Sup (fellow) nerds. This is a pretty specific and niche side of GIS but I think I'll have better luck asking here than the meme cesspool of r/wildfire;

I'm 9 years deep in primary fire with a federal land management agency. Prior to this career I had a few jobs doing some entry-level GIS stuff in timber and trails management, and I minored in it way back in college. I've always been interested in working the map tent but until this season I haven't really had leadership that supported it. I've been given approval to take S-341 this spring and start going on trainee assignments next fire season.

My captain, while supportive of it, has no idea what the next steps should be for me. My understanding is that most of the map tent people have GIS jobs in real life, and aren't primitive and vulgar ditch diggers. What do I do to get out on assignments? Is it as simple as just making myself available as a GISS trainee on IROC? I heard something about a "sponsor" but I don't really know what that means.

Also, for anyone who's gone through S-341 recently, how's that nomination selection test? My skills are pretty rusty but I've been going through some courses on ESRI to refresh my memory. Anything in particular I should practice or prepare for?

Hello everyone,

I am honestly not even sure if this is an acceptable place for this but I have held a gis specialist role for a municipality for roughly 2 years.

On a whim I applied to a GIS program manager role in another municipality and I got it 💀.

The town I’m at now tried to match but isn’t really come close so I start next month at the new municipality. I am curious if there are other GIS program managers here in this community and any advice that could be given for a newbie to this role.

Thanks.

Hi Everyone, I know the GISP is generally not recommended by people in this sub, but my employer has promised me a $1000 bonus and the opportunity to move up into a higher position if I get mine, so I'm taking the exam in December. I have plenty for the portfolio as I have 9 years experience and present at conferences yearly.

I'm mainly looking for anyone's experience with the exam in the last few years. What was your study method? How did you feel about the exam? Did anything surprise you? Any topics you recommend brushing up on? I have strong fundamentals in the GIS world but the study materials list on the web site is honestly ridiculous. I also heard recently that they have started adding more questions about using AI with GIS. Can anyone who took the exam recently corroborate that?

Any and all information would be appreciated. I am getting started with studying today.

My company is moving to an asset management mainly to establish workflows and keep track of material costs. Before this, we did it through AGOL dashboards and web experiences.

The problem is that I no longer have to establish and maintain these. My workload was almost 80% establishing these experiences and 20% data maintenance. That obviously changes a lot.

The asset management will be great, but it obviously shifts my own workload to more field work. The thing is my boss insists I won't have to do field work and that our engineers can go collect data and bring it back to me, which means I'll have a lot of downtime. There's still things to do like, data maintenance, but what else will keep me busy in the office so I don't lose my mind?

GIS EXPERIENCE:
[AI DISCLOSURE]
So I’m going to try to make this short and simple. Basically, I graduated in summer 2024 with B.S. in Geography with GIS Concentration. I wasn’t able to land a job in GIS (no internship, nothing GIS-related out of college). Instead, I work for the local water/sewer company doing utility locates. I use GIS at my job. Survey123, FieldMaps, and our asset map. I applied last year for an entry-level GIS position within the company and didn’t get accepted.

Coming out of school I wasn’t focused enough. But over the past couple months I’ve been able to re-familiarize myself with the basic concepts. I’ve used ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online Map Viewer to create a 12 project portfolio, along with a SOP manual. My resume and cover letters look great. I have three really good references from my workplace.

I’ve applied to two jobs since yesterday, and one has already denied. My concern is that the job market is super competitive and that I don’t actually have the hard skills needed for an entry level GIS job.

Essentially my question to you guys is how can I make myself even more qualified for these jobs. What can I do, get accredited, go back to school? Learn Civil 3D? What do y’all think? Any feedback would be great. (i didn’t use ai, i don’t know why it’s saying i have to put that)

hii! so ive been having trouble publishing layers into my arcgis online network through arcgis pro. Every time I try it there is an error message but without error code, otherwise I probably would’ve been able to fix it. So a few years ago I think I might’ve had the same problem and it turned out that it had to do with the cache, but I’m not 100% sure anymore. Does anyone have an idea why this error happens?