 This is your job. As always, welcome to my channel. Now, what I'd like to do is tell you a little story about how I ended up getting my first job as a geophysicist. As I mentioned before, I worked as a geophysicist in a previous video, or one of the previous videos. I share some of the stories that I have regarding being a geophysicist and some of the experiences that I had and what being a geophysicist sort of entails. I didn't tell you guys in that video how I ended up getting my first job as a geophysicist. I'd like to share that with you because it was certain moments in your life. You only realized how important they were in retrospect. This was an extremely important moment that set me on the path to become a geophysicist. I only realized it much, much later. At the time it was important to me because I was looking to get this job, but I didn't realize how important it was going to be in molding who I am and directing me down this path. Let me set the stage for you. When I was in university, I was in a co-op program. If I can recommend if you're going to go down to university, college, whatever higher education or more education that you want to get, if you can for sure enroll in a co-op program, because co-op program, you get education and you get some schooling and you go into the work force and you do jobs. You work in the fields that you're interested in or in the fields that you accidentally find yourself in. I was in my second year university, second co-op term, my second work term basically. My first work term I worked in construction, sort of building roads, walls, concrete. All concrete and building roads and stuff like this, sort of testing stuff and writing reports and just putting on a white hat as if that means anything and just being there. I've been around construction all my life, so it wasn't really something that I was interested in pursuing as far as long term went. My second work term, second co-op term, basically what happens if I should give you the background of how this works, basically you go to school for a while and then every work term, and it switches up between what year you're in and whatever not, what stream you're in, but every four months or so companies basically place ads and looking for people to hire, looking for students to hire. And the reason they do this is because by working, by getting employees, by getting students to work for your company, either through college or university or what not, even high school I think has certain high schools anyway. The government subsidizes some of that work, right? So when a company hires a student, they don't take on the burden of the full salary that they're going to give or the full hourly wage that they're going to give the student, right? The government takes on, I think it's half the cost of that, right? So the company gets a bonus because they get someone to work for them at half the price of hiring someone straight out. The student gets something amazing because they get work experience, which is in general way more important than school experience in general. They go hand in hand, right? I don't want to trash school, but work is huge, right? And the government gets a benefit because students are being trained to go into the workforce and the economy grows and so on and so forth and so forth, right? So it's beneficial to everybody. So I was in my second work term, second co-op work term and I looked at all the job postings and because I was in the geophysics program in Earth Science, I was specifically looking to do geophysics. I didn't want to go into geotechnical or anything like this. Well, I really wanted to focus on geophysics, right? And as you can tell, or guess anyway, there aren't that many geophysics jobs around, right? There aren't too many people studying and there aren't too many jobs offered. So there was a handful of geophysics jobs. I think there was like five or six of them or so. So I applied to all of them. There was two sort of I was eyeing. One of them I didn't even get an interview. I didn't even get called in to get an interview. And the other one I did get called in for an interview, right? And you know, during that time when you're in school, you don't know whether you saw, you know, I dressed up in my interview gear, which would have been a suit or whatnot. And went to the area where the employees were being linked up with the students that were applying for the jobs at the university. So you're sort of being herded into these areas and you're sitting in these rooms, little cubicle areas. And you're being called in to go interview with whoever is hiring, whoever is looking for someone to hire, right? And for me, the same interview that I went to, I was in a room waiting for, I think it was like, either five, six, seven people that were looking, they were being interviewed for this job as well, right? And I believe I was like either the second or third person, one of the early people being interviewed. So I waited my turn, you know, they called me in. And, you know, I go into the room, I introduce myself, you know, shake hands, hi, this is, well, for you, this is Chico, you know, hello, hello, grab a seat. And at the time, I didn't know what the company was, but basically the person that was hiring that was interviewing me, he was the owner of the company, it was a very small company, there was only three people in that company. The second person, second rank person, second highest level person was the person that hired me after my graduation. And in the previous true physics video, the one, the person that I met in the parking lots and he ended up hiring me long term and I stayed with that company for 10 years, right? So the owner of this company was interviewing me and just a heads up if you're in a co-op program or if you're looking to get a job, just get your foot in the door and learn as much as you can. If you can, find jobs with small companies because what happens is with a small company, you'll learn a lot more because you're responsible for a lot more, right? So you learn, you