Thursday, February 21, 2013

Daily Pump Trap: 2/21/13 edition

Good morning! Between February 19 and February 20, there were 5 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 4 (80%) are academically connected. 

Hmmm: Of course, the one industrial position posted in the last two days is for a civil engineer. Of course.

Who are they looking for at 3M and Cambrex?: One in my continuing, irregular series of looks at companies on the Chemical Week 75 list, 3M seems to have 72 positions related to being a chemist; most of them, I suspect, are not really aimed at chemists per se. Cambrex seems to have 4 positions related to being a chemist.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show 201, 733, 2421 and 12 positions for the search term "chemist." LinkedIn shows 95 positions for the job title "chemist", with 7 for "research chemist", 22 for "analytical chemist" and 4 for "organic chemist."

Postdoctoral expansion: Here's an ad posted on LinkedIn (with the recruiter's contact information) for a synthetic chemist (emphasis mine):
I am seeking outgoing, driven individuals who would thrive in a collaborative environment.  My client is seeking a PhD synthetic organic chemist with 2-4 years of post-doc work in chemical synthesis.  This is a development position with Fortune 1000 company.... 
[snip] PhD Organic Chemistry with at least 2 years relevant experience in an academic or industrial environment.
I sincerely hope this was the recruiter's doing, and not the Fortune 1000 company; I can't imagine that they're looking for a 4 year postdoc, right? 

4 comments:

  1. But 4 years isn't the lower limit, 2 is. I know plenty of people that have done 4 years of postdoc (unfortunately). At least they can get looked at by this company, Bruce Roth won't even give you the time of day if you did 4 years, unless you went to Stanford.

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  2. Ha! I'm in my fourth year of post-doc at a hot-shot top 10 University working for Prof. Duzzwell doing natural product synthesis....we do exist unfortunately because well you know...making a giant molecule takes awhile

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  3. Yeah, I have noticed here on CJ that there is an extreme negative connotation attached to 2+ year postdocs, but at my University, a large state school, there are plenty of postdocs who have been here 4 years and longer. The reason most give when asked about why they are here so long is that they are being highly productive, have a good PI, and just aren't able to find a position they really want. It kind of goes back to the "MUST LEAVE HOME WHEN YOU POSTDOC" idea, if you say it enough I suppose it comes true??? No reason to run away from a nice postdoc situation after two years b/c its the "norm". I suppose they should all go take lecturer or adjunct jobs somewhere instead of staying in the lab and producing good manuscripts???

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    Replies
    1. If people do so by choice, uh, more power to them.

      If people do so because the economy is poor, that's unfortunate and a trend that will hopefully will end.

      If people do so because they are being forced to because of employer expectations, that is a bad trend that should be discouraged.

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20