View From Your Hood: #ozchem ivy edition

Credit: @slkristufek

Via Twitter user slkristufek: "View from my hood:  It’s a beautiful, summery, January day here at the University of Melbourne!"

(got a View from Your Hood submission? Send it in (with a caption and preference for name/anonymity, please) at chemjobber@gmail.com; will run every other Friday.) 

Worth a read

I'm sure everyone has read it already, but if you haven't read Derek's comments about depression and anxiety in graduate school (complete with his own story of late night failed experimental runs), you should. The last two paragraphs are worth quoting in full: 

...I think it’s important for graduate students to realize that everyone has these doubts and bad stretches. Everyone has these moments when they wonder what they’ve done to their lives, but having these thoughts is not a sign that the exact failure you’re fearing has arrived. That doesn’t mean that thinking about your purpose in grad school is a bad thing, but it probably is a bad thing to try to do it at periods of peak emotional stress. If you feel that it really is getting too much, definitely talk to someone. Universities have people around for just that purpose – more so than in my day, fortunately – and if you find yourself wondering if you should reach out like that, then odds are that you should. Do it. I wish some of the people I worked with had, or had been able to. 

Any meaningful graduate degree is going to be a test of your abilities and your resilience. Recognize this, and avoid the two extremes. On one end are the macho types whose response is “Eat stress for breakfast! That’s what I did in my day! If you don’t have the fire in your belly you don’t belong here!”. And on the other end are the voices, some perhaps external and some internal, telling you that you’re a failure already, an imposter, and that you’re never going to measure up anyway. These are two different sets of lies, and everyone has to steer their course between them.

This is the sort of thing that we should be reminding 3rd years and 4th years in graduate school on a regular basis. Derek's been there, I've been there, probably your PI has been there too. It's okay to ask for help. 

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs List: 153 positions

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs list has 153 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions, but if you want to do the traditional "leave a link in the comments", that works, too.

Want to chat about medchem positions? Try the open thread.

Positions I'm not including: positions outside the United States, computational positions (this will likely change), academic positions (likely never.)

12 new positions at Organic Chemistry Jobs

Over at Common Organic Chemistry, there's 12 new positions posted for March 28.

The Process Chemistry Jobs List: 129 positions

The Process Chemistry Jobs List has 129 positions.

Want to help? Here's a form to fill out.

Want to chat process jobs? Try the open thread. 

Ask CJ: how to get industry internships?

From the inbox, a good question: 

Hi Chemjobber, 

I am a [redacted] year graduate student working towards a PhD in [redacted chemistry field]. [redacted] I was pondering the idea of doing summer internships during grad school to get experience and hopefully make connections. My PI is fully supportive. Do you have any feedback/recommendations/or any general input? 

Thanks,
PD

My response:

Dear PD:  

Thanks for your message - it's a good question. Before you begin, make sure to have a resume and a cover letter and an introductory e-mail/phone message. 

• Network your way into a summer internship through your PI/your institutions' connections.
• Find summer internships through online postings, either through general websites (such as C&EN Jobs) or through the companies themselves. 

Both are difficult, but #1 may prove to be somewhat more fruitful. Cheers, CJ

Readers, did you do an industrial internship during graduate school? How did you apply? Let's hear it.  

This week's C&EN

A few articles from this week's issue of Chemical and Engineering News: 

• Cover: "Will the world ever be ready for solar geoengineering?" (article by Tien Nguyen)
• I love the fact that the article deals with the conspiratorial realm in terms of putting substances into the atmosphere. 
• Who knew that 3-D printing could have emissions? (article by Janet Pelley) 
• Great article on Genentech's Wendy Young (VP of small-molecule drug discovery) by Lisa Jarvis
• The ACS Council has approved a plan to raise 2019 dues to $175 (article by Linda Wang) 
• "Some safety eyewear fails to protect against ultrafast lasers" (article by Jyllian Kemsley) 
• Interesting and worthwhile cautionary letter to the editor on NSF's new sexual harassment policy for PIs. 

2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 534 positions

The 2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 534 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

On March 30, 2017, the 2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 582 positions.

Want to talk anonymously? Have an update on the status of a job search? Try the open thread.

Want to talk about starting your new group? That open discussion is here.

Otherwise, all discussions are on the Chemistry Faculty Jobs List webforum.

Postdoctoral positions: University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD

From the inbox, two postdoctoral positions at the University of South Dakota:

Position 1 (Miro Group): Dynamic properties and chemical reactivity in confined spaces with application to surfactant-based  separations and catalysis inside molecular and 3D nanoporous systems.  

Position 2 (Vlaisavljevich Group): Study of molecules and materials with complex electronic structure for applications in heavy element chemistry,  information storage/electronic devices, catalysis, and environmental sensors.

Links and full descriptions here. Best wishes to those interested. 

The Academic Staff Jobs List: 23 positions

The Academic Staff Jobs list has 23 positions.

This list is curated by Sarah Cady. It targets:

• Full-time STAFF positions in a Chem/Biochem/ChemE lab/facility at an academic institution/natl lab
• Lab Coordinator positions for research groups or undergraduate labs 
• and for an institution in Canada or the United States

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

Want to chat about staff scientist positions? Try the open thread.

