When I grow up I want to be a….

Did you have any idea when you were at school that this is what you'd end up doing? Apparently my first chosen career was to work in a shoe shop, something to do with the boxes probably!  Needless to say that by the time I was actually making real choices about what to do with my life and how to earn a crust shoes had dropped off the radar replaced by nature and animals.  Suggestions of Zoologist (no Grandma I won't be mucking out the elephants at London Zoo) and Botanist (yes, Nana all those nature walks did set me on the path) were both a little restrictive, I wanted something that encompassed both and everything in between, it was Niall who suggested ecology when, along with the family, we went to a North York Moors National Park quiz evening he was running at Danby Lodge (as it was then, The Moors Centre now).  And the rest, as they say is history… (although the path from National Park Ecological Surveyor to CJS Editor is a rather winding one!!)

So who helped you and pushed you towards your ideal job, helped you decide on qualifications or guided you towards taking the right 'options' for your secondary school exams?  Say thanks to them today by paying it forward and helping out another budding ecologist, ranger, conservationist, ornithologist…

Today is the beginning of National Careers Week a celebration of careers guidance and free resources in education across the UK which means it's the perfect time to offer that guidance or as NCW themselves say: Empowering Positive Change through Careers Education.

CJS has a range of career advice pages giving information on some of the various roles across the sector, what they entail, the skills and qualifications needed, links to relevant professional bodies and organisations and lists of the many articles we've published which help shed some light on each job.  Read them here.

Please share them with anyone who might be interested and if you can add to them, suggest something that we've missed or would like to write us a career profile of your job get in touch with Kerryn or Amy.

If you're running a careers fair and would like some literature from us, leaflets, posters etc. or want to update your careers resources then please contact Amy and we're happy to send out bits and pieces for you to use. We also offer a QnA service in the form of AskCJS - does what it says on the tin! Ask us a countryside careers question and we'll do our best to answer it for you - or find someone who can.