Hey, thank you for all your posts!
Fritillary,
I completely agree with you, it sometimes feels as if it’s not what you know, but who you know, and it should not be like that! You should be able to find voluntary work though, but some of the animal groups can be hard to get hold of. I have found the wildlife trusts are good, and if organisations do not answer your emails, try calling them too. I would hope your phd would put you in a much better position then me and help you move up the ladder more quickly, although unbelievably I saw an Assistant Ecologist job advertised the other day requesting that a phd would be an advantage. I was hoping that was a mistake!
JimboUK,
Yes it is totally infuriating, my friend has recently started a job with a consultancy and they have sent her out to do all kinds of surveys that she has never done before. She said that she does not feel experienced enough to do them on her own with another person who is in the same boat.
In interviews I have been asked whether I have had experience of desktop studies, report writing etc with a company, and although I do not have this experience yet, I do not see it as a huge problem. I have seen reports at work and they are far less complex than the reports I had to write at University, and doing data searches is not hard. Oh well we just have to keep plugging away until someone notices us!
Moo,
Thank you for your advice, it is very useful. At the moment I think consultancy is definitely what I want to get into, I have considered stat body's but I thought they would probably be even more competitive to get into then anything else. Although maybe getting an admin job with a stat body could be a way in, but I would be worried that as they would know I want to be an ecologist in the long term, they would not want to employ me for such a position.
At the moment I only have Graduate membership of IEEM and I have attended lots of courses with various organisations this year, including Phase 1 as this is another area I have not had an opportunity to experience. Also I am working towards my dormouse licence, and I would love to be able to work towards a bat licence. I heard it takes 3 years to get enough experience and finding bat people to go out with seem to be few and far between. Despite all these obstacles I am determined and I am not going to give up!
Do you mind me asking how you got your first job with a consultancy? Oh and what did you mean by everyone knowing each other? It seems to be that way round here too.