I need a GIS job. Wife's looking too (Civil Eng.)

[kujito]

It's kind of strange how impersonal job hunting has gotten. Nearly all of the jobs I've applied for have a statement basically saying "E-mail a resume and cover letter to hr@xyz.com, but don't contact us about it." How am I supposed to follow up on things?

Anyway, here's a quick run down:
Graduated from Metro in Dec. '08 with a GIS degree. Technically it's a BS in Land Use with a GIS concentration. My "Area of Interest"(extended major w/no minor requirement) is CIS(cpu info sys) and includes Metro's 'Database Analyst Certificate' program
Some skills:
Run ArcGIS 9.x (Map, Catalog, Toolbox), ArcPad and ArcView 3.3
Develop/maintain geodatabases, including SDE Versions
Collect and post-process GPS data using Trimble products and software
Create metadata
General cartography and spatial analysis with Vector and Raster data types
Oracle9i
SQLPlus
Ricoh Geo-Imaging GPS camera data capture
I'm 35 and a vet, so I've got lots of other experience not directly related to GIS, but this post is already getting long.

We just found out that the wife is getting laid off @ the end of the month as well. She's a Civil Engineer with her P.E. She's been more into municipal utilities stuff than design work the last couple of years. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but she's always writing proposals to submit to various cities. I know it's been a lot of water/wastewater and treatment plant stuff, but I don't know a ton of detail.

TIA for any help!
Brian

[xj-grin]

Brian - I believe the Colorado Division of Water Resources is about to lift its hiring freeze (bailout money), and they will likely have some positions open both in water administration (i.e. engineers) and GIS, either at DWR or at the Colorado Water Conservation Board -- check out their website and see if I'm right....

[kujito]

I haven't found many details on that front, but I'll def. check it out again. State job would be cool, especially if they start paying in gold instead of paper!

[xj-grin]

I haven't found many details on that front, but I'll def. check it out again. State job would be cool, especially if they start paying in gold instead of paper!

I don't think that bill has a snowballs' chance in hell with the democratic dominated state government (to be fair it wouldn't survive the neo-conservative reds either), but I DO like the way you think!!

[squirrel80]

That is crazy! My girlfriend does GIS and I do civil engineering too. Right now she is working in Web Design and Graphic Design and I am doing Commercial floor estimating. Times ar tough out there.

[kujito]

Tell me about it. I went to school after being laid off from Lucent Technologies. Market got flooded w/telecom techs more experienced than I. Finally got through school and now the economy is in the tank again. I've got horrible timing.

[buschwhaked]

http://www1.nga.mil/NGAJobs/Pages/Occupations.aspx

Just got a uhh...class from these guys this week. With your vet status you get a bump in points when applying to military contractor types of jobs. I know for a fact they are looking for people. Where you would have to live and what exactly you would be doing...who knows. Their deployments are 3 months in length, not bad at all. And depending on what your MOS was in the military that opens up a few more contractor positions.

Army intelligence and maybe some other forces (probably) use Arc on a very regular basis, and I can't count on all my fingers how many times I've been to a class where a contractor was either teaching me or telling us how to use Arc. There is a huge market out there for experience with the system.

With as many military posts in CO as there are, I'm sure there is something. Check out governmentjobs.com as well.

And BTW, ArcGIS is a freaking sweet program. I've spent months of my life on it and it is such a step above anything else I've used.

[kujito]

Thanks for the link, don't know ow I haven't come across that one before.

ArcGIS is pretty damn sweet, but it has got a lot of little bugs and things that don't quite work as advertised. The help menu has gotten me through a lot of issues.
Despite what ESRI will tell you, don't EVER put raster data into a personal geodatabase. It will let you do it, but it WILL crash eventually. Usually not until you're almost done.

[buschwhaked]

Yeah, and radial LOS in the spatial analyst tool set might take a few minutes when you forget to change it from 10km. There is so much to that program I haven't even scratched the surface on. Did you know it was originally created as a marketing software? Anyway, the ability to database so much data visually and the ease with which it interacts w/excel and access really make it an awesome tool.

But there is another set of contractors that work with a system called DCGS-A. I can't say exactly what tools are in there but Arc is one of them. With your experience you would be perfect for that job. I'll talk to one of the contractors next week to see which corporation they work for and if they got a contact # I can give you. If you don't mind deploying for about a year, it's a quick 100k+ tax free. There are other local jobs as well.

But if you're more into the brainy side of GIS, NGA is the best way to go. Man, the stuff they do is pretty freaking cool.

[buschwhaked]

Just found this:

http://www.governmentjobs.com/view_job.cfm?JobID=150199&hit_count=Yes&