Introduction
Bachelors-level geoscientists make up the majority of the geoscience workforce, and positions
for entry-level geoscientists are expected to grow rapidly over the next decade, with some
jobs anticipating upward of 10% growth (National Center for O*NET Development, 2021). Are
geoscience departments adequately preparing undergraduate students to succeed in these
positions?
Answering this question requires examining the alignment of undergraduate program outcomes
and workforce needs. The results allow faculty to identify strengths and weaknesses in their
programs with respect to workforce preparation (e.g., Viskupic et al., 2020). How well do we
know workforce needs? Vision and Change in the Geosciences (Mosher and Keane, 2021)
provides a list of competencies and skills necessary for new graduates to succeed in the
workforce; the list was generated by academics (n ~200) and employers (n =
46) in a series of workshops. This list, while comprehensive and insightful, represents
input from a relatively small sample of geoscience employers and may overrepresent the
petroleum industry (26% of industry workshop participants), which has not been a significant
employer of bachelors-level geoscientists (Gonzales and Keane, 2021). Our goal was to
characterize the skills sought by the full range of bachelors-level geoscience employers and
how these skills are communicated to potential applicants—with an eye toward providing
information that would allow academic leaders to examine the alignment between their
programs and workforce needs.
What We Did
We designed a systematic study to code online geoscience job advertisements (hereafter
referred to as “ads”) for workforce skills. Ads were retrieved between May and November 2020
from four online job search engines: CareerBuilder.com; USAJobs.gov; CollegeRecruiter.com;
Indeed.com. We limited our analysis to ads that preferred a bachelor’s degree in geoscience
or a related field and required less than five years of experience. A total of 1,214 unique
ads met these criteria. Occupation names and industry sectors, described in AGI’s 2018
Status of the Geoscience Workforce report (Wilson, 2018), were assigned to each ad based on
job title and description of duties. The most common occupations in our sample were
geologist, environmental scientist, and natural resource specialist, following a
distribution similar to the AGI report (Table 1).
Ads were coded for 34 skills; many were listed by Mosher and Keane (2021) and others emerged
through multiple rounds of coding ad subsamples. We defined the skills and organized them
into categories (e.g., data skills, communication skills) according to the classification of
Viskupic et al. (2020). We coded a subsample of ads to establish interrater reliability
among the three co-authors; we had 90% or greater agreement on all codes and Cohen’s Kappa
value of 0.84.
What We Found
Fourteen skills occurred in a third or more of the 1,214 ads analyzed (Fig. 1), with four of
those—written communication, field skills, data collection, and computer skills—occurring in
more than half of the ads. Several skill categories were represented by the most commonly
occurring skills, but seven of the most common skills were in Data Skills and Communication.
Three of the most common skills were emergent codes that were not identified by Mosher and
Keane (2021): ability to drive, planning skills, and record keeping/documentation. Two
skills in Vision and Change in the Geosciences were rarely coded in any ads:
systems thinking and managing uncertainty. The most common skills varied greatly among
employment sectors. For example, teamwork skills were found in 60% of mining ads but only
22% of oil and gas ads.
Figure 1
The most common skills by percent occurrence from the job advertisement analysis. Skills are
colored to correspond to skill categories outlined in Viskupic et al. (2020).
How Can Our Work Be Used?
Our results provide geoscience departments with current representation of the most
sought-after workforce skills that bachelors-level graduates need to be successful in the
current job market. Proficiency in the whole spectrum of data skills—from data collection
and record keeping to interpretation—is critical; these skills are practiced across many
geoscience courses (Viskupic et al., 2020) and can be highlighted as workforce skills. We
also note the emphasis on communication skills, leadership, project management, and
planning. None of these skills are content-specific and may be less commonly explicit in
curricula. Written communication skills are more commonly practiced in geoscience courses
than oral communication skills (Viskupic et al., 2020), but we are unaware of any data
describing the practice of planning and management skills in geoscience programs.
What Is Next?
These initial results are intriguing and provide a glimpse into a rich data set that we are
continuing to explore. Additional analyses will probe:
- Differences between industry sectors (e.g., oil and gas, government): How do skills vary
across industry sectors?
- Geographic distribution of jobs: Where are the majority of bachelors-level jobs? Do
skills vary geographically?
- Further analysis of field skills: Are the field skills sought by most employers geologic
mapping, installing, and monitoring field instrumentation, collecting samples, or other?
- The presence of physical abilities in job ads and their potential impact on recent
graduates: Do advertisements that require physical abilities present unnecessary
barriers to applicants with disabilities?
- The articulation of systems thinking in job ads: Systems thinking is emphasized in
Vision and Change in the Geosciences but was not found in any ads. How do
employers articulate systems thinking skills in job ads?
- Dispositions sought by employers: Dispositions (e.g., attention to detail, taking
initiative) were distinct from skills, and appeared in many job ads. Which dispositions
are most frequently sought, and to what extent can these be developed as part of
geoscience programs?
Summary
Our analysis of job advertisements presents a comprehensive view of the workforce skills
sought by geoscience employers. Geoscience departments can use these results to inform their
curriculum planning and incorporate opportunities for students to practice and develop
competencies. The work presented here is a critical step in ensuring that the geoscience
community is adequately preparing new graduates to succeed in the workforce.
References Cited
- Gonzales, L., and Keane, C., 2021, Recent Geoscience Graduate Employment Trends,
December 2020: Washington, D.C., American Geosciences Institute, 4 p.,
https://www.americangeosciences.org/geoscience-currents/recent-geoscience-graduate-employment-trends-december-2020
(last accessed 18 Mar. 2021).
- Mosher, S., and Keane, C., 2021, Vision and Change in the Geosciences: The Future of
Undergraduate Geoscience Education: Washington, D.C., American Geosciences Institute,
176 p.
- National Center for O*NET Development, 2021, O*NET OnLine: https://www.onetonline.org/
(accessed March 2021).
- Viskupic, K., Egger, A.E., McFadden, R.R., and Schmitz, M.D., 2020, Comparing desired
workforce skills and reported teaching practices to model students’ experiences in
undergraduate geoscience programs: Journal of Geoscience Education, p. 27–42,
https://doi.org/10.1080/10899995.2020.1779568.
- Wilson, C., 2018, Status of the geoscience workforce: Washington, D.C., American
Geosciences Institute, 178 p.
Manuscript received 11 Apr. 2021.
Revised manuscript received 21 Oct. 2021.
Manuscript accepted 27 Oct. 2021.
Posted 22 Nov. 2021.
https://doi.org/10.1130/GSATG510GW.1
© 2021, The Geological Society of America. CC-BY-NC.