It is a pet peeve of mine that college, and especially high school educators lack the resources to expose their students to the job possibilities that exist in the workplace. Too often, we funnel students into curriculum that are simply common pathways to commonplace jobs. A career in GIS is certainly not a common path to take for lifelong professional growth. So how does a student find out about the kinds of jobs that exist?

That's where you come in. Today, Directions Magazine announces yet another resource, this time not necessarily for those already in a GIS career, but for “would be GISers” looking for ideas, guidance, vision, and insight to help them pursue a career in GIS. Today we are launching PROFILES IN GIS and we area asking you to help out.

PROFILES IN GIS is a way for you to communicate what you do in your current job and how you got there; what you do for your daily work assignments and what experience you acquired to get there; what you spend your day doing and whether you like what you are doing! Especially important is to convey some advice you would give to others looking for a career in GIS and perhaps a little bit about your plans for future career development.

So, what do you get for giving this free advice? Well, in true Directions fashion, there are prizes of course. Every month we'll choose a winner at random for a gift from one of our many advertisers who are helping to support this effort such as ESRI BusinessMap, Delorme, Blue Marble Geographics, ER Mapper, SRC, Matrox, Safe, Geomicro and others. So, we hope you will participate, not just for a chance to win a prize but to help others in their quest for understanding how geographic information and location technology can be a truly rewarding career choice. You will be able to hide certain details like name and email address if you prefer to remain anonymous, but you will still be able to post your career information. If you choose to share your information, we'll feature the winner's profile each month in our Directions on Career newsletter on Friday's. You'll be famous!

Thanks for helping and thanks for being a part of Directions’ PROFILES IN GIS. CLICK HERE to enter your profile and don't forget to give us your best mug shot of you at work!