greetings everyone on behalf of all the faculty research scientists and graduate students here
at SciAll i want to congratulate the graduating class of 2021. congratulations everybody you
did it you made. it college is over now if you have just recently graduated with a bachelor's
degree related to stem fields and you're curious or interested or thinking about what a career
in marine science might be like for you i'm sure you still have many pressing questions
questions like what's life going to be like after grad after college what are my next steps
how am i going to be competitive
yeah well here are the answers that I got.
it had been two long years since i graduated from college
up to this point i had fully committed myself to becoming a marine biologist
but after two short internships i had yet to get into a graduate program or find a job
however what i did not realize was that i was well on my way to becoming a marine biologist
although my previous experience couldn't get me into graduate school or a long-term job
it did get me a part-time paid position at a study abroad
facility on the desert-like caribbean island of bonaire
this internship in many ways transformed my understanding of the field of marine biology
after eight months of continuous diving teaching and ecological research i finally felt for the
first time validated as a marine biologist and after that i never looked back.
my name is colin and i'm a scientist who gets excited while talking about coral reefs or the ocean
but i'm also inspired when i meet ambitious and passionate early career scientists and
i find motivation in sharing ocean stories that reveal deep connections with their very own lives
over the years of study and research in the caribbean
i am determined not only to learn as much as i can but to share what i've learned the best way i can
word that internship was absolutely awesome i loved every minute of it now for most recent
graduates getting your foot into the door into a job or the the field of marine science is very
important but i'm sure for many of you you will quickly realize how challenging and competitive
finding a career or building a career within marine science can be
now if you've just come out of college i'm sure you've been given one option consistently over
and over again and that is grad school right yay more school however if you're like me who
struggle to get into grad school right out of college or if you're just completely burned out
and you need a break from before going back into school right before committing to more school
or even if you're somebody who simply just needs to start working right now and make some income
right thinking about internships volunteering and study abroad teaching opportunities
can be a really effective and useful way for you to develop your skill sets in your background
and build your career within marine science or marine biology in other words it's totally fine
if you decide to take some time after college before you hop back into graduate school
or if you before you find a real long-term and promising job right it's okay in fact
i encourage a lot of recent graduates to take the time to look at opportunities like internships or
volunteering opportunities because not only will you be able to develop skill sets and experience
within a particular field but you'll also be able to fine-tune and kind of dial in your interest
to whatever area or field within marine science or marine biology you're interested in
it's true marine science is such a huge ginormous field there's so many different positions
that fall within the umbrella term of marine science right and if you think about it that
means there are more they're probably equal to if not more internships volunteering and study abroad
teaching opportunities work studies and things like this for you to choose from and so in today's
video i thought it would be best to talk about the best ways to evaluate and critique and select
the particular internships that might fit your needs and at the end i'm going
to talk a little bit about in my opinion the best way to apply and hopefully land a job
at these internships right so let's get started so first off one of the most important
questions i think and the first question you should really ask is is this internship paid
now i'm sure many of you who are thinking about marine science are well aware of
the fact that most of these type of entry-level positions won't be paid very much or paid at all
and that is unfortunately a real aspect of this career and these situations definitely
need to change however although certain internships may not be able to provide you
income in any real way they can also provide some kind of support and that usually looks like room
and board they can cover meals they can cover transportation if the facility is remote and so
when you're evaluating these different internships trying to even though some of these may not be
paid look into what they offer and whichever one of these might actually fit your needs
now uh my background my experience is tropical marine ecology and for these kinds of really
popular and exciting heavy field work you know remote traveling involved in all this stuff you
can also run the risk of bumping into internships that you have to pay for it's called pay-to-play
internships where you pay to work at a particular facility or location if you are somebody like me
who refuses to pay to work or if you simply cannot afford that kind of opportunity this
is a situation where volunteering can actually be a very effective and in this case cost effective
alternative to paid internships right volunteering is awesome especially if you already have a main
nine to five that may not necessarily be within stem or marine science but you're still determined
you're still motivated to pursue that as a career and so as you're working having a volunteer
experience at a local aquarium at a state park anywhere outdoors that's environmental in nature
can give you the behind the scenes access and hands-on training and experience
without the full commitment of an internship or even kind of like a part-time job
and so it provides the most amount of flexibility especially for those who are holding a different
job and so when thinking about different types of opportunities it's helpful to consider in
this fashion volunteering is going to be much more cost effective and more efficient than paying for
uh an internship the only circumstance where paid internship would be ideal is if you're
receiving some kind of tangible deliverable that usually looks like some sort of
widely recognized certification or if you're still in college i've seen certain cases where you can
pay for college credits and those are actually really useful and so there are a lot of different
options and it's important to think about the financial aspect of any internship you take on
number two is thinking about the length of this internship right generally you want to focus or
put some emphasis towards internships that are at least four months to a year round that's around
