How sports psychology might apply to job searching

As I talked about yesterday, Kate Clancy (a professor of anthropology) had an interesting couple of posts a couple months ago on the application of sports psychology to her life in academia. She lists the factors that she does and does not control, and how she rates herself on each one. I've taken her list and modified it a bit for my work:

Factors that I do control: time I put in, effort, my decision making, my attitude (needs to improve!), how I interact with coworkers, my knowledge of the literature, my lab skills, my writing.

Factors that I do not control: When the plant starts or ends a process, my bosses' decisions, our customer's decisions.

I think this applies doubly to those who are seeking jobs. Job seekers do not control: the broader economy, the relative lack of chemistry jobs, the massive supply of chemists that are out there, the location of those jobs, the HR departments and their hoops, the employers and their needs. However, there are a lot of things that job seekers do control: the amount of time spent searching, applications written, effort spent networking, the appearance/quality of your CV, your interview presentation, etc.

I fully admit that I spend much more time bit complaining about the factors than I do not control, rather than the factors that I do. Readers, how about you? 

Podcast: Janet Stemwedel and Chemjobber talk chemical academia

A while back, Janet Stemwedel and I had a conversation about her post on the dueling narratives between Daniel Lametti and I on the value of a science Ph.D. Shortly thereafter, she and I had a conversation on graduate school in chemistry and its current state. The conversation, lightly edited for sound, is below:

[I have to take this moment and openly apologize to Janet, in that it took me close to two months to edit the recording and post it. After editing it, I remembered what an excellent conversation it was, and it didn't deserve to languish. So, Janet, I sincerely apologize.]

[From now on, I'm going to make myself edit/post within a week.]

Some time markers:
0-8:00: Introduction
9:00: What are the odds, dear listener, that you're going to get a position as a tenure-track professor?
12:00: The pie chart of Ph.D. chemjobs, including CJ's long digression on the data that's out there on the issue.
21:30: What is the unemployment difference between a non-high-school graduate and a new Ph.D. chemist?
25:00: Will we ever get to retire?
30:00: Janet's impressive time-to-degree.
35:30: Will the problem of the Ph.D. glut be solved by less funding?
39:00: Is science academia a meritocracy? Are we good at picking people to hire?
49:00: The tough economy and larger cohorts in graduate school
55:00: Conclusions
57:00: A brief, but really important, digression into Professor Kate Clancy's sports psychology post on things that you can control, and things that you cannot. I am terribly remiss in not posting on this sooner, and I will. 

Yet more tyranny of the negative slope

Go over to See Arr Oh's place today, and check out his tabulation of the number of Division of Organic Chemistry fellowships, and how they rose and fell over the years. It's a pretty sobering graph he has there.

One thing that I thought I would point out (in repetition of See Arr Oh) is how M&A activity has affected academic organic chemistry in a mundane but still quite profound manner. (See right). I've stricken the names of companies that have been bought out or otherwise closed -- it's quite the remarkable list, on the 1997 side.

While we can argue about the benefits of M&A activity for society at large (future CJ and his Roth IRA may be benefiting), it is abundantly clear to me that the track record of M&A for the bench-level chemist is no good at all.

[Does anyone have the back story to what happened to the DOC fellowships? (Apart from the obvious, that is the funding companies went away.) What's the benefit of funding one of these? Just goodwill in the community and prestige?]

Daily Pump Trap: 11/8/12

Good morning! Between November 6 and November 7, there were 41 new positions posted on C&EN Jobs. Of these, 7 (17%) are academically connected and 30 (73%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Crap: There was one position for chemists, 2 for chemical engineers. Oof.

Frazer, PA: Teva Pharmaceuticals is looking for a B.S./M.S. process chemist, with 5  years of experience.

Hiring?: Sophie Rovner's article about the tepid job market had a number of smallish companies looking for folks. Lubrizol indeed has 1 synthetic chemist position (Ph.D. by Dec. 2012 available), Ashland seems to have a healthy number of positions and Cambrex has ~5 analytical-type positions at its Charles City facility.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov have 268, 689 , 2588 and 8 positions for the search term "chemist."

The Wreck of 1CJ196

"Fellas, it's bin good t'know ya!"

