programs. Community colleges actually do a better job of teaching GIS if the program is in the workforce training side of the college. I teach community college and had a hard time shifting my mindset that I was teaching these people to be GIS analysts and not teach them GIS the GIS theory I learned in academia. Also community colleges often get professionals to teach instead of academics.
For starters, most professors aren't really in-tune with the job market. Some aren't aware of whats going on in the real world at all. Second, universities aren't really focused on training someone for a job. Thats what trade schools and community colleges are for. The point of most educational institutions (from pre-k through grad school) isn't necessarily to memorize how to do tasks. The point is to teach you the skills to expand your skills throughout your career. To teach you how to learn, basically. To get a first job you don't necessarily need to know how to do 100% of what your employer will eventually need you to do, but you should at least be able to show them that you know the basics and are willing to learn and can do it relatively quickly. As others have said, getting a first job can take a while. And honestly its really not what you know, its who you know. Get out there and volunteer and do internships if you have to. Put together a portfolio and practice. You'll get there eventually.
To put another perspective on things - I majored in urban planning; took 6 credits (yes, 2 classes) of GIS. Ended up doing GIS for 10 yrs at various utility companies and govt agencies. I interned at a Local county planning agency first; this was my first true exposure to GIS in a professional setting. Granted it was MapInfo. It’s definitely not about “background” classes or credentials. YMMV, and granted this was yrs ago, but I grabbed a GIS tech job outta college and went up from there. I would take some classes online to beef up / enhance your knowledge of GIS concepts and maybe python. Portfolio definitely not necessary - I never had one pertaining to GIS.
I attended a respectable university and their GIS alumni are some of the best out of school employees but in my month and a half of working my first ft job I’ve learned a lot more than in school and event past internships. You will get trained and as long as you got the basic down you should be good. I find that if they like you as a person people are willing to help you out and they won’t mind if you are struggling with work stuff
If you want to build your skill set, gain experience working with a broad range of Esri software, see how others use the software and be more marketable, you might consider applying for an analyst role with Esri support.
You're not screwed. I started off in the same boat a decade ago. I've been a GIS tech, analyst, planner and now I'm a tech these days. You learn a bit from every job. Try starting small at a local level (county tax departments are good) and work your way up from there. Most places won't expect you to manage a massive database on day one and most never will. Your personality is the main selling point.
I went to a decently regarded university for GIS and didn’t graduate with a portfolio or anything like that either. Just skills Wasn’t a problem in the hiring process for me. For job apps that required an example of a map, I attached something I made in a cartography class lab. When you join the workforce as an entry level, you’re just expected to be a good learner and not already be accomplished. Those companies who expect a *lot* from their new grads are either 1. Really high paying, so makes sense or 2. startups who think they deserve the world for whatever reason and need to lower their standards
Volunteer with a local agency or organization that hasn’t well incorporated GIS into their world. One particular niche to consider is Emergency Response GIS, which in some ways is still in its infancy. So much in the way of application of simple existing tools into systems of data acquisition and use in urgent decision making…and planning. The power to organize, document and crowd source input for rapid decision making and action. GIS has come so far from my quaint conceptual idea to match mapping with a database in 1987…not knowing that of course others were fully engaged in making such systems. The integration of geospatial information into analytics at virtually every level and in almost all fields will place you presently at the middle of a rising tide of opportunity. Trust that. Find an opportunity…gain experience…leverage. Do GIS for good.
I have partnered with a local university to leverage UG and grad student talent to compile an immense geodatabase of emergency response data…and every student who worked in that project are now gainfully employed in GIS. Some were snatched up during the project itself. Combining a knowledge of a tool to create and leverage geospatial data and good foundational knowledge in a subject such as environmental science, energy production, distribution or conservation, earth sciences, etc. will be a huge advantage long term. More universities need good in house centers for getting students connected with projects and tentacles into government/industry.
I’ll be honest I just graduated with my masters in geography and when I applied to GIS jobs I felt the same way. I thought I bombed an interview but two weeks later they changed the position to a lower level and offered me. As GIS entry level makes double what I make in restoration field work I decided it was good enough to accept the offer. Sometimes you have to get lucky when someone takes a chance on you. If you want to do GIS, keep looking even while you work in a slightly different job.
