Thursday, October 15, 2015

Daily Pump Trap: 10/15/15 edition

A few of this week's posting on C&EN Jobs:

Warrington, PA: Polysciences is commonly seen at C&EN Jobs; this QC/QA (?) analyst position doesn't sound very fun, but what do I know?

Rochester, MN: I see the Mayo Clinic is looking for a very specific person to be a mass spec research associate:
...Qualified candidates must have a Doctoral degree (PhD) in chemistry, or a human biological science plus a minimum of two years postdoctoral experience working on complex laboratory test development. Candidates must have presented at a minimum of five regional or national venues and is first author on a minimum of six full-length peer-reviewed articles. Candidates must have expertise in Protein/peptide analysis, including post-translational protein modifications. Minimum of 5 years of mass spectrometry experience, developed and validated laboratory tests on a variety of mass spectrometry platforms including triple quads, Orbi-trap (Q-Exactive), and TOF.
What do we think? H1b?

A couple of things: I really wish that there was a code word that employers could put in the ad so that it would mark these ads as "okay to ignore this." Maybe a set of bulleted points where the first letters would spell "FAKE AD."

Also, shouldn't we have a name for these sorts of ads? For some reason, "purple squirrel" doesn't cut it for me.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) "1000+", 606, 10,461 and 15 positions for the search term "chemist." LinkedIn shows 935 for the job title "chemist", with 126 for "analytical chemist", 28 for "research chemist", 11 for "organic chemist", 6 for "synthetic chemist" and 2 for "medicinal chemist." 

13 comments:

  1. "A couple of things: I really wish that there was a code word that employers could put in the ad so that it would mark these ads as "okay to ignore this." Maybe a set of bulleted points where the first letters would spell "FAKE AD.""

    How about "File under: Hidden Yeti market"?

    ReplyDelete
  2. What I would like to see is qualified US Citizens start filling out complaints against companies once those companies hire H1Bs and get the investigations rolling.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nice idea, but tough to know immigration status of person hired. Also tough to prove person x wasn't hired for some other reason. Lots of job candidates think they're good fits when they really aren't.

      Also tough to prove damages. Just because company x did not hire doesn't remove opportunity at company y.

      Delete
  3. I'm tempted to mess with them by submitting a fake resume with all of the highly specific stuff they ask for.

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  4. The relatively recent obsession with "first author papers" really pisses me off. My post-doc adviser insisted on alphabetical order.....which coincidentally put him up front.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had the same situation with my advisor. Several of my labmates appeared to be minor contributors on papers where they were really the first author, and the crystallographer got first-author billing on many papers he was only peripherally involved in.

      Delete
    2. It does seem to be a stupid criteria, but as long as the organization is footing the bill it can ask for whatever it wishes that doesn't discriminate against 'protected classes' (which it can wontonly discriminate against at the screening stage). Likely an indication of a foolish organization, though.

      Delete
    3. obviously I meant criterion....

      Delete
    4. IIRC Denmark and Trost are never not the first, and Overman also goes alphabetical. Surely you can explain the old-school PI-as-first-author or whatever other shenanigans exist to a committee? I thought it was pretty well known back in the day (something to do with primitive indexing systems, or so they said).

      Delete
  5. Not to mention the advisors who use author position (or, indeed, whether or not someone is listed as an author) as some sort of reward/punishment.

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  6. The presentation and first-author requirements imply purple unicorn hunting - the other requirements at least seem to have direct implications for the job, but I don't know how well numbers of (first-)author papers and presentations (above one, maybe) correlate with the expected competence of the applicant, even if everyone followed the same system and author position could be well-correlated to achievement.

    It doesn't have to be an H1B hunt - given the author requirements, they must have an idea who they want and where they've gone (so they know that the publication and presentation measures mean what they want) and want to pretend otherwise.

    ReplyDelete
  7. CJ, check out this gem from Quora: https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-get-a-job-in-an-industry-after-pursuing-a-PhD-in-chemistry

    I...don't...even...know...how to respond to that first response...

    ReplyDelete

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