A question for #RealTimeChem Day (click to enjoy hundreds of chemists around the world, tweeting their results):

What should you call a dead reaction in your hood that you just haven't cleaned up yet? A derelict? Something that CJ should clean up, but just can't bear to pitch into the red can?

Suggestions being taken. (And yes, it got pitched. Sigh.) 

The Apodaca Challenge: What would I do with the ACS?

Rich Apodaca (the open-source cheminformatics guy) is a long-time reader and commenter on the blog, and he had a really good challenge for me (and for all of us):

I'm curious - you've seen the chemistry jobs situation from a vantage point few chemists have. What should ACS be doing to help its membership? 

Assume ACS is now in the mood to try something bold to address the #chemjobs situation - something it's never done before. Something that could change the rules of the game. Maybe even something with a significant element of financial/existential/credibility risk. 

What would it be?

I am not confident enough in my abilities as a policy wonk that I can offer concrete recommendations about what to do. But since you asked, here are a few ideas that I have:

• Triple or quadruple funding to the ACS Department of Member Insights and Research so they can: 
• Do the ChemCensus every year. Increase participation (advertising, paying people?, getting away from self-reporting) so that we get MUCH better information as to what's happening to ACS members. 
• Expand the scope of the survey to attempt to reach all chemists, not just ACS members. 
• Do longitudinal tracking of a cohort of chemists, so that we figure out what is happening to chemists over the course of their very long careers. 
• Talk to member employers to ask them "What are you looking for?" and to drill down
• Make sure that academics and employers have a much better picture of the hiring market
• Have ACS representatives (members, ACS employees, whatever) show up at key conferences to give lectures on what the job market looks like. Do this ONLY after the above studies are complete (2-3 years), so that people actually have solid, reliable data. 
• Offer more benefits to ACS members. Right now, what do you get? A deal on life insurance, C&EN (worth the cost, IMHO) and access to C&EN Jobs. Thaaaat's about it. 
• Layoff insurance?: For larger companies, there's typically a severance package. That's not the case for smaller companies. Is there a case for ACS-subsidized unemployment insurance that goes past the federal 99-week limit? 
• Shouldn't there be a list of long-term unemployed ACS members, who somehow get special care? 
• Last, and craziest: How about a Rooney Rule for the long-term unemployed? For the uninitiated, the Rooney Rule is a rule instituted in the NFL that requires minority coaching candidates to be interviewed (not necessarily hired) for head coaching and other senior general manager type positions. Why not ask employers to consider/talk to/phone interview one long-term (longer than 6 months) unemployed chemist per opening? 
• Better yet -- why not require recruiters at ACS National Meetings to interview at least one long-term unemployed member? (You could pay them to do it -- give them a break on having a booth, or lower the membership fees for their employees, or something.) 

Those are some pretty half-baked thoughts. The only one that I really, really, really believe in is the first one. If you're in a hole and you want to climb out of it, you have to find out how deep you are. 

Readers, you guys are so much better at me at this stuff. Please, if you had crazy ideas -- what would you do with the ACS? 

Process Wednesday: Volume-Time-Output

From the recent Org. Process Res. Dev. review titled "The Eight Criteria Defining a Good Chemical Manufacturing Process", a fascinating rule of thumb for optimizing "throughput":

Criterion 4: Volume−Time−Output (VTO). VTO is defined as nominal volume of all reactors (m3) multiplied by the hours per batch, divided by the output per batch in kg (eq 3, determination of VTO). If the resulting number is  less than 1, the process for the chemical step is acceptable; if the number is far above 1, the process needs to be improved. Dryer and centrifuge operations during product isolation are not considered for VTO analysis, although these can be the rate-limiting operations. For a particular process, if long drying times define the bottleneck of a process, i.e. product isolation times are greater than reactor processing times, the VTO will have a reduced impact.

If you read further in the review, the authors talk about the reaction to the right (above), where the reaction  concentration of the RCM was improved by 20X by protecting an amide hydrogen with a Boc group. The authors offer a scenario in which they were thinking that they had to build a dedicated plant to handle just these RCMs, before they were able to optimize the process, which allowed them to run it in their current equipment. Count me a little skeptical on that front -- I have a hard time that the narrative was that dire, or that they actually considered building another plant.

