I’ve been seeing a ton of great PAID wildlife internships being posted so I thought it would be a great time to go over how to get an internship for wildlife biology, ecology, zoology, and conservation careers.
This is going to be a series of posts, so make sure to check back here for the next few weeks!
I get the impression from my Getting a Job in Wildlife Biology Facebook group that internships are highly coveted, and while this may be true in terms of people seeking them, from an employers’ standpoint, they aren't that different from other experiences and not necessarily better (more on this later). But first, let’s go over what internships are...
Internships in wildlife biology and related fields differ from regular job postings in that they are (1) temporary (although MANY entry level jobs such as field assistant positions are temporary) and (2) are meant to include more mentoring and professional development than regular jobs. They are intended for current college students or recent graduates and often meant as a way to expose newbies to real world work environments. Therefore, they are a great starting place!
When you are hired for, say, a temporary field assistant position, you are hired to do a specific job with specific duties and responsibilities to carry out. You might be hired by someone who cares about professional development and mentoring and they might do some of this, but they are not obligated to.
Instead, internships are designed to incorporate more mentoring and *should* include professional development in addition to work experience. For instance, when I worked at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, we provided our interns with science communication training throughout the summer and incorporated interns in our lab meetings as part of their mentoring experience. When I worked for the Bureau of Land Management under an internship ran by the Chicago Botanic Garden (my very first one!), they provided us with a three day workshop training us in GIS, mapping, data collection, and other field skills.
A lot of people think internships are akin to “shadowing,” where you follow your supervisor around and get to know their job by walking through a day in their career shoes. In reality, internships are not that different from other work experiences. You often have a job with assigned tasks, duties, and responsibilities, and you complete them as part of your internship.
If you have a non-internship field job with an excellent supervisor who cares about mentoring, working as a field assistant can strongly resemble great internships or even be better than them. On the other hand, if you have a poor supervisor who doesn’t care about mentoring or is not good at it, even if you are officially in an “internship,” you might not get any additional benefits. In other words, sometimes internships are in name only.
Next week, I'll talk about how to find and get internships!
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