1. HELPING CHEMISTS FIND JOBS IN A TOUGH MARKET. 2. TOWARDS A QUANTITATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF THE QUALITY OF THE CHEMISTRY JOB MARKET.
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| Credit: Prof. David Cahill |
What's the job market like for chemists? Dude -- it's always bad.*
How bad is it? How the heck should I know? Quantifying the chemistry job market is what this blog is about. That, and helping chemists find jobs.
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(*For the literal-minded, this is a joke. Mostly.)
I came from that department. The graduate seminars often were faculty candidate talks, and it seemed like a terrible experience for all involved.
ReplyDeleteSame here. A few I remember not getting a job:
ReplyDeleteThe guy who didn't have a backup plan for computer problems and kept a whole auditorium waiting 30 minutes (in the days when computers were glitchier, and you were expected to bring transparencies as a plan B).
The woman who packed 3 or 4 hours of material into a standard 50-minute UIUC seminar slot, and talked 100 MPH without taking a breath the whole time!
What a fantastic presentation, kudos to Prof. Cahill.
ReplyDeleteHis point that top flight researchers tended to be top flight teachers made me pause for a second before I realized he was right. From past experience, the teachers in university who were awful weren't, in fact, the really good researchers there were the second rate researchers who thought they were top of the heap....
I vividly remember a graduate level biochemistry class taught by a NAS member, revered by the other faculty in his area. He had built a research career on seeing possibilities other scientists had not seen, and documenting them with experiments no one else thought of. As a teacher? He didn't see what the students couldn't understand, and took the lectures in directions no one else was thinking of. It was awful.
Delete"top flight researchers tended to be top flight teachers"
DeleteIronically, Cahill is an amazing scientist, but I found him to be a sub-par teacher.
This is a fiction that academics tell themselves to justify their existence. If you reject it, the entire enterprise of academic science crumbles. The self-evident truth...that the skills needed for teaching undergraduates has very overlap with those needed to do world-class research...is an existential threat that must be rejected.
Don't get the hate for Skype. Less awkward than a group phone call ("wait, who said that?").
ReplyDeleteIf it broadens the pool at a later stage of the process, that means more applicants "have a shot" at the gig.
They're gonna have to see your face eventually.
Hate is probably too strong of a word, but definitely "discomfort" or "unease." I guess that I dislike the concept of Skype interviews the same way that I dislike the European tradition of putting pictures on CVs - it introduces information that should be irrelevant to the process (age/race/gender/looks, etc.)
DeleteI think you're right that the Illinois Skype process does broaden the quality of the initial electronic screening interaction (i.e. it's a better, longer interaction than a phone interview).
It doesn't matter what I think anyway - this is happening, and it's not going to go in a different direction.
I am pretty awful looking, without a commanding voice or anything that might lend me an advantage for audiovisual transmissions, but my only Skype interview to date led to employment. Similarly, my father who is approaching retirement age, recently applied for a job with a Skype interview, and he fretted over what they'd think of his grey hair and wrinkles - he too got the job. So let my family's anecdotes be comfort to anyone out there who thinks they'll be judged by their appearance.. unless our qualities, or lack thereof, are what's sought after?
DeleteWell, that's a good sign for those of us (myself included) who are awful-looking and/or have grey hair. Thanks for your relevant comment!
DeleteNo need to be down on the grey hair....George Clooney, Anderson Copper, and Steve Carell are examples to all of us!
DeleteI am never a fan of Skype interviews. Your body language, posture and even manner of speaking can be very different when the person is not in the room and is giving the illusion of not even directly looking at you. That being said, I still prefer them to phone interviews which I intensely dislike and find awkward all round (although I have to say that I have only had a phone interview not lead to an on-site once).
ReplyDeleteI dislike Skype in a business setting anyway, I find it disconcerting that if I look directly at the other person it looks like I'm looking away, and if I look directly at the webcam I can't see the person I'm speaking with.
ReplyDeleteI've read a few reports about bias in interviewing recently too, thoughts about removing visual elements from interviews are pretty interesting.
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ReplyDeleteOn second thoughts, this comment didn't make any of the sense I wanted it to, so it's gone >_<
DeleteI lose interest in a job if they want a Skype interview. It makes both parties look bad. Key and Peele did a great skit about it.
ReplyDelete