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So - I’ve been working 3 years in a Texas Department of Transportation laboratory as a contractor. That is, I’m employed by an engineering services company that provides workers for TxDOT. Before that I was a research assistant at the state university for 5 years while I was a student: my name is listed as a co-author on some abstracts and papers, I briefly helped grade assignments for an online geology course offered by the university to high school students, did some fleet van / truck driving, and a little bit of geology field work / rock appreciating. Right now I do general lab maintenance, data entry, prepare concrete cores for failure / quality analysis by TxDOT geologists (my “client managers”), identify, characterize, and catalogue samples of rock and sand used in TxDOT works, and am generally just helpful. I’m a petrographic technician that works for state cement petrographers. I like it a lot! But the tax shortfall for Texas this year means for FY2021 I’m reduced to 20 hours a week, and if things don’t improve I might be cut entirely. Now I am looking for jobs around Central Texas - I’m drawn towards quality control positions at the various quarries and cement plants around here, but in the 2 months I’ve been sending applications, no dice as yet. Mining in general seems like steady work (as opposed to oil’s ups and downs) that will let me stay in the region - which is important to me. Otherwise I’ve also been applying to environmental technician / sampler jobs that are concerned with things like air/soil/water - since I know some people I went to school with do that kind of thing. I got hired just yesterday for a job reading water meters to make up for the shortfall in income and it seems fine given the season but I don’t want to be doing it come next summer. I’ll work both jobs since the TxDOT position is flexible. Am I missing something obvious? TxDOT doesn’t have the scratch to hire me, and I told the company I work for that I’m willing to do other work besides for TxDOT - but that hasn’t yielded anything. I might emphasize that I’m fine with a different hourly rate, I guess. I don’t hate the idea of working for the state or federal government and I’ve been applying to anything that seems tangentially related to my skillset or vaguely clerical such that anyone competent could probably do it. But, again, no results and I’m told federal hiring is slow and Texas hiring is dicey because of budget concerns. Thoughts? Am I doing reasonable things? A niche I might toss my resume into that I didn’t mention?
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Sep 24, 2020 03:44
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Yes, that’s pretty much spot on - non-biological lab work and sample taking. Construction or mining would be fine. I’ve applied to Terracon at least twice, yeah, but that other name is new to me. I confess I don’t know what these testing positions are called by other companies or who all the players are - Terracon at least was straightforward in calling their openings “Construction Materials Testing Technician”. I’ve been getting shown lots of survey crew positions that seem to range from small firms to national level businesses on LinkedIn and whatever, but not for construction testing. wolfs fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Sep 24, 2020 |
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Sep 24, 2020 04:28
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Heyo. Idea scouring the minds of goons: making a post to check what I last posted in here, and then maybe editing this post … but basically: If I don’t want to break into software or sales, what trades or other (very flexible or self-employed) sorts of jobs are out there that can make alright (70k-ish) money without too much trouble? I went to college for geology, have 4 years experience as a concrete petrographer (not AASHTO / ASTM C856 certified sadly) and now 1 year as an environmental protection specialist for FEMA, but the FEMA position is intermittent - so it’s really more like 8 months experience. I’m applying to relevant government jobs as soon as they open up and ideally see myself doing the FEMA thing for decades to come - but government hiring is slow. My boss seems to think I’m good at reviewing government plans for compliance issues and liable to move up in the long run. Which is good! But, stupidly, reserve FEMA employees don’t enjoy USERRA protections, so I am pondering something I could conceivably do on my own between FEMA work or where the people in charge are used to people coming and going… besides the obvious entry level stuff out there that has constant churn and hire just about anyone. also nixing welding, electrician, electric lineman, wind turbine, oilfield, heavy construction, and pesticide / herbicide positions out of my risk averse nature disclaimer: if a horrible disaster occurs in the near future i’ll probably have stuff to do and might end up getting promoted into something full time and non-intermittent and won’t have to worry about this
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Mar 20, 2022 14:46
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Hey thread - if you have a background in geography, geology, infrastructure, biology, environmental conservation, archeology, architectural history, or some aspects of federal environmental laws - FEMA’s Environmental Planning and Historic Preservation cadre is hiring reservist employees. https://www.fema.gov/careers/position-types/reservists I can say that in my experience- I went from being an intermittent reservist employee to full time within a year but before my first disaster related assignment it was 7 months of nothing after onboarding - just a few online trainings. Depending on how disasters and bad weather shake out if you apply and get hired there may be no work for you for a while - but if you’re currently employed and thinking about transitioning into government work there’s been a development in the last few years: the CREW Act passed and FEMA reservists have the same USERRA employment protections as people in the National Guard. https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_crew-act-userra-one-pager.pdf FEMA is hiring reservists across the 23 different cadres, too, but I don’t have experience with the other disaster response groups in terms of specific experience that would really wow an interviewer. Public Assistance might be interested if you have any experience in construction planning or inspecting construction. Happy to answer any questions. In my instance I have a background in geology and concrete petrography - I applied August 2020, got hired as a reservist March 2021, got my first substantive disaster assignment November 2021, got hired full time March 2022 as a GS9, and April 2023 got promoted to a GS11 in FEMA’s EHP group.
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Sep 15, 2023 16:53
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