New People on the Block: Recent graduates find surprises in the working world
By Sherrie Voss Matthews
When planner Anita Davis attended one of her first public meetings with a planning and zoning commission, her boss warned her that it might not be quite what she expected.
It wasn't.
Davis expected the commissioners to be dressed in suits, not overalls and flannel shirts. The commissioners turned out to be volunteers whose day job, more often than not, was running a family farm. "It's been an education for me. It's pretty laid back," Davis says of her job as a planner for the Boonslick Regional Planning Commission in Missouri. She's gotten used to the overalls, and has been busy finishing up her first comprehensive plan ‹ for Wright City (pop. 1,532) ‹ as well as hazard mitigation plans for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
An eye opener
Many young planners, fresh out of school, soon discover that planning isn't all about urban design, geographic information systems, and comprehensive plans. A lot of it involves working with the public, helping people understand the need for planning, and explaining what it is.
"It's more sitting than I expected," Davis says with a laugh. The Boonslick Regional Planning Commission covers Missouri's Warren, Montgomery, and Lincoln counties, including rural areas that are grappling with the concept of planning.
Davis says she truly enjoys working with the public. In some ways, her job isn't all that different from her previous career in public relations. She went back to school four years ago to get her planning degree from Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield. She joined the regional commission a year and a half ago.
"Dealing with the public is pretty much generic," Davis says. "It's being able to listen to people and hear what they are saying. It's a communications issue."
Having fun helping others
For Jason Beske, planning may not be exactly what he expected when he sat through his classes at Iowa State University, but he's having a lot of fun. Beske is a city planning consultant with the Heartland Brick Council, based in Johnston, Iowa, a group composed of brick and masonry manufacturers in the Upper Midwest. While Beske tries to convince small towns in an eight-state region of the importance of brick and masonry construction, he also finds himself serving as a planning missionary in places that don't even have one planner, much less a planning staff.
He travels extensively, offering advice on the uses of brick, with planning guidelines for commercial and family structures. Perhaps a quarter of the time he's in a town of 20,000 or less, where guidelines are a new concept.
"I've had small towns actually seek me out for help with their ordinances," Beske says. Earlier this year, a city council member in Holt, Missouri (pop. 500), heard of him from a neighboring town and asked him to visit. Holt had neither an ordinance nor land-use plan. Beske helped with ordinance language and introduced the idea of planned unit developments.
Missionaries
Amanda Goebel is also a planning missionary of sorts. She works with the Louis Berger Group, an international development planning firm based in East Orange, New Jersey.
While most of her work has been stateside since her graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison two years ago, this fall Goebel will take her planning skills overseas, either to the Philippines or Afghanistan. She could be involved in road construction projects in Afghanistan or in assessing social and economic factors in the Philippines.
Goebel says she can't wait. As a child she lived in Pakistan and Taiwan, and that experience fueled her desire to do international work. After college, but before grad school, she worked for the Nature Conservancy, explaining the science to decision makers so they could make informed decisions.
She finds herself bridging the same gaps as a planner. "Smart growth should actually be smart," she says. "Scientific literature is not very user-friendly; it can be off-putting if you aren't part of the club."
Jason Beske may not be traveling overseas, but in traveling through America's heartland, he's often doing a lot of education about planning, urban design, and historic preservation.
"I always thought I'd be working for a city somewhere; I didn't know the broad range of opportunities," Beske says. His internship at the city of West Des Moines in Iowa, taught him what it was like to work on a project from concept to reality: That's what happened with the Jordan Creek mall, the city's new town center, to be completed this month.
Hindsight
Now that they are out in the real world of planning, new planners think of things they'd like to do a bit differently.
Christopher Parker, a planner for Dover, New Hampshire, often has high school students job-shadowing him. One thing he likes to stress to them is that planning isn't predictable.
"School didn't really prepare me for that," Parker says, noting that 8 a.m. on Monday is never the same as 8 a.m. on Tuesday. He wishes his professors had provided more practical information, such as how to read and write budgets and grant applications ‹ how to find the funds needed to accomplish the great design you want.
