Lucie Bland © Lucie Bland 2020

When I embarked on a Biology degree at a UK university in 2007, I had little idea that ten years later, I would be running my own business in Australia. No one in my family is an entrepreneur, so I can’t say it runs in my blood. It seems to be a bug I caught mid-career.

Graduating in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis, I decided to pursue a PhD in Ecology to delay having to find a job. I then completed two postdocs in Australia and unwittingly found myself in an intensely competitive career path with few opportunities.

To showcase how ecology degrees can be used in different ways, I believe we have to be acutely aware of the economic environment we live in. While the economy is stronger in Australia than it is in many parts of the world, we are still seeing a casualization of the economy (with more part-time and freelance jobs and more under-employment) and limited academic funding.

However, as any biologist will know—when disturbance occurs, there will be both winners and losers.

What if you could be a winner?

This casualization of the economy has led to the emergence of many freelance jobs and alternative careers. (I still can’t believe that posting photos of your Chihuahua on Instagram can generate revenue and be called a ‘job’).

So, what if you could use your hard-earned skills to create a career that fits around your timetable and enables you to make money on your own terms?

Many ecologists have knowledge and skills that can be transferred to a myriad of fields, whether this is operating lab equipment, taking photographs, teaching or writing.

My own route has taken me to a career that is distantly related to what I initially studied but is deeply embedded in the skillset I developed. As an editor, I read, write and transform draft manuscripts into jewels suitable for publication. While some of my manuscripts pertain to ecology, most do not (I edit widely across non-fiction, business, health, psychology and medicine).

If you’re an ecology graduate looking to develop an alternative career amidst our era of technological and social disruption, I would first start by having a hard look at yourself. Here, assessing your skills and interests (especially beyond the specific topic of ecology) is a crucial step.

The classic career coaching book What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard N Bolles (now in its 48th edition) can set the foundation for you re-setting your career. Through its practical exercises, I discovered three years ago that my superpowers were to ‘quickly understand complex content’ and ‘communicate it better than someone who’s studied it for 15 years’.

With a bit of research, I discovered that there was an actual job that corresponded to this peculiar set of powers: editor!

If you’re searching for a new career, look far and wide. There are thousands of occupations out there, and the repository O*Net Online can be a good place to search for occupations according to skillset, personality traits, educational level and the type of work environment you enjoy.

If you are a lecturer or professional who wants to mentor students into alternative careers, guide them to think beyond their personal or your personal experience. Unfortunately, academic careers tend to create warped expectations of what the wider world of work is.

Finally, utilize your network to research different occupations (and get those jobs!) As they say, your network is your net worth. This might mean inviting old colleagues to coffee to ask them about their job, join a networking group in your city, or check out the #altac or #postac hashtags on Twitter for alternative or post-academic careers.

So don’t throw your ecology degree down the bin just yet—just look for creative ways to reuse it!

Dr Lucie Bland is an editor and publisher and a certified career coach (and perhaps an over-achiever too). Following a ten-year academic career, she forged her own path to build a business that fits around her life interests (books!)

Giveaway!

As part of the ESA Bulletin ‘Using an ecology degree in different ways’, Dr Bland is donating one mentoring session for ecologists interested in pursuing an alternative career path (regardless of academic level). To enter the giveaway, please complete a short application form here by 23rd March 2020. The winner will be notified by email and the mentoring session will be conducted online over Zoom.

For more information, contact Lucie here.

Read more from the March 2020 ESA Bulletin.

Banner image: Lucie used the skills she developed in in ecology career to start a new career as a consulting editor. Credit: Lucie Bland.