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My story:
-Graduated with an MA in Geography in 2010, focus was on Population Geography/Sprawl as my major research was a paper on sprawl in the Hartford region using Census Data and regressional analysis.
-BA included a Business Minor
-Aspired to work either in the US Census or DOT or Regional Planning Agency
-I have not found work in almost 2 years. I am very frustrated and desperate. I want to work in my field or at least use my skills.
-In a dream world, I would be working as a demographer studying TV Ratings/Fanbases of sports teams.
Do any of you have tips at all on how I can get a gainful career either in sports demography or anywhere relevant to my skillset and interests (Urban Planner/Site Analyst?).
28 with no career and very worried.
GIS. GIS.
A friend of mine got a master's in community development (closest thing to city planning in the area). We were looking up master's programs for him and they all mentioned GIS, and he didn't know what it was. Took a class in undergrad and used it in a paid internship.
It did take him 1 1/2 years to get his professional job, but he uses it a lot and is working in historical preservation and transportating for the city he ended up living in.
I'd never heard of GIS then, either, but it's clearly important, if not as a majority focus, then as a tool.
I focused on the same thing that you did when I graduated almost 20 years ago. Some of it may depend where you live. After graduation, my wife and I moved to Pennsylvania for her to go to grad school and there were just not any jobs in the geography field anywhere within a 2-3 hour radius of our apartment. Thought it would be easy to get a job because back home in Arizona it seemed like every commercial real estate firm, real estate appraisal firm, city, town, state, Indian tribe and private firms where hiring people with an urban planning background.
I ended up in sales and have been somewhat successful. Used my background in geography/urban planning to help forecast sales, "read" neighborhoods to find the best places to concentrate my selling in and find clients in places that other reps could not. Even have used my knowledge to help one employer game Google Maps and get us up to the top of Google Maps in multiple locations and used Google Maps to find the best places to set up short term locations for our business.
We have / use people with a planning background to get new cell tower sites through zoning and permitting processes in jurisdictions.
Of course, some wireless carriers prefer to use attorneys , especially for stickier locations.
Even now, we are mostly doing cell site upgrades to keep up with data demands - we have people that confirm jurisdiction requirements and processes for each site and take the project through permitting and zoning as needed.
We are an engineering firm with a real estate arm - lots of commercial development companies also have to have zoning and permitting people for their projects - new fast food places, gas stations, etc.
Just a thought.
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