Transcript 

Hello everyone. Happy New Year. It is 2023 and this is the first podcast of the New Year, and I thought this was. Such a great podcast episode to release because it is really such an inspiration. I interviewed one of my members of the Successful Wildlife Professional Program and he has just had such a great transformation.

This is a program that I developed to help people land their dream jobs. Teach them to have the steps to get there so that they can carry out their purpose in life. Really, we’re called to this career. It’s more than just a job for us. It’s our calling and we want to help nature, help animals, help the planet.

So this is what I helped Francisco Llauger do. When I first met him, he was working in a job that was not really related to his masters, honestly, and not quite on the career path trajectory he wanted to be. So as I mentioned, he has his masters and like me, he and I have similar experiences in that he didn’t get the training that he needed in graduate school to land the job that he wants.

Now, he learned a lot, of course, but when it comes to actually being out there in the job world, you’ll find out that there are skills that you need to get that job and you assume you’re gonna get it in graduate school. But that is quite honestly not the case. So he joined the program and now he has his dream job working in herpetology at the Houston Zoo.

In this episode, we’ll talk all about his journey to get there. And I really want you to leave this episode just feeling so good and feeling so inspired, because even if you aren’t where you want to be right now, things can change so fast. It might seem like they’re dragging on and on, but things can change in an instant.

And one of my mantras, one of my sayings that I love is that my current situation is not my final destination. So that’s all what this episode is about today, and I really hope you enjoy hearing from Francisco and the lessons that he’s learned on his way to becoming a successful wildlife professional. Enjoy.

 Hello Francisco. Welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited to have you here today. 

Hi. It’s great to be here. Thank you for having me, and I’m happy to talk about this. 

We first met because you decided to sign up for this informal request I had. I posted it to social media and I asked people who were trying to get a job or who were interested in getting a job about their experiences. Can you tell me why you first signed up for that? 

Sure. So at the time I believe I was getting towards the end of my master’s, I was doing a Master’s in Ecology, Evolution, Behavior in Austin. I was looking for jobs and stuff like that, but I was finding myself a little bit frustrated with the market.

I felt like I didn’t really have a lot of direction, and more importantly, I didn’t really have any person to really talk about it, that had experience about it. At my school, a lot of their career and job mentoring was focused on academia. They didn’t really know how to coach people on alternate paths.

And so when I saw that you were asking for attitudes about that, I thought it was important to add my perspective to the mix, to contribute to the conversations, considering it’s probably not happening in a lot of places that could actually do something about it. And then, hopefully someone could benefit from that at some point. 

When you went to get your master’s, did you intend to go into academia or was that never an option for you?

I think at first I just figured that was the end goal. Like you go to grad school, you end up in academia at some point. I went in thinking that I was gonna do a PhD and even before I went, I had some reservations about what.

Not only that would entail, but also if I, if what I really wanted to work in needed a PhD, and. So I think about a year and a half until the program, one of my lab mates was mastering and, so I talked with her and I talked with my advisor and so I came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t need a full PhD to do what I wanted to do.

And I definitely did not want to go through the whole process of academia.  Even just relatively tangentially seeing my colleagues’ experiences with it. I was like, this is not for me. 

Yeah. It can be a pretty rough experience. 

Absolutely. And it’s funny because a lot of my peers, they’re still thinking about going to academia.

I think there’s this attitude, especially with I guess younger generations that want to try to change it.  Landscapes change the overall attitude in academia. And I think that’s important, and I think we need people to do that, but I was like I’m not sure I’ll help in any way I can, but I don’t think the best way for me to help is to be in the middle of it.

Yeah, I totally agree. It’s definitely a problem and it’s definitely something people are paying attention to. just, I think today, actually today or yesterday, I got. An email from Nature Science, and it was a study that just came out about how students, I didn’t read it, I just saw the headline, but graduate students are questioning their degrees and even questioning staying in the field because they’re feeling discouraged  and just questioning its value in getting a job. 

So when you graduated with your masters what kinds of jobs did you want to get then? So at the time I was looking into it I’m trying to think of what to categorize it as. I was basically just looking for anything and everything, conservation, outdoors, wildlife related. I was looking  at Texas Parks and Wildlife.