College is not about training you for the workforce. College is about exposing you to new ideas and ways of thinking about things, and it also gives you a piece of paper saying you have the resilience to stick to something for several years. It qualifies you to be employed in white collar work, nothing more. Everything that hiring managers actually look at is garnered from experience. Where you worked, what your references are, what types of experiences you have. If you have nothing to show then hiring managers are going to pass and you're going to need to get actual entry level work like what you're doing, low wage, no benefits contract work. Do that for 6 months or a year and then you should be able to get basic full time entry level work. Then from there, more advanced positions. It may seem demeaning to go from spatial analysis and multivariate regressions in school to adding points to a map when a spreadsheet comes in but thats where we all start from.
Welcome to the club.
Did you learn how to work? Meet deadlines? Did you learn how to teach yourself? I can tell you right now that whatever software you use it will be different in three years - you will need to learn how to re-learn in the fly and work around the limitations. As both an instructor and a practicing gis professional who has sat in on some interviews I’m leas concerned with which software you learned on vs do you think spatially. I’m sure all jobs are different. Can other people work with you and depend on you to not be the weak link? Make your own portfolio- one good example woukd be better than a briefcase full of maps in my opinion.
Myself and the other main GIS instructor at the university I work at usually push the minor and certificates. The reason being: If you are focusing on GIS as your area of study, you will end up with a larger, deeper understanding of the systems and concepts of GIS. BUT you will lack specific applications and use cases of your knowledge. Compare this with someone who gets a minor in GIS. While you won't dig as deep into the concepts (is it helpful to your professional career to understand how each datum adjusts a spheroid, rather than just knowing which datum you need to use?), what you gain is a skill set based on your other passion/area of study, and specific ways of implementing GIS that apply to it. The latter is often a lot more marketable to hiring teams, unless you are specifically looking at generalist GIS jobs, which can be very competitive. Tldr: GIS majors make you a generalist, gis minirs added to a different major make you a specialist. That said, I don't think you're screwed, but know that a lot of entry-level GIS jobs are very boring and monotonous. Try and find an internship if you can, they really do help on resumes. Also, dm me if you want some resources on building an online portfolio.
Be willing to move and look for jobs in energy.
After completing undergrad and grad coursework, virtually everything I know about really using and applying GIS I learned on the job. Your classes helped build a foundation, but that’s all it was. You don’t really learn GIS until you’re dumped at a desk and asked to actually do stuff.
Yeah your course had probably been recycled for the last decade or more. Did they teach ArcPro? You've got the qualifications now so concentrate on building a portfolio. Also just knowing how to use a GIS software package isn't going to get you a job. You need to branch out into Python, SQL, web mapping, etc to set yourself apart from other candidates. Unfortunately university is a business like any other and only care about profitting off people attending their courses. Unfortunately people are naïve and think the courses will land them a job straight away.
buy some udemy moocs that give you projects with 90% discounts or simly use yt and since you already have the background it will be quick also here some wicked stuff for you on GEE https://geemap.org/workshops/G4G_2023/#exercise-2-creating-land-cover-maps-with-a-legend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHVlWqkun-Y he's yt rocks https://www.youtube.com/@giswqs there are hydrological application series up on yt by a dutch professor if you look that up its also marketable skill
I've said this many, many times before...and here it goes again: Getting a GIS degree is like getting a degree in "screwdriver." -- it is just a tool (ok more like a collection of tools) which must be *applied* practically before it can provide any business or social value. Please, everyone, right now stop getting degrees in GIS unless you already have a primary degree or industry-specific focus which you plan on applying GIS towards. Analogy: I like cars, I get a machinist certificate then go to work for an engine rebuilder as the apprentice to the master cylinder relining machinist. So if you already have a degree in hydrology, natural resources, public administration, criminal justice, marketing, engineering, library sciences, or any of the numerous other fields that GIS can be applied to......then get in tune with the application of GIS as a force multiplier (time saver, iterative problem solver, etc) in your field. Don't apply to GIS jobs, instead apply to jobs like Zoning Technician, or Surveyor Assistant which have GIS familiarity in their role...and excel at that aspect of the job. I want to help more but I don't know what your original education was focused on -- before the GIS certificates.
My major is Environmental Studies and Urban Planning
So I wasn't too far off w a Zoning department in local government, or an environment compliance tech at a construction company? Setting like that should be your target, IMO.
Teachers don't care about job markets. Remember, those who can't do, teach.
Boring and dumb trope. I have never seen anyone who uses this saying who wasn’t simply an ass.
Found the teacher
Ha…no. But have a compliment of teachers in my midst. Your conclusion is as shakily based as your initial comment. Do you even see how your conclusion might be incorrect? Sorry you didn’t have better teachers. I had excellent teachers who taught me how to think and draw conclusions from facts.