Geography is an incredibly broad degree that covers topics from other disciplines from film studies to natural disasters. For this reason, it is important to decide what you may want to specialise in for your career. These career pathways are not completely strict and limited. The nature of geography is that you will end up acquiring skills for all of these pathways even if it’s not specifically what you study.
- Academia/Research
In your second and third year of your geography degree, you will become more accustomed to conducting your own research. If you really enjoy this process and being able to study whatever you want, you may want to go further into the realm of academia! This will involve pursuing a Masters, PhD, and eventually becoming a researcher and lecturer for a university. Doing research in academia often means working with people with similar research goals in your department (or even outside of your department since geography is so diverse) to eventually produce a publishable paper. Geographical research also tends to involve a lot of travelling which is a great way to explore the world if this interests you. Because this research is supported by a university, you will also need to teach during term time, typically delivering lectures on your research specialty. Most of your hours are very flexible, so if you enjoy having a lot of freedom in your work and have a love of teaching, academic research may be for you!
- Working in a Research Lab/Field
If you do not want to work in academia or maybe are less interested in teaching, working in a company’s lab or doing their fieldwork may be more enticing! Large companies like Unilever or Procter & Gamble have Research and Development laboratories where they test and develop products. This will involve a lot of wet lab work where you will need to learn your way around the instruments of the lab and all of the proper techniques. Lab work does require a lot of repetition and dedication, so patience is a must!
- Data Science
Some data science jobs fall under the same umbrella as research jobs, but are typically computer based. If you have a knack for technology and are good at statistics, data science may interest you! Depending on where you work, this data may be largely human or physical geography oriented. Your day may include cleaning and tidying data, making data displays, and running statistical analyses on large amounts of data. The same big companies that have lab work will also likely need data scientists to interpret all the data they’ve collected.
- Consulting
Working for a consulting firm means working for a specialised team that gets hired out by other companies to provide their expert input. Again, these can be for either human or physical geography depending on what kind of consulting services your firm may offer. An environmental consultant, may be concerned with the environmental health of certain projects by conducting site testing and writing impact reports. A social scientist consultant may be more concerned with helping predict the human effects of a certain project. If you’re great at problem solving and networking, this may be for you!
- ESG and Sustainability Management
ESG jobs may overlap with consulting or be dealing within a specific company. The goal of this type of management is to ensure that environmental impact is minimised and everything is working as efficiently as possible. If you have a more business oriented mind, you may enjoy this work! Since all companies are looking to become more green, a whole plethora of companies over many sectors are looking for sustainability managers!
- Business Analyst/Corporate
Business analysts and corporate data scientists also share a lot of overlap with the above jobs. They require a strong understanding of how to clean and interpret data as well as a lot of patience and diligence when it comes to large data sets. If you have a strong understanding of Excel and data manipulation, you will thrive in this job! Your analysis will typically go towards assessing costs and allocating information for clients.
- Urban Planning
As a geographer, maps are incredibly important tools and specifically relevant to urban planning. A strong understanding of maps and flows is incredibly important to these jobs! You may need to use map making software to create your designs in a more senior position or be focused on researching. This will involve conducting and assessing site surveys in combination with local laws to generate the best plans. Specific urban/town planning firms may hire these positions or even local government.
- Civil Service
If you want to give back to help shape the policy of the world around you, civil service is the sector to do it in! It is incredibly important to get the voices of geographers heard in policymaking. Government jobs like these require strong writing and interpersonal skills to produce reports and contribute your voice. They also often require higher levels of education depending on how big the government position is; from local all the way up to supranational like the UN.