ANALYSIS OF SKILLS SOUGHT BY EMPLOYERS OF BACHELORS-LEVEL GEOSCIENTISTS

Abstract

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 bachelorslevel geoscientists (Gonzales and Keane, 2021). Our goal was to characterize the skills sought by the full range of bachelorslevel 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.