the average sweet spot for most internships right anything less than that is maybe less ideal why
participating in an internship that actually lasts last several months gives you a realistic shot at
developing some kind of deliverable as well this item can be really useful in selling your ability
to be productive to show your determination and hard work and you're more likely to be
able to produce something like that with longer internships compared to something that's less
than four months now i get it if you're if you're still in college and you're trying to get ahead of
the game and get into some internships then yeah you only have a few months during the summer and
even less time during the winter months and so then less than three months is ideal however if
you're after college i would highly encourage you to think about internships that are four months or
longer now another great metric that you can use when comparing internships is their intern history
if you take the time to go to the website and a lot of the good internships will have this
they'll have a section in their website that lists all of their previous interns over the years and
this can be a real treasure trove of information that can be useful and help you identify and
select certain attributes that are highly favored at this particular internship right each of these
interns in the past will be asked to write some kind of blurb or background information about them
and if you're able to briefly read through a couple of these and see certain trends in
skill sets or experiences or interests that are generally hired at this that can be useful in
highlighting similar interests that you may have right it can also provide information for how many
interns they hire and how often is this internship offered every spring summer and fall or is it just
in the spring and the fall how many interns each season do they hire how many spots are available
right a lot of useful information can help you identify which internships you have a
better shot of applying to and getting an interview and hopefully getting hired
so overall just as there are many different types of internships and volunteering opportunities
there are a lot of useful methods and metrics that you can use to evaluate compare
and to select the internships are going to work great for you now i want to switch gears and
talk about in my opinion what are the best ways to apply for these types of internship opportunities
right and there are two major uh rules or suggestions that i have that can really set
your application above the rest and actually have each evaluator spend as much time looking at your
resume compared to others from my experience i've had some small opportunities to sit on the other
side of the table and to learn how to evaluate applications from interns and this is where i'm
getting my information from one of the best one of the most important things to think about and
one of the most important rules to follow when writing your application is following
the rules it makes a difference when you uh actually format and organize your application
specifically how it is specified in the job description it is an easy early indication for
the evaluators to determine who is actually able to follow rules and instructions because like when
you're reviewing a hundred different applications the page numbers matter the number of the of
pages that they allot on your cv matters what is contained within your cv or resume matters how
long your cover letter is the word count these things are used to expedite the application
process and to make your application as concise as possible and so one of the most important things i
can encourage you to do is actually take the time and read exactly how your application should be
submitted and the second most useful tip that i have for anyone who might be applying for
internships is to tailor your internship to the specific agency or facility you're applying to
i have met a lot of really ambitious and motivated undergraduates and grad and and recent graduates
um where they have a bunch of different applications and they've put a lot of effort
and time into one version of their cover letter and resume and they shotgun blast that through
all the different ones and in reality and in many ways that could be effective if you apply to 50
or 100 internships most more than likely one or two of them actually may trickle out of that and
you might get an interview however if you take your time and evaluate each of these different
internships it'll prep you up so you know exactly what to expect if you do get an interview
or if you do actually get hired and it actually is a really effective way to to sell yourself to this
particular agency or organization as an evaluator if you're reading a resume and a cover letter
and there's the theme and the topic is very related or similar to the expectations and the
details outlined in the job description these are going to be the ones where the advisor is going to
spend more time reading and trying to understand compared to other applications and this can be
somewhat clear at times that application actually is not intended for this particular university
or this particular internship or this particular opportunity there are a lot of different you can
see a lot of small grammatical errors or just oddly placed phrases or words there are certain
signs that evaluators have known to have been have learned to recognize where it's clear that this
particular application wasn't designed for or wasn't specified to the job description
it was more of a generic version and so if you're able to accomplish these two things
you're able to follow both of those it already will set you in the good pile at the very least
and will give you the opportunity for these evaluators to really look over your resume
to question certain things to go back and forth between your resume and cover letter
and that is what you want the longer their eyeballs are spent on your application the better
because that ultimately gives you the best chance at potentially getting an interview and
ultimately getting a job or getting that position getting that internship and once you're in you can
continue to develop and build your skill sets and continue to build your uh your career path towards
marine science or marine biology now if you like content like this and you would like to learn
more about how to find and build a successful and rewarding career with the not only marine science
or marine biology but stem in general please hit the like button and feel free to subscribe here on
this channel sciall is a compilation of a bunch of different ambitious and motivated and seasoned
veterans within all aspects of science and stem and we are pumping out videos consistently every
week on multiple different topics and if you're really interested in wanting to learn more please
stay tuned for more i'm really excited to continue making videos like this and i will see you soon