Thursday, April 23, 2020

Data from Organic Chemistry Jobs

Brian at Organic Chemistry Jobs has done a phenomenal job of collating industry jobs in synthetic chemistry for many years, and he was kind enough to share his data, which I publish here: 
2017
January: 101 positions
February: 68 positions
March: 97 positions
April: 61 positions
May : 52 positions
June: 68 positions
July: 95 positions
August: 77 positions
September: 64 positions
October: 116 positions
November: 61 positions
December: 53 positions
Total for 2017: 913 positions 
2018
January: 76 positions
February: 65 positions
March: 87 positions
April: 78 positions
May : 73 positions
June: 91 positions
July: 101 positions
August: 60 positions
September: 84 positions
October: 97 positions
November: 103 positions
December: 76 positions
Total for 2018: 991 positions 
2019
January: 140 positions
February: 99 positions
March: 122 positions
April: 82 positions
May : 111 positions
June: 89 positions
July: 91 positions
August: 114 positions
September: 84 positions
October: 111 positions
November: 42 positions
December: 96 positions
Total for 2019: 1181 positions 
2020
January: 72 positions
February: 115 positions
March: 82 positions
It will be interesting to see how 2020 shapes up - I suspect that we will see a drop, but here's hoping that we won't. Thanks to Brian for this helpful data. 

7 comments:

  1. I would like to know how the number of available positions compares to the number of graduates (at all levels) being churned out by universities every year. We all know that academic positions are very thin compared to the number of PhD grads, but looking at these numbers for industry, I would think that industry jobs are equally scarce, which jives with my anecdotal experience... if you're a chemist, you have to apply to 100-200 positions just to get 1 or 2 interviews...

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    1. That is different from my experience. My previous company was acquired, so I was searching for a position in Feb/March of 2019. I applied to ~30 positions and had 3 onsite interviews and 3 offers. I also turned down 2 other phone interview/onsite interview requests for various reasons. This is just my experience though.

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  2. Can you update this post with a graphical image of this data?

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  3. What was your education and experience level? I think jobs tend to be easier to find for people with BS/MS 1-10 yrs exp. or PhD 0-5 yrs exp.

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    1. PhD in organic chem, 0-5 years. Incredibly tough market. In my experience, entry-level positions are saturated - too many candidates.

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  4. PhD in methodology research, 0 years experience, four first author publications JACS/ACIE. On the job market for 1 year, three interviews, no offers. Seems like total synthesis PhD or those with post doctoral research are doing better though.

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    1. This is the new norm - entry level Scientist/Sr. Scientist positions in industry are going to those with postdoctoral experience, even if the job description states "PhD with 0-2 years experience".

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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