Back to the future - I return to Geology!
January 30th, 2008 | by lissie |OK exciting development - I am a geologist again! I have just accepted a 3-day / week job as a “Geological Administration Assistant”! Now for those of you are not totally up to date on my CV - and let’s face I had to read up on it my self! I have a total of 4 years experience as an underground, open cut and exploration geologist plus another 5 years running, consulting and training is specialist software for geologist/engineers. I last worked in the industry in 1995! Since then I have been mainstream IT. Now the reason I got out of geology was that there were really not many jobs around, and because of the state of the NZ $ at the time although I had a NZ-based job I spent nearly 75% of my time travelling overseas to clients. In short I decided “a life” would be nice - the definition of “a life” in geology is that you get to go home every night and on weekends!
So in a weak moment when I found myself excited about hitting $20 MONTH in advertising revenues I did a quick look on an online employment site and came up with a couple of jobs which looked OK. This one in particular caught my eye because the wanted part-time and the company was advertising direct and not thru an agency - agencies sometimes fail to appreciate the uniqueness of my CV! So I sent off an email late Wed - got a call 9am Thurs - went in for an interview Friday. Today (Monday was a holiday) I got the call - start next week please!
In the meanwhile the 2nd job I applied for, which was an agency had got back to me Tues (apologetically he’d been on leave) and had organised another interview for me on Friday, which I had to cancel. The agent was friendly and confirmed that there was big demand for “older ladies whose kids are off their hands” doing these types of office database management jobs. (Political correctness has obviously not made it to WA!) Basically geology has always generated lots and lots of data but the software has finally evolved to be more useful than just plotting numbers out. I am impressed that a) there are “ladies being employed without a second thought b) there is part-time work and c) there is a recognition that computers are useful for geological data - all of this is new since I was in the game and a reflection that true change always comes through market forces. I should point out that I was the 2nd woman to work underground in Broken Hill in 1984, at the time the union still banned married women from joining which effectively barred them from all work except nursing, teaching and professional.
Anyway the same agent could have got me a job as a geo in Wiluna “tomorrow” which even given agent hype was pretty quick. But without even knowing exactly where it is , I knew what the answer was. Here are the quick stats from the website:
Distance from Perth (km) 966
Area (km2) 184,000
Length of Sealed Roads (km) 20
Length of Unsealed Roads (km) 1,833
Number of Electors 355
Population Total*# 1644
Males* 1226
Females* 418
Indigenous Origin* 366
Median Age* 33
Employed* 97.2%
Unemployed* 2.8%
Note particularly the % of unsealed roads, distance from Perth and sex ratio! Now I am not saying Wiluna may not have been a great job - it probably would have paid nearly $100k to start with BUT I do feel I have outgrown this sort of thing - I don’t even have to check to know that chance of Paul’s employment or ballroom dancing classes!
So of any of your out there have a disused geology degree or engineering degree - brush off the old CV, sort out your Ozzie work permit and get yourself to Perth!
