Hi! I am a 21 year old college student looking into working as a contracted health physics tech in order to pay for school. I don't have an official degree, but I do have over 90 credit hours of classes with focuses on math and physics. The only work experience I've got is from a couple retail jobs I got because I knew someone at the time and academic work - tutoring and internships. If this was a resume I'd say I have experience working in an environment with radiation hazards and am familiar with certain PPE practices and safety standards, but working in a laser lab doesn't exactly count in this field.
I don't know too much about the job, aside from that my step-father used to work as such and made off pretty well. As far as I understand, the qualifications are an Associates degree or other two year certification and some university level knowledge of math and physics. I can grab a couple of those from my university if I go through some loopholes. I also know there is an extensive background check for the security clearance needed to work in a nuclear power plant and probably a NDA about everything in the plant. The work is simple enough in the scope of a nuclear plant, monitor radiation levels of people and equipment while understanding the safety practices and procedures in case something happens. I do not have any technical knowledge of the work, just a basic idea. That I can fix myself though by searching through here and learning what to read and understand. I'd like to say that I'd be confident enough to start thinking of what I'd say at the interview in a month or two.
There's a few catches though. I'm currently jobless, which makes finding a job much harder to begin with. I understand that it takes a while for a person to even finish the application since you have to transcribe everything you've done in the past five years or so, and I'm sure it takes longer for someone to read and verify everything that is sent in. The only thing I'm worried about concerning the background check is a traffic infraction concerning expired stickers in a city two hours away - all my money goes into getting my car to work and it is not much money to begin with. That's not the real issue though, I don't think there are any security issues caused by a broke college student being unable to pay a traffic ticket. I'm more worried about spending several months preparing and then waiting to hear back from someone without being able to really commit to another job, and then actually moving to the city closest to the site if I do get the job.
I was hoping to catch the eye of someone who's been in a similar spot. I plan to use the forum and learn what I can but it wouldn't hurt to ask for some extra advice about the application, relocation, and what to do in the meantime. Like I said, I'm jobless and as a result not able to go to school. I've got to work to go to school and all my real jobs have been working at the school, it's a Catch-22 situation resolved only by money in the bank. I'm burning through my savings like a brush fire. Currently I could either make a several hundred mile trip or have an apartment for a month, but not both. The possibility of moving for the job on my own dime is growing smaller by the monthly bill cycle. I'm not going to try for the spring outage since I'd rather take the time to prepare and be able to pass the certifications when I hand in the application, and gamble on more open positions in the summer. I'm hoping to get an intermediate job in the meantime but the entire reason I'm looking into this field is because I live in is a podunk backwater town on the border of Texas and Mexico. The biggest thing that has happened here in the last ten or twenty years is SpaceX choosing the area to build a launch pad, but I'm not a systems or fluid dynamics engineer. Second to that is agriculture and maybe working on an oil rig. Most other the jobs here only exist to give people jobs. It's all retail as far as the eye can see, and the pre-requisites are to have lived here your entire life, speak and understand Spanish better than English, and know someone who will get you the job sans interview. I happen to fail at two of them and my friends are starting to move up and out of this place.
I plan on reading through the forum to pad my resume and find literature to peruse and books to start studying. My only real skill is schoolwork so it should be easy enough. If someone happens across this and could throw some advise my way or is open to networking and Q&A about the job I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and thank you in advance if you reply.