They would have these positions for district wildlife biologist which through networking and such, I found was more like a hunting regulation focused in a lot of counties. And I was looking even at like interpreter positions, ranger positions I did delve a little bit into the private sector for like biological consulting agencies.

And for those I always felt that I was underqualified, which, in hindsight I was. But just anything that was tangentially related to biology, just so that I could get my foot in the door. Conservation organizations like the Nature Conservancy and Othon and stuff like that, whenever they would have a conservation coordinator position open or something like that.

I was looking into science communication jobs as well. Basically anything that could be tied to wildlife and conservation.  in my eyes, paid well. But in the back of my mind, I definitely always had a soft spot for working at the zoo because I volunteered there in the  back when I was in high school.

And I had actually applied to a supervisor position a couple of months before you and I first spoke. And I had been. One of my colleagues who was always also going for the position, he was like, even if you don’t expect to get it, it’ll be good just to go through the process. More or less what to expect.

I was already relatively aware of what the process for working with the zoo was and such. So I was always in the back of my mind, but of course the issue of pay was always what kind of steered me to the other jobs. . And you mentioned, I’m just curious, you mentioned that you were underqualified for consulting jobs even though you had a master’s.

And just from my experience looking at the consulting jobs, it seems like a lot of them don’t require a master’s or a higher degree, right? 

Yeah, a lot of them. As long as you have a certain set of skills. 

So what did you think you were missing? Or no, you were missing. 

Yeah. So specific to my area which is like Southeast Texas, Houston, Texas wetland delineation was a huge one just because that’s always gonna be a thing for biological consultants down here. Then there would be like for example, I had experience with field work whenever I was doing my research, but I didn’t have experience actually managing like pots of land or identify plants, which, and that’s stuff that I relatively easily could get, but it’s not something that I had been focusing on throughout my undergrad and my grad school years. So when it came time to apply for jobs, it’s. It didn’t feel like I had actually been trained for what jobs were actually requiring.  

That is so similar to how I felt when I graduated as well. I was like I spent close to seven years working on just the PhD, let alone my  undergrad, plus all of the internships and stuff and it was like, oh, like I still don’t have a lot of experience that is needed for these jobs. 

So in grad school, I still learned a lot, it was still a great learning experience, if anything else.

But I guess tying back to how grad school in general doesn’t really, or certain programs, and at least my program doesn’t really know how to coach people outside of the academic track to professorship.  I felt like all my skills were geared toward that. I knew how to write grants, I knew how to write papers.

I knew how to design studies and all this other stuff, and that’s all fine and dandy, and it’s a good experience. But when it actually came down to, okay, I don’t want to be a professor I want to do something else with my experience, you’re left with you only trained for one specific role.

And let’s just backtrack a little bit. What made you want to go to grad school or even be in this field in the first place? 

Yeah, so originally I wanted to be a vet, like an exotic veterinarian. I shadowed a couple of veterinarians in my area and actually worked at a vet clinic for a bit, but I was like, this is great. I respect this profession a lot. I think it’s really interesting. There’s a lot to learn, but I just don’t see myself doing this for my entire life. 

And when I got to college, I think like on the second day, I went to a club meeting for the Society for Biological Conservation at A and M. And it was just this mass, no PhD student talking about her grad school experience. And she did all sorts of stuff. She was doing stuff like birds and marshes and the Carolinas. And then she did field work in Ecuador as well with herbs. And, she had been going all over this place and I was looking at this, I’m like, that sounds awesome.

I’m getting the pretty side of everything, and so I was like, okay, if I wanna work with reptiles, but I don’t want to be a vet.  And I wanna make more money at a zoo than maybe grad school is the way to go. So that’s what steered me in the direction.

One of the things that I kind of warn people about is when they get an idea of, or when they’re trying to get an idea what it’s like to be a scientist, to be careful when you’re looking at social media from graduate students because there you get a good balance of things.

