In my final year of university, I volunteered as a Career Services Peer Helper where I helped students in STEM improve their resumes, cover letters and interviewing skills. Helping others with their professional development was a rewarding experience for me and I enjoyed motivating students to apply for opportunities in their field of interest.

As a Peer Helper, I learned that there are ways that you could make yourself stand out even if your background experiences do not completely match that of the job posting. For instance, most field-related jobs require you to be comfortable with conducting field work. For those without previous field work experience, you can always highlight other related qualities that make you stand out in a pile of resumes. For instance, you can mention that you like going camping, hiking, herping with friends, or volunteering with local environmental organizations to support your genuine interest in fieldwork. It shows the employer that you are capable of working in adverse weather conditions and that you genuinely enjoy being outdoors. As a general rule of thumb, if you do not have previous experiences directly related to the job you want, you can always highlight related activities where you've developed core skills that can be transferred to another position. Easy, right?

However, I began to question myself. What if there was someone who is genuinely passionate about wildlife but never had the financial means to go out camping or volunteering because they were too busy trying to find a paying, unrelated job just to survive? One day while working as a Peer Helper, a student approached me with a similar situation. She was truly passionate about a specific field in health sciences and she wanted to apply for a student position with strict requirements. She was hoping to find a way to get around the requirements because she had little experience/opportunities. Due to family and financial constraints, she was not able to take on extra curricular activities that help make her stand out of the pile. It hurt my heart because I could see how keen she was about the job posting, and even taking the steps to better her resume and cover letter was a good sign of initiative. In the many days I've volunteered as a Peer Helper, there were not enough students taking advantage of the Career Services, but she did. The only concern was that she didn't have much of the experience.

In helping students analyze these job postings, I began to recognize that there are some barriers that I thought were a little unfair for student level positions. Having requirements in job postings such as:

• · Backcountry experience
• · Boater experience or boating licences
• · Full G licence
• · Expensive certifications outside of school

I understand how these criteria could be useful for a somewhat higher position. But I felt bad for the students who had to deal with such strict and unfair requirements when wanting to apply to positions like this. It almost felt like the jobs favoured for students who were on a pedestal, a position of privilege. There are probably other factors at play that I do not understand yet in the hiring process, but it's just a little disheartening to come across these qualifications that seem like barriers.

That being said, not all organizations are unreasonable and I'm glad that the organizations I look up to are quite reasonable and fair in their hiring process.

It is why I hold this placement dear to my heart. This placement has provided such a great opportunity for a variety of folks to dive into ocean conservation with little to no barriers and I'm forever grateful. It makes for a great jumping off point and I hope to be able to pay this opportunity forward in the future. As I progress through my career, I hope to be in a position where I can mentor and guide budding biologists! The mentorship I’ve received from previous work and volunteer experiences has given me the confidence and capability to work in the field today. It feels right to pay it forward.

I hope that this blog reminds everyone of our place and our privilege in work. There are many others out there who are experiencing barriers in the field of aquatic conservation, outreach, education and research. It is even more difficult for those in the BIPOC community where racism might affect their ability to progress in the field, access to safe green spaces are limited or that there are financial barriers to some nature programs. I hope that we become more aware of this.

For those who have time, I highly suggest listening in on TRCA's Youth Council webinar on Barriers to Inclusion in Conservation and Outdoor Spaces (you have to scroll down quite a bit to get to the videos). It's a thought provoking webinar that I attended last year and still something I think about frequently. If you're short on time, I would still encourage you to please watch a snippet of the webinar starting at 28:13.

I hope that as we progress through our careers, we continue to provide others a low barrier and non-judgemental opportunity to learn in the conservation/environmental field, as what Direct Action has done for us.

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