know, a lot of the bureaucracy involved and a lot of technical stuff involved and then you learn a lot of, you know, if the company's getting a lot of work, all of a sudden, you know, they throw you the deep end in the water and tell you to swim, so you have to learn on your toes, you have to learn fast. It's amazing, really, really good experience working for a small company if you're starting off, right? So, you know, I sat down, we used to do ourselves and he basically, you know, looked at my resume, he said, asked me, you know, everything was there regarding my education, who I was, you know, my background, where I came from, what courses I'm taking, stuff like this. So after all the little minor initial stuff was done, this is the question that he asked me. It was either first or second question, a serious question that he asked me that really got me the job, right? And the question was this, he laid out a scene and said, listen, so, you know, you're hired, I've trained you to do a certain job and I send you to the field, you take all the equipment and all, you know, what not, and you're set up and you're about to do your work and you go to turn on the instruments, right? Your geophysics instrument may be seismic, mag, radar, EM, gravity, going down boreholes, whatever they may be. And it doesn't turn on, it doesn't work. What are you going to do? That was the question. You're out in the field, you're about to do a survey or you're planning to do a survey, collect data, whatever it might be. And you go to use your equipment and they don't work. What are you going to do? For me, you know, I've had a little bit of, I was in my second year, end of second year schooling, so I've had some experience with some of these instruments, not all of them, not my long shot, right? But I had some experience and growing up in the 80s, you know, I was into video games and stuff, so, you know, I had little handheld games that you played and whatnot. So it was, you know, I'd been exposed to some electronics and without really thinking my reply instantly was, my trip to batteries, right? You know, I had his pen in his hand, I was looking at the sheet and looking at me and stuff like this and as soon as I said that, it paused, right? He sort of went. And there was a moment of silence, right? And I was sort of, you know, I was new, I didn't know, right? And I was sort of like, I wasn't sure if I replied correctly or not, right? The pause was extended, so I went, is that okay, you know, just check the batteries. He goes, yeah, yeah, no, no, that's fine, that's fine. And then just this minor pause and then he did a follow-up question. He goes, he goes, what happens if the batteries are all fine, right? Everything's in the right order? Again, almost instantly I replied, I said, I don't know, I checked the connections, right? I checked the cables, right? I'm plugging everything, replugging back in. Just like a stereo, right? Again, there was a pause. This guy pauses a lot, right? And then he turned to me and said, listen, just want to let you know you're hired. And I went, what? And he goes, you're hired because those are the answers I was looking for, right? I said, what do you mean, right? So I started asking him a question, what do you mean, that's it? And he goes, listen, we're a small company and he told me about this, he goes, we're a small company, or my company is a small company, it was his company, right? And if I train you for something and I send you to the field and if things aren't working, you call me for every little problem, right? I don't have time to deal with it. He wanted basically problem solved with someone who's going to deal with any problems that come up as best of his ability and after he's tried everything and if nothing works, then he puts a call into the office, right? Because if I'm out in the field and things aren't working, it'd be ridiculous for me to call back, call the office right away and have them walk me through what I need to do to check to make sure everything's happening. It's like calling computer support, right? The first thing I ever do when I call any software computer, what kind of electronic or cable or cable is not working, whatever it is, whenever someone comes on the line, the first thing I do, I've already turned on and off the computer, I've checked the connections, I've set the reset button, you know, I do all that, right? There's a reason why I'm calling it and that's what he wanted. He wanted there to be a legitimate reason to call into the office. After, you know, the interview, and he basically told me, look, you might be having other interviews if they do offer you the job, don't accept, you know, he told me I'll get the paperwork done up right away and then you can accept and you're hired and he said I have to interview the rest of the people here, but you're basically it. And I was physically fit and I could carry the equipment and he looked at my resume, he knew I was specializing in geophysics and he knew what I wanted to get into, it was there, all right? Just that simple reply, right? Check the batteries, right? Getting that job really set me on the path of who, you know, what I was going to do for a number of years, a number of years, right? And for me, after working for this company, after working for this person, there's three of us, four of us working together, me being, you know, the lowest level second year student running around doing things and learning different instruments and being sent out on my own at times, well, a lot of times actually, for the first month, no, but after that, going out and doing all the stuff, after doing that, I knew just exactly what I wanted to do and that's what, you know, the co-op program is really about, right? To give you experience if you find a field that you really want to be in, you can pursue that, right? And then for the third year, third co-op term, you know, when, you know, booklet was coming out and because it wasn't a lot of time, booklet would come out, you would read the stuff, the job, post things, and you apply