My responsibilities vary. At the moment, I am co-managing a multi-disciplinary project which involves reporting and problem solving, as well as ensuring communication and integration. I also work on the project as a technical member, making me responsible for completing tasks and producing data. I lead our company’s ‘Early Career Employee Inclusion Group’ which helps support early careers employees in the company; in this role I am responsible for running meetings, managing the budget, and creating an environment for the team to set and achieve goals.
Despite the flexible working policy CGG has, I choose to go to the office most days as I like meeting with people in person. During a project, I have tasks to do to work towards completing the project so I will work through these. I often have a meeting or two each day, and these might be for a project, with a client, discussing ideas with a group, or watching presentations on work in other departments.
When I am not on a project, I use my time on various other tasks and this changes regularly. This may include research & development, proposal writing, working on skills (at the moment, python!), or supporting other team members where my skills and experience are needed.
My favourite part of my job is the variety of experiences you gain working on different projects with different teams and people. You get to work on a range of geoscience problems which builds unexpected knowledge bases and keeps things interesting. When I was looking for jobs, I always wanted one that would keep me on my toes and allow me to continue to learn and develop.
Our business is client-facing meaning we design and execute projects for other companies. Client work is really rewarding, but it can be challenging to manage expectations, communicate well (especially when the industry has a lot of confidentiality constraints!), and work to deadlines when the nature of the work is often exploratory and therefore unpredictable. We have to stick to budgets and deadlines, without compromising the high quality of work we want to produce.
I work with people from all over the world and learn something new every day.
I would recommend exposing yourself to more than you think you are interested in and taking opportunities that you may not think fit your plans. When I left university, I expected to be working in a fieldwork job, as this is all I was told existed in the industry. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to use machine learning in my MSc dissertation and learned that there is a whole side of the industry we don’t often hear about. As it turned out, I am much better suited to the job I do now! Keep an open mind, and don’t let anyone determine your expectations.
I took Geology as a GCSE and haven’t looked back since, so I can’t say I ever seriously had a plan b. Other subjects I was interested in at school were English and Law, but I had made up my mind fairly early on.
