I'm a recent zoology graduate hoping to get into ecology and conservation but really struggling to decide whether to focus on getting a job or PhD. It's really tough to know what advertised PhDs would entail so any suggestions would be greatly received!!!

I'm in a completely different field but I think that the most important factor is your career plans. For some career options a PhD is a must (for example if you want to be a lecturer) and in some industry fields it would definitively improve your career prospectives (i.e. you will have defintively more chances to be promoted if you have a PhD). So it's really up to you to decide what do you want to do in the future and analyze if a PhD would help or not.

Having said that, I think that, even if you are now determined to do a PhD, 2 or 3 years of work experience between your undergraduate and your PhD can be very useful. Work experience will be always valuable in a PhD application, you can save some money and it will help you developing some skills different to those you can develop at university.

If you're looking for an Ecology or Conservation job then be prepared to pay to do it (e.g. one of those 'help Orangutans in the Wild' positions that charge you £2000 for the privilege), volunteer (and earn no money) or get paid quite a low wage.

The last option is the most difficult to get because in my experience a lot of positions require prior work/field experience (more than just an undergraduate dissertation etc). Depending on your PhD project, it can give you a few years of experience of field data collection, analysis etc which might be the boost you need.

But Mr Nimrod is right in that it also depends on your career plans.

Hope that helps.

Coastman - Miss Nimrod would be more accurate...

Thanks for the messages. I should have added that I'm already 28 so have had loads of work experience before doing my degree. For the last 6 months I've been volunteering two days a week with the Avon Wildlife Trust and getting some really great experience but everyone I speak to has different views on whether or not to do a PhD. I think the experience would be great but I get the feeling that your PhD could also limit your future plans. Unfortunately at the moment I don't know 100% what I want to do apart from work on vertebrates. Do you think a PhD gives you quite a wide range of experience or is really specialist?

Ooops sorry Miss!

It depends on your project I suppose, but on the whole they are very specialised in subject. However, they can be very broad in terms of field, data handling/analysis and other transferable skills that you'll learn on the way.

What are you studying?