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Once a year, I teach a map portfolio course. I help students create job application materials (resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles, and portfolio maps). One assignment is an informational interview with a senior professional to ask about their career, job routine, challenges, and opportunities in the geospatial field.

It’s one of my favorite assignments because job interviews, portfolios, and resumes can be very subjective. Learning the inputs of other senior professionals in the field is helpful. I always say:

“if you show your resume and ask advice from ten different professionals in your field, you will very likely receive ten different feedback.“

Therefore, I am compiling highlights from the November 2025 informational interview assignment, featuring multiple perspectives on networking practices, industry trends, and advice for new professionals.

1. Attend conferences to meet people making a difference in your field. Conferences feature workshops and panels that use straightforward communication, time optimization, and innovative content delivery. It’s a good way to expand your network while travelling to new places.
2. Don’t use AI for a cover letter for that job that you REALLY want. Hiring managers suspect unusual upscale vocabulary and that princess-perfect look. Use your charm in cover letters to enchant your next manager before you even meet them. Learn their names and address your cover letter to them. Resumes and cover letters should convince managers to invite you for an interview.
3. Learn AI tools applicable to your field, such as the best machine learning algorithms for pixel classification, deep learning models that use computer vision to extract objects, and AI assistantship to debug code. AI tools are unlikely to get your job if you know how to use them for productivity and professional development, following current regulations and institutions’ guidelines.
4. Be a problem-solver and showcase this ability through your portfolio. Either in data analysis or visualization, impress with skills that show solutions with good design, structure, and truthiness.
5. Develop your communication to improve map layout and share results. Not everyone who needs geospatial products is familiar with technical terms. A map or a data-oriented project should clearly describe the issue and your role in solving it. Tell a story using data analysis and visualization.
6. Navigate between different platforms and software and work on your tech stack. Be versatile to learn how to use different platforms (e.g., ArcGIS, QGIS, Google Earth Engine, Adobe, among others). For example, there is a big trend in industry to use Python, so keeping notes and code on notebooks, blogs, and repositories is a strategy to stay on track with your skills and know where/how to apply them.
7. Explore transferable skills, whether it is customer service, design, engineering, or community leadership. Your professional persona is a combination of your technical skills (programming, cartography, 3D analysis, and others) and your core life values (boldness, flexibility, sensibility, ambition, etc). Professionals in the spotlight have shared their stories and disclosed how their backgrounds have shaped them.
8. No one knows everything. When going through impostor syndrome in grad school, an advisor once told me, “no one knows your work better than you. You are the one facing your job challenges every day and solving its problems”. Therefore, be accountable for identifying areas where you need training and ask for help from supervisors if you are stuck or stressing out more than you should. Your mentors have probably been between a rock and a hard place before and can guide your path.
9. Be organized, as the geospatial field generates and consumes tons of data. Label projects correctly, avoid messy datasets, and be extra cautious when publishing data to the public, partners, or clients. Transparency is sexy, and unnecessary data is unfashionable: just pumping more water to cool down data centers. Keep the mess in your storage closet, not in your database.
10. The best way to get a job is to ask for a job. Hiring managers and their team also have anxiety about their next hire – it’s not an exclusive feeling of job applicants. It doesn’t hurt to ask for a full-time position at your internship institution or a recommendation from a senior professional. Especially if you have put in hard work to develop your skills, and people can notice it through your portfolio.

Do you have other insights? Write in the comments some advice for geospatial professionals.