Like you’re collecting the data, you’re doing the field work. You’re doing all parts really, but then once you graduate parts of those, it depends on your job. , but a lot of parts of those, especially after PhD, go away, like you’re not really gonna be in the field anymore. So it’s definitely a different perspective.

Oh yeah, no, for sure. My advisor, from the moment I first talked to her, she had been talking about going, back out into the field and everything. And I think when I finally graduated, she had been a professor for three years at that point, she was finally able to find some time to go back out into the field.

Other than that, those three years were spent just doing the grant writing and setting up her students because she was a professor and everything. So I think there’s definitely a certain picture that’s painted of grad school that a lot of incoming students may not necessarily know about.

Okay, so you graduated and you were applying for jobs and tell me about that. What was happening and you were applying for like Nature Conservancy and all these different types of nature and science communication jobs. What happened? 

I wasn’t getting anything. And I did have a career advisor at my school which, himself, was fantastic. From a career counseling standpoint, it was a really good experience. But again, it wasn’t necessarily specifically tailored to the jobs that I was looking for. So I felt like I was missing a couple of tips and tricks to the wildlife industry. Specifically just like how to approach an application maybe, or like what to expect or how to portray your experience and stuff like that.

And I would apply to jobs and I would think that I was doing okay and, there it was just rejection after rejection. Sometimes even without notification, you just submit an application, then you never hear absolutely anything. And so it was getting to a point where I was about to, finish grad school, my lease for my apartment was going to end, and because my stipend was also going to end, I was gonna have to move back home, which that itself wasn’t an issue, but I was like, I need, I felt like I needed to find a job.

And so then you got a job in what was like a medical science center? Is that how you would describe it? 

So I got a job at a hospital specifically in one of their research divisions. The Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences. And so the way they advertised it was that this was gonna be a communication specialist role.

It was gonna be science communication. And so I saw it and I was like, okay, I submitted the application. And they got back to me pretty quickly and they wanted an interview and stuff like that. And I read the job description and everything. I was like, okay, it’s not like wildlife or conservation or absolutely anything like that, but it still sounds relatively similar to the kind of science communication that I was used to.

There was gonna be some outreach, there was gonna be some internal materials. I was gonna be able to create  posters and flyers and newsletters and that kind of stuff. And within, medical research, so some kind of science research. So I was like, maybe I can take this and maybe beef up my communication skills for a bit while at the same time, still looking for something else more in my field or just keeping an eye out to go ahead and make that transition. So I went ahead and took the job as a communication specialist. 

And just a question about your career counselor. That wasn’t specific to wildlife, right? 

No, it was, he was one of them, he was actually the head of the grad school career counseling. And again, he was great. It’s just like there was no one specific for my program. 

Yeah, even one of my colleagues at the, we were together at the museum, we’re both no longer there, but she was a career counselor for the Fisheries and Wildlife department of a university, and she was telling me that it was actually challenging for her at times to advise students because she had so many other administration things to do that it was like hard to stay abreast of what the field needs.

For sure. I can definitely see that. So yeah, no I wasn’t getting specifically tailored. Advice or anything like that. But eventually I did land a job . 

And then, you joined my program, A successful Wildlife Professional. What made you finally want to join? 

A couple of months into my new job, like my first job, I got a text from my colleague at the zoo saying that a herp keeper position was opening up and that he had already started to flip my name and that I should apply.

And so I am sitting there. I know the pay is not gonna be as great, but I have to at least try to get this. Eventually I got an offer. But. The wage just was not livable. Survivable and I went back and forth with HR for a bit and I was like, listen, this is the absolute lowest wage I can take.

Like you gimme this and I’m all yours. I’m already having to sacrifice a lot of stuff like, please help me out. And they just weren’t able to do it. So I had to turn the job down and that was one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do. Because that was my dream job. . And so afterwards I was just feeling super lost, super broken, and I knew that you were having this program, and I was like, let’s have a conversation. Let’s see what it’s like. And see if this is something that could actually help. 

And so what’d you think? What was your experience in the program? You better say it helped you. I’m just joking. 

