The inaugural winner of the Banholzer Award: Anon749am at ChemBark

In the midst of the long faculty jobs thread at ChemBark and the current sub-discussion about a postdoc thinking about turning down a faculty position and re-upping for their postdoc, a hiring manager for Ph.D.s at "the big 3" chemical company breaks in about extended postdocs and faculty candidates looking for industrial positions (emphasis mine): 

I work for one of the big 3 chemical companies and lead PhD recruiting for our division. We evaluate hundreds of applications from top 25 schools every year and interview dozens of outstanding PhD and postdoc candidates, many of whom have pedigrees and CV’s worthy of getting TT positions at top schools. The candidate pool is INSANELY deep right now, and excellent candidates really are a dime a dozen. 

@ March 8 10:34: I’d be very careful about “holding out” and adding years to a postdoc. It sounds like you’re determined to work in academia, but you should know that extended postdocs will hurt your chances of landing an industry job as well. I can’t even begin to tell you how many awesome candidates I have interviewed who have tried and failed to get TT jobs and are now trying to get into industry, only to find that the bar is just as high (or higher, if you look at soft skills). You obviously want to minimize regrets in your life, but you have a chance at 5 years of guaranteed job security. That’s more than I have now, and certainly more than most will ever have. I’d hate for you to regret passing up what could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

...and later on in the thread:

As I mentioned earlier, the talent pool is much deeper than most people really want to admit. The assumption that you’re making is that an extended postdoc confers broader knowledge, training, and experience? Does it, though? Most of the post-docs I look at are working in areas that could reasonably be considered extensions of their thesis fields, and those few who have stepped out of their comfort zone to get broad experience are generally able to demonstrate their talents within 3 years. Many of the post-docs in their 2nd or 3rd appointment are basically acting as the “synthesis expert” in a non-synthetic group. I’m not trying to disparage the post-doc experience whatsoever. Just recognize that post-doc is not always synonymous with terms like “more” or “better”. Sometimes post-doc is just a synonym for “holding pattern” or “cheap labor”. 

The Banholzer Award is awarded for "Truth-Telling about Chemical Employment" from chemical employers, no matter how uncomfortable, unpopular or annoying. Congratulations, Anon749am and thanks for the insight.

[CJ's editorial re-comment: postdoctoral positions are quite often the scientific equivalent of an inferior good, that is a position that one would not take, if one had a better option.]

The Banholzer Award

If you didn't know it already, I actually like it when senior people in industry and academia say things that are true, even if uncomfortable and unpopular and annoying. Beryl Lieff Benderly gets some great quotes from Dow executive vice president and Ph.D. chemical engineer William Banholzer (who, incidentally,  is on the Shakhashiri Commission):

...But you'll notice that a history of postdocing is not among the characteristics that appear in Banholzer's description. "I don't think I need to hire postdocs," he told PCAST. A Ph.D. earned under an excellent professor is sufficient education, he says, because Dow provides newly hired scientists its own training for the work that they will be doing. "They sort of get their postdoc on the job," he notes. 

[snip] 

A final element of Banholzer's formula for starting an industrial career is studying at an institution that ranks high in your field. "If you want to get a job, you'd better go to the best schools because that's where the best faculty are, that's where the best research is done. It doesn't mean there might not be a world-class, creative, capable person at a lesser school, but I've got to work so much harder to find them." Dow recruits at the roughly two dozen schools at the top of their fields; the particular institutions vary with the disciplines. An outstanding candidate from a lower-ranked school can still apply but faces much longer odds of getting noticed and hired... 

[snip] "The reason I'm in industry is that I want to solve society's problems," Banholzer says. For aspiring scientists desiring to join him in this endeavor, his advice is straightforward. "You've got to figure out how to distinguish yourself from others. That means you'd better go to a prestigious university, you'd better work on some disruptive thesis, you'd better be outstanding at communication."

I respect Dr. Banholzer for being willing to lay out the bare minimum for being hired at Dow to be an entry-level Ph.D. scientist, and not hiding behind code words for the same thing ("unique skills", "critical thinking"). I could probably do a really good job at quibbling with this reliance on glamour and sexxxxxy science true, considered meritocracy, but in general, I believe it is true* that better, longer CVs from respected institutions are correlated with getting hired and having better salaries. If you read more in the article (very much worth it), he also argues for there being a relative surplus of Ph.D. chemists in relation to the industrial jobs to absorb them.

Dr. Banholzer hasn't talked about the other, industrial-sized elephants in the room: that Dow probably doesn't need to hire all that many R&D scientists because they're probably hiring them overseas. And I'll also note that he's in direct conflict (hhhheeeyyy) with his boss Andrew Liveris, who can't stop plumping for more scientists.

[I mean, yeah, we could dog him for all of this, but is he going to change Dow's hiring habits? No. Better to know the reality, talk about it and not hide from it.]

But for describing the unpopular reality that you can't get hired by large corporations without a great-looking CV from a prestigious institution, I announce the Banholzer Award for Truth-Telling about Chemical Employment. I look forward to future nominations.

*Anecdotally true, not statistically proven, I might note.