What makes a new forester/conservation scientist most competitive for good jobs?

In my third year of school working on my forestry degree, planning to do wildland fire for a while after graduation, and then a research masters in something like forest ecology or maybe just general environmental science. When I look at jobs online for conservation foresty, wildfire ecology, etc, I see a lot of jobs with midrange salaries 50-65k, but posts for jobs that get up into even 130k. What can I do to make myself competitive for those higher paying jobs later in my career? Is it just based on seniority? Thank you!