Yeah. No, it was horrible. No. It was a program. I was impressed by how thorough it was. And then just the, so I guess if we’re talking about what was most helpful to me in the program, .so the specific mentoring calls were really helpful. And then a lot of the extras that you may not necessarily think about tips and stuff for like financial planning.

And then for my stuff, that was really helpful cause I think, going in okay, I knew how to apply to the zoo and all that stuff and I knew how to talk to people and. But what was my mindset going into it? Mindset is part of what br brought me to the program in the first place.

Like a defeated mindset. And so how to work with that, how to change that, how to actually work it into your process of looking and applying for jobs. And again, like I said, the one-on-one mentorship, cuz there you get, little it, it essentially becomes a conversation. And you get little tips and tricks that you, that one wouldn’t necessarily think of if they’re just like sitting down to write a guide or something. 

Yeah. Mindset is huge and I wish I would’ve known about mindset when I went to grad school because I think a lot of people, when they hear the word mindset, they think like it’s just positive thinking and it’s not really about that. It’s really about accepting what is in your circumstance and doing what you can to move you forward and also, like looking for the evidence around you to build you up and locking out those voices that are building you down. Because I don’t think grad school intentionally does that, but it does, it definitely wears you down.

It wears you down. And it definitely, mindset isn’t a thing that they’re really considering in grad school in terms of. Teaching their students. They’ll say stuff like, oh, make sure you’re taking care of yourself.

And can you help me out? I don’t know. I don’t know. How did I do that? You figure it out on your own. But the other thing in my mindset too is that you have to train yourself. Cause I think that most of us, we don’t really get trained on how to actually work with our mindset when we’re growing up.

We’re just taught that I don’t, not necessarily conform to a certain mindset, but just deal with stuff as it comes along, but without any actual training on how to deal with it. Exercises or. Whatever a mindset course entails it, it helps just to reinforce that.

And over time, it’s a process. It’s a learning process. It’s not like you take a course and then suddenly you’re enlightened and you’re good to go. It takes time. 

Yeah, absolutely. And I’m glad you used the word exercise because I like to use it in relation to the gym a lot. It’s like you can’t just go to the gym once and be like, oh, I’m done.

Or like or even like building, like you said, it’s like a practice even with building your muscles. Like you don’t start lifting like a 300 pound barbell. You have to start small and practice every day. And you, no, you’re right. It is like we are conforming and we don’t even realize we’re conforming.

I talk to you guys and like sometimes when I really. Push and like asking, like, where did you first hear this? Or like, where’d you first get this feeling from? You weren’t good enough. A lot of times it stems from like way back in the day, like our school days or something, and you just end up carrying it over.

Something else I wanted to mention with you, the mentoring sessions is I think one of the things that, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that you may have learned is like figuring out what jobs you were qualified for or not, because that’s what . I learned from being on the job market.

Like you, I applied for all these different jobs and I remember applying for Nature Conservancy jobs especially. I really wanted to work there.  and I was like, why won’t I even get an interview with ’em? I’m great. This is perfect for this job. Because I just thought, oh yeah, PhD translated to all this experience but it didn’t, so once I learned oh, like this is what this means and this is what that means. And same thing for the science communication jobs. Like a lot of times they want people who have their degrees in communication or journalism and then.

Honestly, a lot of ’em, they don’t care that much if you’re that good at science, it’s more if you have an interest in science,  rather than if you’re a scientist who’s really good at social media. 

Yeah. And I found that out going into my first job at the hospital because I had no idea about any of that stuff.

I just knew how to communicate science in general. And they saw that, so I was able to do the job well. But, I was, I knew reptiles. I didn’t know, medical research and stuff like that and convalescent plasma and all this other stuff. So it was basically having to learn as I went as well. So yeah, no that’s definitely true.

Absolutely. It’s so funny, like the public. They think, like even within my realm of nature and stuff, they think because I’m a scientist or I got my PhD, like they can show me an insect and I know what it is.

Yeah. Today we’re feeding the tortoises and they gave us like animal nutrition will give us browse plants to give them.