Nevertheless, I like this, because it offers an interesting rule of thumb for "process intensification" and when you're close to using your plant/equipment efficiently. Readers, I'd love to hear what you have to say.

1. Dach, R.; Song, J.J.; Roschangar, F.; Samstag, W.; Senanayake, C.H. "The Eight Criteria Defining a Good Chemical Manufacturing Process." Org. Process Res. Dev. ASAP. dx.doi.org/10.1021/op300144g 

"A profound sense of loss"

From Susan Ainsworth's great article on chemists living and working far from their families (part of C&EN's Employment Outlook issue):

When Duane Burnett lost his job in big pharma at the end of last year, he initially focused close to home in his search for a new position. After all, he had put down deep roots in Kenilworth, N.J., where he had worked for more than 23 years at Schering-Plough and later at Merck & Co. after the companies’ 2009 merger. 

He finally landed the perfect position—one that “checked all his boxes”—as director of chemistry at EnVivo Pharmaceuticals. The downside? It was in Watertown, Mass., some 250 miles from his home and family. 

Burnett feels fortunate to have found a position that allows him to pursue his passion for discovering central nervous system drugs. However, accepting the job has meant that he has had to live apart from his family for eight months so far. As a result, “I have a profound sense of loss,” he says. “You can’t replace the time that you share over a meal or over other activities that keep you close as a family,” says Burnett. “I truly miss that time. It is the biggest sacrifice I have had to make, and I think about it a lot.”

The sacrifices we make to stay in this field can be costly.

And what about research assistant professors?

"How many Brukers were there at Hereford?"
Credit: poodfoison.wordpress.com

An astute reader writes in to ask:

Within my little research niche, I've noticed a lot of "research assistant professor" positions popping up.  The duties seem to be summarized as "chief post-doc with a more respectable title and no teaching responsibilities." 

This might be good news: Slowing the Ph.D. production rate somewhat and providing jobs for those already out there.  I was wondering if you or any of your readers has noticed these positions...and had any idea why they might be becoming more common.

I haven't seen this very often in the ads, but there have been so many run-of-the-mill assistant professor ads recently, I can't really remember.

If they're becoming more common, it's probably because certain institutions have enough soft money to support the position for the short/medium-term, but not for the long term. (Also, could these be "holding pattern" positions for favored postdocs?) It's my guess that the problem with these positions is that they're "soft money"-related, so as soon as the funding runs out, you're in the wind.

Readers, you know so much more about this than I do. Please, feel free to tell me what's up.

Anyone have anything to say about Kelly positions?

So I tend not to talk about the 100 bazillion Kelly Scientific Research positions that tend to pop now nowadays. It's mostly because I don't find them particularly relevant to Chemjobber's readership.

But a reader writes in with a good question: "Are these legitimate job postings that I should be applying for, or should I not waste my time?  I guess I do not fully understand what these are and am curious to know what you think about them."

It seems to me that they're mostly aimed at, for example, enticing employees from other companies (i.e. experienced workers). Here's a nice example: it's a temp-to-hire position in West Lafayette in process chemistry/formulation. They'd like you to have experience in:

"Polymorphism and Salt Screening in Pharmaceutical Systems, X-ray Powder Diffraction, Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Thermogravimetric Analysis, Optical Microscopy, Crystallization Studies, Co-Crystal Screening, Crystal Form Isolation, and Crystallization Kinetic Studies. The ideal candidate would have a bachelors or masters degree in chemistry and at least one year work experience in a lab."

So an young, but experienced B.S./M.S. process chemist -- why would they want a temp position? (unless, of course, they were out of work or were coming to the end of their previous contract.)

There's also a lot of lab technician or midnight QC chemist positions available. There's nothing particularly wrong with them, but they just don't seem to be very tempting. So I'm pretty "meh" about Kelly, which is why I don't post on a lot of their jobs. Readers, you've probably had a lot more experience with them. Any thoughts? 

Daily Pump Trap: 11/6/12 edition

Good morning! Between November 1 and November 5, there have been 106 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 32 (30%) were academically connected and 56 (53%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Seattle, WA: Seattle Genetics is hiring a principal scientist for its chemical development team. They've been hiring a lot for their process team, recently.

