So it begins: the launch of the AGU Career Center blog, On the Job! On the Job is a blog that dedicates itself to helping students, early-career, and established professionals with all aspects of the professional world. The workforce in general is hard to navigate, and being in a specialized field of the workforce (i.e., geosciences) can make this process even more tricky. With the Internet drowning in job advice, interview tips, and personal anecdote–based guidance, it can be hard to know where to turn and what you can confidently trust.

However, it is from this overwhelming mountain of Web-based information that On the Job is born. This blog will strive through every post to be a manageable and reliable source for all your Earth and space professional quandaries.

The Career Center at AGU has always prided itself on being an excellent resource, providing such services as a monthly newsletter, job board, career profiles, and webinars. So to once again ensure we are both meeting the needs of our members and serving the overall Earth and Space science community, we are introducing this career advice blog.  We can’t really begin to define what On the Job will be entirely because On the Job is a living entity; it will grow and change in order to keep the content relevant to you, our reader. Although we may not be able to pin down an all-encompassing definition for On the Job, we can define what it will intend to accomplish, how it will serve the geoscience professional community, and what you can come to expect.

Every week On the Job will publish contributions ranging from common workplace challenges to finding your career path to job market trends and everything in between. We will broach difficult, nerve-racking, and awkward topics (which undoubtedly most professionals face sometime during their career), giving the most reliable, expert advice all while keeping a healthy sense of humor along the way. On the Job will feature numerous posts discussing varied career topics to benefit all individuals of the geoscience community. Our goal is to consistently feature refreshingly new content, styles, and perspectives. Every post, article, and piece of advice will aim to share knowledge across our readership and further connect the Earth and space science community.

The professional world is daunting at times, but you are not the first, nor will you be the last to feel, at times, underprepared or confused. Fortunately, there is a community of geoscientists, just like yourself, who have faced similar difficulties, wondered similar questions, and even accomplished similar successes; you are not alone in this journey.

Above all, that is what you will find in On the Job, a diverse network with the shared interest in advancing and developing their careers in Earth and space science. We hope that you find our posts useful, that our blog is a continuance of AGU’s mission to further connect the geoscience community, and, most importantly, that you find success in every aspect of your geoscience career.