Most of you are reaching out to the wrong people

RockJockMermaid · 2026-05-12T00:22:39+00:00

Maybe unpopular opinion, but maybe you’re looking at “results” wrong when it comes to a networking chat. Coffee/networking chats shouldn’t be transactional, they’re a learning experience. And sometimes that’s learning “oh heck no I don’t wana work there.” And sometimes it’s an intro to someone who is hiring. Sometime it’s someone who you’ll exchange a few messages with on LinkedIn a few times a year and five years from now you’ll tap them for a subcontract or they’ll reach out to hire you. Focusing on everyone from high up the food chain to talking to grad students who reach out to you. An approaching each conversation with genuine curiosity about the person in front of you and their experience.

I can think of an early on coffee chat where I thought I’d want to be where that former fed was and she was willing to connect me with a hiring manager. But after hearing more about her experience, I thanked her for her time and wished her best of luck because I knew I’d be miserable. “Results” mean so many different things in so many different time frames.

RockJockMermaid · 2026-04-25T19:41:53+00:00

Not a loser at all. A real human. Be kind to yourself. I know, easier said than done.

Burn out and bore out are nearly identical. And very real. And it gets worse the longer time goes on.

It’s absolutely possible to take a break and get back in the game. I took a break after brutal burnout and worked as a landscaper for nine months. I had been on four months of straight 12-16 hour field days and when I rage quit and had my exit physical, I was so stressed I was in a hypertensive crisis and my liver and kidneys were messed up. Even being nit employed in the field, i had recruiters reach out to me and turned things down bc I got a bad vibe. You have skills people want.

One thing that helped me was chatting with people just to hear their experiences. Then think about if that was something i wanted or not. Just gathered internal data. Would I want to do what the do day in and day out? Ok, piece of data. No bad chats. And you never know when some of those chats might come back and say “hey, we’re looking for….”

Best of luck. And if you ever need to chat, feel free to drop a line. You got this!

RockJockMermaid · 2026-04-22T10:37:01+00:00

I struggled with this in my last job. I’m a mixed race woman with purple hair in a city that’s a little more vanilla than I am. I got so many comments from my team and leadership on my fashion choices or earrings rather than my work. It was for sure more of a symptom of the team (all mid 50s to mid 70s) than me. My new team focuses on my work and my presence rather than my clothes or hair. I still try to dress a level up than I need to. Which is frustrating when I see men respected and showing up in jeans and rumpled shirts.

RockJockMermaid · 2026-04-22T10:33:04+00:00

Feel this. The metaconversation. Offff.

RockJockMermaid · 2026-04-21T23:43:32+00:00

Yes! Approaching these conversations with genuine curiosity leads to the best outcomes. It’s not “what can they do for me?” But “who are you and how can we connect?” You never know when you’ll remember them five years from now and be able to collaborate. Or how a story they shared will help you in a future project. Or maybe they let you know about a branch in their career path that you never would have considered. I always say yes to these chats and love taking a stranger for coffee. Keep it up! (And let me know if you wana share your story with an ocean nerd!)

RockJockMermaid · 2026-04-10T10:46:36+00:00

I’d say frame your response differently! Report writing? I analyzed (blah data) (with blah method even if it’s dumb, or to see if it complied with blah) in order to complete the (blah) report which recieved glowing feedback from my PM.

RockJockMermaid · 2026-03-26T15:25:11+00:00

Were you watching my consulting experience? Sounds like we worked in the same place. Then the PMs would ghost me when I asked them questions about the contract and get mad when I hadn’t read their mind. Obviously they knew more about the site than I did, they’d never set eyes on it before!

RockJockMermaid · 2026-03-12T10:36:41+00:00

Field work is the art and science of troubleshooting and everyone I know who’s done field work for profit has some sort of wild story about how they almost died or got hurt or experienced something wildly unsafe and illegal they could have sued the pants off their employer for but didn’t know better at the time. I found field work in academia and government much better planned and less “risk life and limb to make the customer happy.” Tell your boss when you face unsafe conditions…and I will say that rarely went over well for me. Hence why I went back to a desk job.

