While preparing for a recent podcast episode that brought attention to the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s (EM) hiring efforts and associated challenges, Michael Butler, host of the “Gone Fission Nuclear Report Podcast,” came across a recent college graduate who joined EM’s Office of External Affairs team last year.

"We’ve heard what folks from government and industry think about the EM workforce challenges, but what about the employees? What do they think?” Butler asked during the podcast, which covers EM news across the country. “We had a chance to find out.”

Butler interviewed Carly Howard, an EM Update cub reporter, and a transcript of their conversation follows:

Butler: While putting this episode together, we ran across Carly Howard. Carly is a recent graduate of James Madison University who joined the EM communications team in D.C. six months ago. We asked her how she chose EM as her first job out of college.

Howard: In my junior year, I was very unclear of where I wanted to go and then I got lucky to get an internship with an office at James Madison University, which was the Center for the Advancement of Sustainable Energy at JMU. They did a lot of clean energy work on campus, so I kind of got involved in the STEM and energy world through that and I did a lot of communications work for them.

Starting my senior year, I knew that I wanted to work in the “sciency” energy field, but I wasn't exactly sure how to get there. I knew I wanted to move to D.C. so I figured the Department of Energy was hopefully where I would end up, but I wasn't exactly sure how to get there. I found the job through EM. I found that job on LinkedIn, I believe, and it worked out perfectly. It was right up the alley of what I wanted to do, and I couldn't be happier with how it worked out. With EM, they were telling me about all of their goals and what they've accomplished so far, and it was really cool to hear that something I was doing would be kind of helping towards a bigger issue and so that was a big drawing point for sure.

I would definitely love to stay with EM and hopefully work my way up through the office. I would encourage it 100% for everyone. It's been such a smooth transition. Everyone has helped out, getting to know, since it is my first real job outside of college that’s not an internship. Everyone's just helped out and made the transition smooth and helped me learn how things go. EM’s a great place to be. It's just nice. Everyone's very friendly and feels like a big family.