Ahh, you again: Millenium is once again advertising itself as having positions. Are they real? No one knows.  (There are 4 positions for the search term "chemist" on its career website, none for synthetic.)

Colorado Springs, CO: Pxyant Labs is looking for a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. analytical chemist with lots of experience with mass spectrometers and GLP.

And you, too!: Phenomenex is also looking for multiple positions.

Ivory Filter Flask: 11/6/12

Good morning! Between October 30 and November 5, there were 46 new academic positions posted on C&EN Jobs. The numbers:

Total number of ads: 46
- Postdocs: 6
- Tenure-track faculty:  37
- Temporary faculty: 1
- Lecturer positions:  2
- Staff positions:  0
- US/non-US: 43/3

"Anne of Green Gables" novel not included: (Sorry, PEIers.) The University of Prince Edward Island is hiring an assistant professor of chemistry for a position to start next summer. 

High Point, NC: High Point University is hiring for 3 positions: the chair of the department, a biochemistry faculty position and for an assistant professor of organic chemistry.

Northern paradise?: Stockholm University is advertising what appears to be a pre-doctoral fellowship position to study materials chemistry. 28k to 40k/year, with pension for your last two years. Huh.

Central paradise?: Indiana University-Kokomo is looking for an assistant professor of environmental biochemistry.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern's chemical engineering department is looking for a postdoc in lithium-ion battery research.

To make glorious benefit nation of...: Nazarbayev University (Astana, Kazakhstan) is looking for professors of biology... on the website of the American Chemical Society.

ACS Webinar on the doctoral glut

ACS Webinars is holding one on "Are there More Scientists Than Jobs?". This is with Professor Richard Freeman (Harvard). It is also with Professor Paula Stephan (Georgia State), author of "How Economics Shapes Science." It will be moderated by Patricia Simpson, Director of Academic Advising and Career Services for UIUC's School of Chemical Sciences.

Let me be blunt and say this up front: Professors Freeman and Stephan are well-respected scholars on this issue, and have more-or-less come out on the "Yes" side of the equation above.

Tune in on Thursday, November 8 at 2 pm Eastern. I'll be listening (and Tweeting/liveblogging), and I hope you will be as well. 

ACS resources for unemployed chemists

Looks like there's going to be an online job club for unemployed chemists, run by ACS, on Tuesdays at 2 PM Eastern.

Click on the link for other ACS resources towards finding a job (I guess Chemjobber doesn't merit a mention -- sigh.) 

Human stories abound in C&EN's employment outlook issue

Credit: C&EN

From Linda Wang's excellent, yet excruciating story on unemployment among pharma chemists, some terribly sad stories:

“I’m listed as employed,” says “Eric,” 46, who was laid off in 2007 from his position as a senior chemist at Johnson & Johnson and is now an adjunct professor at three different colleges and universities. “I got reemployed, but is this what employment should be like for someone at my level?” [snip] 

...He teaches as an adjunct professor on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, splitting his time among three colleges and universities that are 50 to 70 miles apart. He leaves around 10 AM and doesn’t get home until after 11 PM, leaving little time to spend with his twin daughters, who are nine years old. 

Because of the length of his commute and the high cost of gas, Eric sold his car and bought a used Suzuki with better gas mileage. “The previous car was costing me about $1,000 a month in gas, and that was not sustainable,” he says. He has roughly $400 left in his 401(k). “Four hundred bucks is no 401(k); it won’t buy you a plane ticket anywhere,” he says. But he’s not one to dwell on his difficulties. “It’s tight financially, but the fact is we’re still surviving. It’s just a little harder, that’s all.”

I found this comment on ACS' Salary Survey data kind of amusing:

“The data that ACS has is for the most part self-reported, and that’s always going to underreport the truth,” says Lee H. Latimer, a consultant and longtime ACS volunteer, who was laid off from Elan in 2011. “Many may have a job, which keeps them from collecting unemployment, but they’re not working either in their field or in a position that comes anywhere close to matching their previous income”—meaning, he says, that they’re effectively underemployed.