Business cards

A list of small, useful things (links):

• The latest from Stellen für Chemiker.
• Check out the RSC Twitter poster session, by Molecular Dreams
• The latest round up from Adam Johns at All Things Metathesis
• "College chemistry coursework that has been of enduring value", by Th'Gaussling
• Ethan Perlstein, on 'economies of rare'
• Kat Day, on a clever acronym to help people distinguish questionable science from non.
• "Professoring by the Golden Rule", by Beth Haas
• xykademiqz on the blahs, and what to do about them

I hope you don't get the blahs this weekend - have a great weekend! 

Fantastic myth-busting on the "skills gap"

Great article from the National Association of Colleges and Employers' director of research, public policy, and legislative issues, Edwin Koc (emphasis mine):

The figure of 6 million job openings comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report. BLS issues the survey results on a monthly basis, with the latest published report—the January 2018 issue—providing data as of November 2017. The latest job opening figure shows 5.9 million job openings in the United States, which is little changed from the previous 24 months. However, it is important to note that these job openings are not the result of new jobs coming online; further, the implication that these jobs go unfilled is highly misleading. The openings result from a variety of factors, most of which can be characterized as frictions in the labor market. 

The job openings are the result of:

• 3.2 million workers quitting their current jobs;
• 1.7 million workers losing their jobs as a result of a layoff or firing;
• 0.3 million workers retiring, going on disability, or transferring to a different location within the same firm.

That means 5.2 million job openings are the result of separations. This leaves approximately 700,000 unaccounted for, but presumably relatively new job openings. 

The 5.2 million job openings that result from separations are actually an indication of a healthy economy. As the above indicates, the majority of these openings are voluntary. They occur because an employee perceives a better opportunity in another firm or another location. The number of separations tends to increase as the economy improves and declines when the economy goes into recession. As Figure 1 shows, the number of job openings dropped significantly during 2008 and 2009—the period of the great recession. Since 2009, the number of openings has been climbing steadily, reaching around the 6 million mark in an economy where the stock market is at record highs and unemployment is at near-record lows. 

Nevertheless, if all these openings—whether they result from separations or from the creation of new positions—went unfilled, then that would present a serious problem for the economy. However, the same BLS job opening report also provides the count of new hires made each month: For November 2017, BLS reports that employers hired 5.5 million workers. This leaves approximately 400,000 job openings that went unfilled during November, which represents 0.2 percent of the U.S. labor market. It is important to note that the November 2017 figures are very consistent with the monthly data since January 2016. In fact, hires have exceeded separations, and the openings they create, for every month since 2010. A mass of jobs in the United States are not going unfilled; a relatively small fraction of job openings are taking relatively longer than the desired time to fill.

I need a couple of days to absorb this, but it is remarkable to have such a popular stat punctured a little bit. 

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs List: 146 positions

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs list has 146 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions, but if you want to do the traditional "leave a link in the comments", that works, too.

Want to chat about medchem positions? Try the open thread.

Positions I'm not including: positions outside the United States, computational positions (this will likely change), academic positions (likely never.)

ACS New Orleans Career Fair: 26 jobs, 422 job seekers

These numbers reported to the ACS Council this morning (data thanks to friend of the blog Chris Cramer):

Number of Job Seekers: 422*
Employers: 15
Number of Jobs: 26
Recruiter Booths: 15 

Résumé Reviews: 316
Mock Interviews: 139

*There was a change to the way that job seekers were counted, so job seeker/jobs ratios can't be compared anymore.

The job seeker to job ratio is 16.2 to 1, which is the worst for quite a while. Note that, in comparing to previous years, it may be difficult. Still, a tough year for employers. (I sense this may be geography-related more than anything else, but I don't know who the employers were at this Career Fair.) 

32 new positions at Organic Chemistry Jobs

Over at Common Organic Chemistry, there's 8 new positions posted for March 19 and 24 new positions posted for March 21. 

The Process Chemistry Jobs List: 124 positions

The Process Chemistry Jobs List has 124 positions.

Want to help? Here's a form to fill out.

Want to chat process jobs? Try the open thread. 

What 3000 metric tons of cobalt might look like

Credit: Photographer Jasper Juinen, for Bloomberg

I've worked in scale-up for quite a while now, but it's always still a kick to see what bulk containers of compounds (or elements) look like. Courtesy of Bloomberg Businessweek, a picture of a cobalt trader and part of his stockpile of 3000 metric tons of cobalt.

Readers, what's the largest, weirdest container of compound you've ever seen? I'll start: I've seen a bulk container of bromine and lived to tell the tale. 

It might not just be you

Also in this week's C&EN, an interesting set of statistics: 

41%: Percentage of graduate students with symptoms of moderate to severe anxiety, compared with 6% of general population 

39%: Percentage of graduate students with symptoms of moderate to severe depression, compared with 6% of general population

From the Nature Biotechnology article "Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education."  

This week's C&EN

A few of the articles in this week's issue of Chemical and Engineering News:

• Cover story: Geri Richmond, Priestley Medalist (by Sam Lemonick) 
• Professor Richmond's address
• C&EN covers the Novichok compounds. (by Mark Peplow)
• ACS president Peter Douhout on the ACS Safety Summit
• This graphene hair dye story is pretty amazing (by Mitch Jacoby)
• The latest Stereo Chemistry, featuring ChemRxiv.
• "Helium supplies are tightening up again" (by Marc S. Reisch)
• Some d00d yapping about public speaking.

2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 531 positions

The 2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 531 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

On March 12, 2017, the 2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 581 positions.

Want to talk anonymously? Have an update on the status of a job search? Try the open thread.

Want to talk about starting your new group? That open discussion is here.

Otherwise, all discussions are on the Chemistry Faculty Jobs List webforum.