[Sodfoster]

Cheers guys its good to hear I'm not the only one who feels this way!


Hannahpanda I would say it is probably a good bet to look down south for temp work. There is lots advertised, although be wary of what you get offered. One of the companies I worked for gave us a contract to do some GCN surveys and the money was ok it was hourly pay and we got a living allowance per day of £20 which worked out well. Then after 3 wks when this initial contract was finished we where give a new contract for a longer term on min wage but it was salaried not hourly and they cut down the living allowance to £10 a day!! we where working around 50 hours a week sometimes but only paid for 37.5 so it worked out that we where paid 3.93 an hr! plus we where living in a hotel so we had to buy our food out as we had no where to cook anything! And finally if that wasn't enough it was cost me £60 a week to get there and back from up north!

On the flip side I made some good friends and meet up with some really good ecologists who sadly happened to work for a poor organisation. It even turned out that they paid them very poorly also (the reason everyone stayed is that they promote people very quickly but at the same time pay them less ie an ecologist will go to a senior level within 1-2 years but be on about K less than the national average!! they even had a principle who was only out of uni 4yrs!).

sorry I'm off on one again!!

Finally in reply to real wild child, you have a point and I guess that is the way things are. Although I have 3 friends from, 1 did law, 1 did IT the other Graphic design each one of these left uni with decent degrees no prior xp but each one got a Job because the career they chose recognised the degrees they had gained. How may IT, Law firms and graphic design companies do you know where they expect you to have 2yrs experience with recognised licences for graduate positions??? My point to this is when you search for Ecology Jobs there are plenty advertised for senior or principle positions which seems to say there are not enough senior/principle ecologists to go around so why isn't the industry investing more in the Graduate/ Entry level jobs so in 4-5 yrs there will be plenty??