And how about the PMP, that certificate of awesomeness from a couple of years ago?:

“Michael,” a Ph.D. organic chemist in his 50s, living in California, knows just how unsettling this roller-coaster ride can be. Since he was laid off from a biotech company in 2008, he has applied for more than 10,000 jobs, some 7,000 related to the chemical sciences and 3,000 outside of science. 

Meanwhile, Michael has earned certifications in clinical trial design and management, regulatory affairs, quality assurance and control, and project management. But “by the time that I finished, not only did the number of these jobs decrease, employers weren’t going to take anybody who doesn’t have experience. The training is not enough for them,” he says. “I went and retrained myself, but I still cannot get a job. 

I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the people in these articles are in what is supposed to be the prime of their careers (late 30s to 50s). That it has become brutal for mid-career chemists (the people who are probably going to be most productive and have the most ability to innovate) is fundamentally clear. It is beginning to be clear that not a single organization (not ACS, not the pharma companies, no one in government) has any idea what to do about it. What a shame.

C&EN's 2012 employment issue: the numbers

I don't want to have the new numbers released from the ACS Department of Member Research and Insights from the March 2012 ACS Salary Survey to be lost in the shuffle, so here they are, pulled out of Sophie L. Rovner's article, which is worth reading in full:

• Overall member unemployment: 4.2% 
• Ph.D. member unemployment: 3.4%
• B.S. member unemployment: 5.9%
• Industrial member unemployment: 5.4%
• Academic member unemployment: 2.2%
• % of members unemployed at anytime during 2011: 8.2%
• % of members unemployed at anytime during 2010: 8.4%
• % of newly graduates unemployed in October 2011: 13.3% 
• % of newly graduates unemployed in 2010: 10.6% 
• % of Ph.D. graduates unemployed in October 2011: 8.8%
• % of B.S. graduates unemployed in October 2011: 13.6%

Also, check out this chart from the article (right), which indicates the brutal reality facing new graduates in chemistry.

Credit: C&EN*

Anyone who buys into facile claims that America needs more scientists and more chemists needs to be able to explain this graph. 

Also, the larger picture for the chemical manufacturing sector:

Zeroing in on the U.S. chemical manufacturing sector, employment totaled 799,600 on a seasonally adjusted basis in September 2012, up 0.2% from the prior month and up 0.7% from September 2011, according to preliminary figures from BLS. That’s good news, but it’s little comfort to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their jobs in prior months. At the start of the Great Recession in December 2007, employment in the sector was 857,600. Five years earlier, it was 921,500. And 10 years before that—in December 1992—chemical manufacturing employees numbered 1.03 million.

Yikes.

*[NOTE: Corrected number for 2004 for ACS members. Numbers include unemployed and seeking employment. Data for 2012 on new graduates are not yet available. SOURCES: ACS Starting Salary Survey, ACS Comprehensive Salary and Employment Status Survey.]

Chemjobber welcomes ACS leadership to early 2009

Chemical and Engineering News is running its annual employment issue. I'll be covering it more tomorrow, but I am taking the following passage from Linda Wang's truly excellent story on unemployment in chemistry as a sign that this blog (and its truly excellent readership) was ahead of the curve and that the leadership of the American Chemical Society was behind:

The impact of this recession has been unlike that of previous recessions. “The fact is that the number of jobs has declined,” says Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, president of the American Chemical Society. And the usual methods for obtaining a new job aren’t working. “If the jobs aren’t there,” Shakhashiri says, “no matter how much you network, you’re not going to find them.” 

“The situation today is a tragedy of national proportions,” says Madeleine Jacobs, ACS executive director and chief executive officer. “It’s devastating to individual lives, and it’s devastating to this country.”

More in the AM, but I just want to point out that we have NEVER heard this kind of language from ACS leadership. Welcome to Chemjobber, my friends -- I suggest you start at entry 1. 

What's the best disaster planning for a chemical laboratory?

I am sure that all of you were horrified by Hurricane Sandy and its continuing aftermath, especially the situation with the NYU medical center and the loss of all the research mice. From Derek Lowe:

...thousands of genetically engineered and/or specially bred rodents were lost from an NYU facility due to flooding. The Fishell lab appears to have lost its entire stock of 2,500 mice, representing 10 years of work. Very bad news indeed for the people whose careers were depending on these.

