KR's big chemistry break: knowing about HPLC tailing

Last week, I posted on my "big break" into industrial chemistry and lots of you contributed in the comments. See Arr Oh has a nice post on his break. I also received "KR"'s story by e-mail: 

One and half years out of undergrad, I was contentedly working at a contract lab. The prospects for growth weren't phenomenal, but I just wanted to get familiar with mass spec while figuring out if industry was the right place for me. The money wasn't great, but the work was interesting.  

I wasn't actively looking for a job, but my wife was. She saw an ad for entry level chemists in the course of her job search. I figured that I didn't have anything to lose so I took a shot and submitted my resume. I got a call from the recruiter the next day. The job that he was looking to fill sounded very interesting, but the position was temporary. 

While I was planning on heading back to grad school in a few years, I wasn't ready to leave my permanent position for the uncertainty of being a temp. I asked the recruiter to contact me when something permanent came along. I kind of forgot about it and kept on doing my thing, but about a month later he called me back. There was an entry level BS position available at the same company.  

I didn't realize this at the time, but the opportunity to get hired directly into this site without being a temporary first was extremely unusual. There were only a few other BS level chemist (out of a staff of fifty or so) who had been hired without starting as a temporary. I remember being extremely nervous when I parked my car. Maybe some part of me knew that this was a rare opportunity. 

The interview was largely technical. One particular question stands out in my memory. The hiring manager asked me what may be causing a tailing peak in HPLC (I was interviewing for an analytical position). I used what I had picked up in my job at the mass spec lab and told him that there could be another peak eluting with the analyte. He went on to tell me some other possible explanations for tailing peaks, but he also told me that I was the only person he'd interviewed that had mentioned co-elution. That must have been the difference maker because I got the job. 

That job triggered a series of events that have worked out pretty well for me. My new position offered tuition reimbursement so I started taking graduate classes in the evening at the nearby university. I took two classes and ended up working with one of those professors when I started at the school as a full-time grad student. My graduate research had nothing to do with mass spec or HPLC, I did laser spectroscopy, but when I called my old manager up when I was about to graduate (with four publications and another almost ready for submission), he put in a good work and I was given an interview. 

I had been gone for four and a half years, but it was pretty easy for me to pick up where I left off. I'm still working for the same company. I've played a key role in launching three products, and I managed to find some interesting problems to work on. I've been promoted twice and recently shifted my emphasis from the bench to a manager role. I'm not sure if any of that happens if I didn't happen to know that an interferent can cause tailing in an HPLC chromatogram.

Great story, KR - thank you! Readers, send in a story of your big break into chemistry at chemjobber@gmail.com

Stories wanted: "My big break"

I'm a frequent listener to NPR's Saturday evening "All Things Considered". I was a pretty big Guy Raz fan (very fond of his conversations with Jim Fallows, among other things), but Arun Rath is growing on me. 

Anyway, one of the neat/hokey things they're doing is interviewing various celebrities about their big break, i.e. something lucky/coincidental that helped them get where they are today. Here's Leland Martin, NASA astronaut (and chemistry degree holder) talking about a training accident that stopped him from being an astronaut for a period of time:

"There was blood coming out of my ear and they rushed me to the emergency room," he says. "They did surgery, they looked around, they couldn't find anything and being an astronaut, you need your hearing. If something happens and they can't explain why it happened, they won't let you fly in space." 

Melvin's hearing slowly came back but he was still medically disqualified. So he traveled to Washington, D.C., to work in one of NASA's education programs instead.... 

...As he flew across the country attending memorial services [CJ's note: after the 2003 Columbia tragedy], Melvin says the chief flight surgeon was watching him closely, assessing his ear injury. 

"He's watching me clear my ears and go up and down in the airplane and he calls me in his office and says, 'Leland, I'm going to sign a waiver for you to fly in space,' " he says. "That was one of my big breaks."

I don't think I have any fantastic stories like that, but I can talk about my first ever campus interview. After failing to get into medical school (yes, I'm one of those), I put my resume in for an on-campus interview with a relatively unknown drug delivery company. I walked into the interview wearing (I think - it's been 10+ years) a clip-on tie and the only button-down shirt that I had. After a nice conversation with the two gentlemen sent from Company T to interview me, they asked me what I was working on for my undergraduate research project. I ended up drawing the structure of the compound that I was trying to synthesize on one of the interviewer's notebooks.

They looked at me in some odd wonder and they said "You're the first undergrad we've talked to that can explain their project to us." I ended up getting the job.

Honestly, I don't think that I was particularly smart -- I think it was just a coincidence that they went out recruiting that day and I was coincidentally the most prepared for a job.

So that was one of my big breaks. Readers, what's yours? Stories of coincidences or dumb, weird luck desired.