Finishing my bachelor's degree; thinking of a job

[MartinV]

Hello everyone.

I would assume such a thread would be very common in this section but I believe my circumstances are specific so I will make a new one.

I'm a student in Slovenia, Central Europe. I'm finishing a bachelor's degree in physics. My particular area of study were astronomy and geophysics. The geophysics part proved much more interesting than the astronomy part but sadly the geophysics area was very neglected for my taste. All I got was a single one-year subject Geophysics which quickly went over the topics and left me hungry for more. I was more or less forced to write my degree in an astronomical area because there was not a single geophysics professor that could act as my mentor. If I had known this in the beginning, I would have chosen meteorology.

With my education nearly done, I'm naturally thinking about what I want to do with my life profesionally. I'm interested in working on areas such as hydrology, ecology, meteorology, but I fear I lack certain areas of knowledge. I'm willing to fill those blank areas, though.

My biggest concern is that in my country the employment status is far from favourable for a guy just out of school with no professional experience. Going to find a job in another country sounds more and more appealing and since my English is fairly decent I was naturally thinking of going to an English speaking country.

The question I wish to ask this community: how should I start looking for a job abroad, considering my lack of experience? How can I convince an employer that I know how to solve their problems if I do not know what I'm capable of or what specific area I'm interested in? I daresay I have a fair knowledge of mathematics but then I'm not a coding whiz. I doubt many people would be willing to take on a guy who needs a whole lot of studying to do before he's useful.

Anyway, I'm not asking for a magial solution here, just your thoughts on my predicament.

 

[elkement]

Hi Martin,

did you have a chance to work on some sort of project during your studies? Many BSc programs require that you work with a company for some time. Or do you have any experience you can sell as "a project"?

Reason I am asking:
In nearly any area of engineering or generally any area that requires specialists to work in a large project professionals are hired by contracting companies. These companies search for qualified individuals on behalf of their clients (Example: http://www.hays.com/)

Since the job profiles are typically specialized and clients are not just round the corner it is actually harder not to work abroad. E.g. I live in Austria and due to my current specialization most of my large corporate clients are in another country.

In order to get hired for a project you need to provide some evidence of previous experience of course, so I am asking if you have done anything that may count as a "project".

If you start to work as a contractor you might finally also get hired by the client company.

 

[MartinV]

I wrote a seminar assignment titled Earthquake Hydrology. In this paper I explored the effects ground water has on the surrounding material and how water levels in wells can reveal pressure changes, a posibility to predict earthquakes this way. This was basic research through published articles and a presentation.

Does it count?

 

[elkement]

Does it count?

I am afraid it doesn't - you would need to have some experience in a project that involved a "client" to sell it a "typical project a contractor does". Such as: doing that type of research by order of some public authority.

 

[MartinV]

Since I don't have any real job experience, I was thinking of doing an internship. Can anyone tell me where I can look for internships in the field of hydrology and/or alternative energy sources?