And we held up this one plant and three people that are relatively well aware of tortoise diets and stuff like that. And we’re like, we have no idea what this plant is. Ended up being like a Chinese Hawthorne or something like that. So that stuff like that happens all the time. You’re always learning. 

So you mentioned that today you were feeding tortoises. So obviously you’re not at the medical place anymore. So tell us about what happened.

Yeah It’s about a month ago now. A little two, no, about two months ago now. I had a point where I was just like, don’t like this job. I still like trying to apply to other jobs, but at the same time, I’m not able to devote as much time as I want.

I get back into the industry because I have a full-time job to worry about on top of everything else that I’m doing. And so I saw it as well. One, I want to go ahead and take the leap and do what I want to do, and two. If I’m ever going to actually move up in the industry, maybe to a better paying job at some point or to make a role that I want for myself or something like that, I have to start somewhere.

I can’t keep trying to do it on the side from a completely different related field. And so I texted my friend, I was like, Hey, you want to let me know whenever there are any other jobs available? And he was like, there’s a posting right now. So I applied and I now work at the Zoo. 

Yeah. And we were just chatting briefly before we started and you said that you love it and it’s an amazing job. 

When I was a kid, my very first career day in first grade or something, my best friend and I were the only ones that had herpetologists.

And yeah. And so we had a, they had Paper, backgrounds on the walls or whatever. And we drew like snakes and lizards and stuff for hours. And we had a, there was a teacher in the school that had a ball python in our classroom. And so we had the ball python. , while we were like, parents would walk by and be like, we are herpetologists, we study reptiles and amphibians.

So yeah, I think the goal was always to work directly with them, not just tangentially and stuff like that. So reptile ha desu was definitely the way to go. 

Were you guys independent of one another? Like you both came up with that on your own, or did you like to do that together?

Yeah. No. So we became best friends because we were both super into herps. Yeah. Oh, okay. That just ended up working out, and both our parents were teachers at the school. So yeah, no wait my first reptile buddy, yeah. 

So how would you say that the program has changed you since before you started and now?

The way I would put it is it made me stop bargaining with myself. Relates back to that mindset thing, but at some point, you can’t keep being like, oh, I’ll eventually get to doing the job that I want. I gotta just do this first. And sometimes that’s valid.

It’s not always a linear path and sometimes you do have to take a couple of small steps, but eventually there’s gonna be a point where you have to take a leap. And I think the program really helped me to come to terms with that. And to really allow myself to put myself in a place where I knew enough and I had worked on enough stuff that I was like, okay, it’s time to take a leap and I’m gonna go ahead and take it.

And I felt prepared to do it, not just from a mindset perspective, but also from a more practical perspective. My application was good and edited and all that stuff. I knew a lot more of what to expect from the industry, even if it’s not the specific zoo, but just zoos in general, life in general.

I knew a lot more of what to expect. I didn’t go in with this I guess rose colored view of everything. Like I knew that it wasn’t gonna be perfect, but I felt prepared to deal with anything. 

I love that. And yeah that’s something that I really try to give because I don’t think grad school gives you that expectation, like maybe now it’s a little bit different that it’s coming out of the woodwork, that this field is competitive and hard.

But when I graduated in 2012, I knew academia was hard but I was actually somebody who never wanted to do academia. So when I graduated I was like, okay, I can just get a job. Like I didn’t know it was going to be hard. And then when you find out it’s hard, you start to blame yourself and wonder like what’s wrong with you?

And then you also realize there’s nothing wrong with you and you get bitter towards a system and then you can play into that victim mentality. And yeah, it is super frustrating and there’s a lot of problems with our field, but.  right now, there’s not gonna be any major changes because it’s mostly a money problem.

And if you really want a career in this field I truly believe you can make it happen or it can happen for you. But I do think that you have to make it happen and yeah. And recently, I don’t think you were on, but recently we had a call where we talked about this podcast interview of Sarah Blakely.

She’s the founder of Spanx. And I had, I don’t know if you listened to it or not, but I had the members listen to it because she did a lot of unconventional things as an entrepreneur, like some, in some cases, she didn’t know what the rules were, so she broke them. Like accidentally, like she would just call up Neiman Marcus and other suppliers and stuff like that.