and I knew I wanted to do more environmental geophysics and geophysics specifically, but there were no geophysics jobs that really caught my eye for the third work term that I had, you know, you go to school for four months or eight months and you do another work term, so what we were supposed to do to qualify, to graduate with the co-op program that I was in, you had to do minimum four work terms and you could have done five, you were offered five, so I had done two. For my third work term, I didn't find any jobs that I was interested in, so what I ended up doing, and after working for this company for three, four months basically, I realized what type of education I needed to get to be able to pursue this, right? So in my third work term, I knew there wasn't any jobs that I really wanted to get into and I knew I needed to learn a little bit more mathematics and co-op program basically works like this, when you go out and work at the end of the work term you sort of write a report and you submit it to your university you get a letter from your employer saying you know, this person you know, did everything they were required to do and they pass, right? And you know, you get a little check mark you fulfill your requirement to do a co-op work term and you can proceed to the next level. So for my third work term, I couldn't find any jobs that I wanted to do and I was lucky enough to have a family member at the university where I could use to say I was working for because after working doing the geophysics I realized I needed more mathematics and I wanted more mathematics knowledge so instead of well so what I ended up doing was basically telling the university that I was working for this family member and we made it a confidential work term so I didn't have to submit a report because you could work for someone and they could say it was a confidential work so they didn't want this information shared with the school, right? So we made it confidential and I did some work work and he sent a letter in saying that I had fulfilled my requirements and what I ended up doing was taking 4 math courses that term so I could get my math minor and hands down as far as my academic career grows and doing a work term at the same time a confidential work term that term of taking 4 math courses was hands down the hardest academic term I've ever had and I share a part of that in the first video we put out for the language of mathematics where I said one course I had to study for was I studied 10 days straight for one of the tests I was writing extremely difficult extremely difficult so that's what I ended up doing and I knew I wanted to do geophysics for my fourth work term I did the same thing I looked into the job postings and there was nothing resembling what I had done previously in my second term and I wasn't interested in doing those types of jobs I knew exactly what I wanted to get into so I was lucky enough to be have people the west coast of BC that were in construction family members I was hired to do another confidential work term work reports and fulfilled my requirements for my four cooperative terms and it was the second one that really got me into the geophysics field got me doing what I did for about 10 years and some of the experiences that I had that I shared in the previous video just talking about geophysics and some of the places I went to some of the things I experienced anyway so in retrospect at the time it was important because it gave me the job my reply to the question what would you do if your instruments didn't work check the batteries and caught me to a job but in retrospect it set me on a path sort of had a huge part to play of who I am right what I've learned the experiences that I've had so very important experience goes a long way and I was lucky it wasn't a question I was expecting you read you try to prep yourself for an interview you think about all the things they're going to ask you what are your hobbies why do you want to work for my company and what not who are you what experience you've had what would you do in the field if your instruments didn't work going to geophysics is very important huge part to play in my life and if you're going for job interviews and if there's a job that you want in retrospect you'll find out how important those moments are I'll share one more one more little bit with you for me I share some of these stories with some of my students and some of my students sometimes share stories back with me back with me one of the stories that I shared with you guys before was the 10 by 10 math puzzle game one of my students showed me a game I think I was showing him games and we were interacting he was playing a game we were having math sessions and I asked him what it was and I take some of the stories that my students tell me to heart and I use them and one story that one of my students told me was regarding the students father's partner and his friend had a company and the partner was in charge of hiring and firing people it was a medium sized company hired people at different levels I could have been high ranking someone they needed technical engineer whatever it was I can't remember what that company was or mid level or low level maybe they needed a pencil pusher someone male delivery my student and girl told me that her dad's partner had told her that the first question the first question that he asks of anyone he's interviewing for irrelevant of what position and what level they're on which blew me away I've never heard this before basically she said the first question that he asks everyone he turns to them looks at them and says what's the name if they hesitate within reason there might be a pause to think but if they hesitate and they say they don't know he doesn't hire them irrelevant of what position it might be it's because they don't know what it is mathematics very powerful very important if your instruments don't work it sets you on a path to become a geophysicist for a job interview you might be going for what's the name I'll see you guys in the next video