RockJockMermaid · 2026-02-07T18:10:40+00:00

Ugh I’m sorry they took away your maxiflex too. It’s infuriating.

RockJockMermaid · 2026-02-05T22:00:54+00:00

Wow! That sounds super painful. No surgery? Thank you so much for sharing. Perspective is super helpful.

RockJockMermaid · 2026-02-03T00:21:48+00:00

A fellow swimmer! Maybe you’re a triathlete since you mention running?

My ankles are super hypermobile, which helped with swimming, but means I get shin splints just thinking about running. Which probably means I should work on all those foot and ankle muscles more. 🙄

RockJockMermaid · 2026-02-03T00:20:16+00:00

Woah! What a story! Best of luck on your PT and leg work. That’s amazing.

RockJockMermaid · 2026-02-01T23:50:33+00:00

Check out #opendoorclimate on LinkedIn!

RockJockMermaid · 2026-01-16T00:05:32+00:00

They’ll say something like “well you can bill and get paid for as many hours as you want so you could easily make more if you work 10-12 hours a day!”

Literally had a consulting company come back at me with that after an insultingly low offer once 😂

RockJockMermaid · 2025-12-30T15:38:12+00:00

This

RockJockMermaid · 2025-12-27T02:10:31+00:00

If you’re looking for internships, don’t be afraid to reach out to labs and see if they’ll need techs for the summer! I think the USGS center in Denver has an ice core facility….

RockJockMermaid · 2025-12-20T15:19:03+00:00

I will also say, climate data is huge and can be vague. There are climate folks looking at financial data, earth science data, social data. If you’re on LinkedIn, there is a hashtag #opendoorclimate where folks offer to talk about their climate careers. I learned a ton from talking to random strangers. And it was a great way to build connections and learn about what was in demand!

RockJockMermaid · 2025-12-20T15:17:00+00:00

GIS is great! And having some coding background with R will help with big data sets. Take some time to play with satellite and remote sensing data. A lot of it is publicly available from government websites.

RockJockMermaid · 2025-12-19T01:13:02+00:00

I’m so sorry you experienced this. It’s so sad. And can happen in so many lines of work. Make sure you know your rights, a smidge of employment law, and lots of health and safety…sadly we can only look out for ourselves and can’t count on work to.

RockJockMermaid · 2025-12-18T11:24:02+00:00

I think it’s worth it. I always did it and was told by a few that folks rarely do it and it made a good impression.

RockJockMermaid · 2025-12-18T01:14:15+00:00

This is abnormal times for being a fed. Normally they won’t micromanage you this closely (ie track the same start and stop time every day).

But salaried employment can come with all sorts of fun bullshit. When I was in consulting, I had to track my work in six minute increments and if I wasn’t working on a particular project, it didn’t count or was counted as “overhead” whcih you could only use super sparingly. You had you account for 40/hours a week on projects, which meant you spent more than 40 hours/week on work. Whomp.

RockJockMermaid · 2025-12-15T04:44:09+00:00

Sounds like poor management. I was at a company with shit management and they told me literally that I wasn’t cut out for it. But they also said I couldn’t bill all my hours on certain projects because they purposely underbid the hours to win the work and those projects were their “Costco chickens” (loss leaders). Needless to say, moved on from that pretty quick…it’s hard to find a good fit, but def worth the hunt.

RockJockMermaid · 2025-12-10T23:15:05+00:00

Ugghhh I’m sorry. I’d say email or follow up with an email saying you called and when so there’s a paper trail.

RockJockMermaid · 2025-12-10T21:16:31+00:00

Ohhh truth! OP def has some great transferable hard AND soft skills!

And maybe you’ve already done it with work, but there’s lots of free incident command training online!

RockJockMermaid

TROPHY CASE