Anita Davis warns new planners to expect a lot of on-the-job learning ‹ and the need to pick up skills quickly. "The first thing I did was hazard mitigation," she says. "I didn't know anything [at first]. Now I can tell you about tornados or earthquakes. You learn something new every day."
"Expect the unexpected," Davis adds. "I took this job [with the regional planning council] because of the variety. I had another prospect in another city. I had the feeling that I would have been doing only one kind of thing."
Amanda Goebel emphasizes the need to write and speak clearly. "The idea can be great, but if you can't explain it," it will go nowhere, she says. "You need to be able to communicate."
She adds that new planners need to get out of the classroom and onto job sites, through internships and by volunteering. The more people you know, the easier it will be to find a job later, she says. "Some people will have preconceived notions; you need to try everything."
For Rosalyn Perkins, the years since her graduation from the University of New Orleans in 2002 have been an education in what she really doesn't want to do. She's been a planner with the San Antonio Development Agency, but she admits she's a frustrated one.
"I'm still a little baffled that anyone can call themselves a planner, whether they have a degree or not," Perkins says. She has decided she'd rather go to medical school, starting this fall. "It's my desire to serve people and society in a more direct way," she says.
In contrast, Christopher Parker says he can't imagine doing anything besides planning. He has been busy since his graduation from the University of Southern Maine in spring 2002. Initially hired as a transportation planner to fill a position while the original planner was on duty in Iraq, Parker now also does land-use planning and GIS.
"Overall, planning is exactly what I wanted and needed; I hope to stay in it for a long while," Parker says. "I hope to be a planning director here or somewhere else."
Getting that job
Those who want to stick with planning say it isn't always easy to find a job, either as a new graduate or one who is looking to move on to a second, more challenging, position. Amanda Goebel was determined to stay in the Washington, D.C., area to be close to her family. She admits it took her a while to find the right position.
"There are definitely options out there," she says. "It's not a bad market; it's just a little challenging sometimes."
Julie Vick, a career counselor at the University of Pennsylvania, emphasizes that new planners need to use the resources of the graduate school they attended. Go to career fairs, search through employer databases, look at jobs-available websites, she says.
Vick adds that students and recent graduates shouldn't rely on just one strategy. Apply for posted positions, yes, but also network with employers, even those without any immediate openings.
She offers an example of a recent planning graduate who followed specific steps to get the job she wanted: a position with a transportation agency in a particular region. Here's how she started:
€ Began a job search in November (six months before her May graduation). She contacted people with whom she'd worked on case studies in school, people she met during her summer internship, and friends from before grad school. She was told it was little early and to make contact again in the spring.
€ In March she made contact with the November group, and contacted employers listed on her university's career center database; she also met with several professors.
€ She applied for a position on a jobs website, and got an interview in April. Another interview resulted when she contacted an employer directly. Through a professor, she got an informational interview in May, and through a friend she made a connection that led to an interview with yet another organization ‹ and the job she ultimately took.
Diane May, assistant professor of geology, geography, and planning at Southwest Missouri State University, says that the market for jobs is out there, although new planners may have to reconsider the location they are targeting, because many municipalities have tighter budgets in these days of a slack U.S. economy.
Planners are needed, especially in smaller communities, May adds. Often, SMSU graduates are working in towns that have either their first or second full-time planner.
"There's more difficulty if they want to stay in a specific geographic location," May says. She has noticed that most of the jobs her graduates take have been in the public sector, with relatively few going into the private sector.
"Smaller towns often would like someone with a GIS background," May adds, but she's sometimes cautious about recommending those positions to new graduates. "We don't want these people pigeonholed because GIS is not planning: It's a tool."
On the other hand, May adds that more and more communities are looking for a generalist, because that new grad may actually be the entire planning department.
Sherrie Voss Matthews
Matthews is a writer and editor based in Springfield, Missouri.
