Thank you so much for this wonderful resource Jay. I'm just starting out in the industry (part time aquarist at a public aquarium) and found a lot of great advice in your book!
I got my foot in the door by volunteering for a year and a half at the aquarium at which I'm currently employed. My advice for anyone going that route is to treat it like a paid job. Show that you can be relied upon, and understand that it'll take some time, require quite of bit of unpaid labor, and likely still be a gamble.
In my case, I think the fact that I continually asked around to see if there were other things I could help with while volunteering allowed me to gain a more diverse range of experience than some of the other volunteers there. That, in turn, meant significantly less training invested on their end when they offered me the position (which in the age of covid and all of the associated budget cuts is a pretty good selling point).