But yeah, that’s what I tell my members is you gotta network a lot on social media, LinkedIn and things like that and do more of these unconventional things. And I make sure you get these things that are actually gonna land you jobs and not just a degree is just not enough anymore, unfortunately.

Yeah, definitely not. And so quick, funny aside about the whole breaking rules without knowing thing so when I first reached out to my advisor I applied in fall of 2018, but I first reached out to her like, Back in January or February of that same year, just cause I was looking into programs and I saw her lab, I saw she was gonna be, in Austin and I was like, oh, let me reach out to her.

And we had a phone chat and we corresponded every now and then throughout the year. And then when it came time to apply to stuff, my undergrad advisor at the time, my lab manager, he was like, okay guys, you don’t contact the professors until you have like your letter of intro, like fully catered and everything.

And it’s like very minimal contact and everything. I was like, I’ve been talking to my potential advisor for almost a year and he was like, oh my god. But going back to the thing about academia. How you can get bigger towards it and stuff like that. I feel like something that I saw and something that I do see changing, especially with younger professors, like my grad school advisor, she was really good about this kind of stuff, but they seem like a lower number of professors being hired and stuff like that. And they see it as a training issue and not an attitude issue. So then they’ll be like, okay, let’s make ’em have to go through more postdocs. Nowadays you can’t get, it’s really difficult to get a professor job without what, like at least two or three postdocs, something like that, at least in our field.

And we have to give them more rigorous coursework during grad school, when really what’s happening is that people are getting jaded and people are getting burned. And so I do think that’s being seen a bit more. . So yeah and I think it’s, I think it’s good for people to acknowledge that because that way incoming people to grad school or to academia or anything can be maybe more cognizant of that, that when they start to get out and everything.

It’s not because they’re not good enough, like you said, it’s not because they’re not doing enough training or they’re not doing it well, it’s just because that system right now is structured in a way that’s bound to happen. 

Yeah. I definitely talk to people who are like, I don’t get it. I did everything right and I still can’t get to where I wanna go so yeah, it’s not about that you did anything wrong, it’s just that it’s competitive and you gotta think outta the box a little bit and then just really make sure you have those non-academic skills or knowledge that they don’t necessarily teach you.

Yeah.  Like you said, there comes a point where you make it happen for yourself, even without the difficulties and you have to find a way to, to get what you want. Even if that looks a little different than what you originally intended. But it’s good to have that insight and that knowledge going through it because it helps you out. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much for sharing your stories. Do you have any last parting words or anything? Not to put any pressure on you. I always feel like there’s a lot of pressure on you.

I’m gonna make or break people’s experience now. First of all, thank you so much for chatting with me about all this. About it any time. And like I said, your help this past year has been great. It’s been wonderful to anybody listening to this, like it’s possible to get what you want.

Be kind to yourself. Be smart about it. Take the steps that you need to make stuff happen. Knowing that there’s gonna be a few steps back, but just keep on the track. Eventually you’ll end up somewhere where you want to be.

Yeah. I love that. 

 Thank you so much once again, Francisco, for doing that. I am so happy I could help you. And I love helping the members in my program. That’s why I created it. I started off blogging about this because nobody was talking about it. Nobody was talking about how hard it was to get a job, especially after getting a graduate degree.

People didn’t want to feel like there was something wrong with them. So I started blogging about it and also about how the things that I learned in graduate school didn’t necessarily translate to jobs. And I found out that there was so much stuff that I was missing for the jobs that I wanted. If you are interested in learning more about the successful wildlife professional or wanna sign up to be the first to hear about it, head over to stephanieschuttler.com/swpwaitlist and or if you just Google fancy scientist and then search for swp waitlist, then it should pop up as well. And of course, I will put this in the show notes. It’s weird that I have to say stephanieschuttler.com because I recently changed my name back, but that’s what happens in life.

I hope you guys are all having a great day and Francisco just had so much great advice for us and I really do hope that the younger generation out there will change how this field is run and how academia is run. Be kind to each other. I love what Francisco said. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to each other and be kind to animals. Bye.