Here's C&EN's coverage of Hurricane Sandy and its effects on both chemical academia and the chemical industry.

I think it is worth having a conversation about whether/if it is possible to disaster plan for an academic chemical laboratory or a small chemical company.* If it's a relatively slow-moving disaster like flooding or a hurricane, one imagines that there's planning that can be done ahead of time (things like regular backups of digital data, etc.) If it's an earthquake or an alien invasion, there's not much to be done. Obviously, physical safety and security is of primary importance. (Ready.gov is a great place to start for these sorts of things.) Get your car gassed up ahead of time, etc. Board up your house, get your stuff ready to go, whatever.

But are there steps that chemists can take, if they believe their laboratory will be affected by a natural disaster or they might have to evacuate? Here's what I'm thinking about:

• Graduate students and postdocs, in case of evacuation, make sure that your laboratory notebooks are  at hand, and that you have multiple copies of your digital data. 
• Attempt to secure instruments (especially expensive ones!) that might be affected by the oncoming storm. For example, here's @TheModernScientist, talking about what to do with their NMRs. (I believe this chemist is in the NYC area.) 
• I think there should be an effort to power down or decommission any obvious chemical hazards. I'm thinking about the clichéd THF still or what have you. 

Readers, what do you think? Am I crazy for thinking about this stuff? Do you have experience from Katrina, Midwest floods or crazy blizzards that you can share? 

*(I'm basically saying that if you work at a large company, they should have the resources to deal with this on their own; it's much less likely that you'll be like See Arr Oh, chainsawing a tree out of the boss' driveway, or whatever. Whatever relationship you have with a large corporation, it is unlikely that they'll rely on you, the individual chemist for disaster planning, except for maybe the laboratories. Correct me if I'm wrong, naturally.) 

Thoughts from a campus recruiter

Since we were talking about corporate recruiting visits earlier, I thought I would talk to MP, a mid-career chemist who visited a major research university as a representative of their employer, looking for people to hire. I asked for general impressions of what it was like to sit across a table and attempt to evaluate graduate students and their work. What follows is a mashup of the e-mail back-and-forth, lightly edited:

Should you dress up? Most people wore a suit and tie (or suit for the women). I would say how they were dressed was the least memorable thing about the interview unless it was extremely casual. I would recommend dressing up for the interview.

What's the best way to present your work? It was best when the interviewee came prepared with a short overview of their research. One thing that surprised me was how little some people came prepared to talk about things they wrote on their résumé. Least effective interviewees were ones who wouldn't elaborate on what they did, what were their duties, etc. IMO, shorter, concise resumes are better. Some people had appended other items.

Cultural differences: I interviewed both chem engineers and chemists and I noticed a big difference. The Chem Es all had some kind of industrial experience, either internships or actual business classes. This was very rare in chem students. Chem Es were also more clear in their duties, like saying they supervised these people, they were in charge of this group duty, etc. I'm not sure if this is a chem/chem e cultural difference.

What distinguished the students who got it right from those who didn't? The ones who got it right had more things to talk about than just their research. The ones who got it "wrong" we're unable or unwilling to elaborate on things or were perhaps a little too honest (like admitting to hating certain tasks which would be a big part of their jobs.)

Any other general comments? As far as other advice, I'd recommend trying to take interview training, I think that would help some a lot. I'm also rather indifferent to the follow-up thank you email but I suppose it couldn't hurt.

Thanks to MP for insight into what a scientist is thinking during a recruiting visit. 

Unemployment rate up 0.1% in October, U6 unemployment down 0.1%

Credit: Calculated Risk blog

Fresh electrons from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the unemployment rate in October was up slightly to 7.9%, from 7.8% in September. The broader U6 measurement of unemployment was down 0.1% to 14.6%.

Chemical manufacturing payrolls increased by 1,600 jobs to 802,700 for the sector.

The news will be about the total nonfarm payroll number, with an increase of 171,000 jobs for October. Less discussed, but equally significant are the upward revisions of ~80,000 jobs for August and September.

There are 12 million people who are unemployed -- best wishes to them.

Thanks, as always, to Calculated Risk for the graph.