Select to view content in your preferred language

Clarify Your Contributions: Advice from a Mentor

130
0
03-07-2025 12:08 PM
JimHerries
Esri Contributor
3 0 130

Something I look for in resumes, cover letters, portfolios, and interviews is evidence of someone's contributions to a project or organization.

When you say you were a GIS Analyst, what specifically did you bring to the work? Early in our careers, we all follow the paths others define for us. Along the way, we start to see ways to improve things, get a better result, increase query performance, reduce costs, increase revenues or satisfaction.

We all act as part of a team, but if I as an interviewer cannot tell what you specifically brought to the table, it infers that you are at the stage of following instructions as given. If that is the case, we have mutual clarity about where you are in your career.

If, however, you did make suggestions and proved they work well and your input was validated and used, that's worth discussing in your resume, cover letter, portfolio and interviews.

Don't make me work for that information. I won't. You should. 

Contributors
About the Author
I am a geographer, making maps to clarify interactions among people and things they care about. I work as a lead on the team responsible for ArcGIS Living Atlas. Every day, I put the GIS community's data to work, defining and creating useful maps for GIS users and the people they serve. We deliver these maps as data, services, layers, web maps, apps, dashboards and story maps in ArcGIS Online and Living Atlas. As GIS practitioners, we use the software every day. I came to Redlands in 1994 to join Esri as an intern, and liked the opportunities I saw here. I returned in 1995 as a consultant/project manager in Esri Professional Services, working mostly with commercial GIS users in retail, marketing and health. For ten years, I learned about the software, hardware, data, people and processes required for successful GIS projects. Later, I served as product manager for Business Analyst Online and its web services, and program manager in the business products team. With the arrival of ArcGIS 9.3, I joined the ArcGIS Content team to focus my time on making high quality maps as information products for the web, using the core tools. ArcGIS Online was in beta at that time, but the potential for web GIS was evident and I have focused that ever since. My undergraduate degree in journalism reflects a lifelong interest in how data and information are distilled into clear stories that are communicated to the intended audiences. I earned a Master's degree in Geography under the guidance of Dr. Duane Marble at The Ohio State University, where we co-authored papers on how to apply GIS and demographics to better understand university admissions processes.
Labels