“In 2002, new B.A./B.S. chemists showed a small decrease in unemployment (6.2% in 2001, 5.9% in 2002). But this trend was reversed in 2003 as the unemployment figure for B.A./B.S. chemists climbed 1.6%.”
So a 6% unemployment rate in my field isn’t that bad IMO, but this article says employment prospects are poor. You also have to consider that other articles have said that around 2/3 of chemistry graduates go onto graduate school. Half go for chemistry graduate degrees and the other half usually go for medical degrees (pharmacy, veterinary, medical, dental), with a small percentage going for non-chemistry degrees so that may also explain the low unemployment figures (ie some people are giving up on finding jobs and going to graduate school).
I don’t think i’m smart enough or dedicated enough for a graduate degree in chemistry or a medical field. If I did try this and actually got in I would just do it to kill time until I could find a job.
I figure I may have to go through 200-300 applications for a job when I graduate. I am willing to relocate anywhere in the US but i’d prefer to work in Indianapolis. What all can a person do to survive and ease the year or two after graduation and before they find employment? What all methods of gaining employment are best (I don’t know how to network, I was just considering using professional employment placement services and websearches)? I am willing and able to work $6/hr jobs while I look for a job, but will that allow enough time to go to interviews? I guess my main worry isn’t so much not finding a job soon enough, its having so much time pass by after I graduate that I become unemployable and I wasted all the time and money to get a college degree. Another fear is getting railroaded into one career path or another for fear that your first job = experience and nobody will hire you in a field outside of the one you have experience in.
The article I posted about employment prospects shows that in 1998 there was about one opening per candidate, now its one to four. Even so, one to four is probably better than the ratio of interviewees and employers for low wage service jobs. So it may not be horrible per se. I could also work as a chemical technican (this usually requires an associates degree), but I fear I would get railroaded into that career path if I did that. I would want that more for something to pay the bills and a way to gain experience before I got a full BS chemist job.
So what advice is there from people who have been through this kind of thing?
I seriously doubt you are not smart enough to go to graduate school if you wanted. Most people that go are never going to win a Noble Prize. It does take a lot of dedication however and you say you lack that right now. However, your job prospects would probably greatly improve if you did go to graduate school. The pay and level of work that you would be doing would be higher.
The best way to start setting yourself up for a job is to make contacts in the iindustry starting right away. There are probably some professional organizations that you can join even as an undergrad that may help. You can also try to get an undergraduate research position with a professor that you like and shares your interests. This is invaluable if you decide to go to graduate school but it will also give you a recommendation and maybe the professor has contacts or affiliations with some companies.
The median pay for a Ph.D. in 2002 was 85k, M.S. was 68k, B.S. was 58k and A.S. was about 38k. I am pretty frugal and do not need to make 85k over 58k since I will just invest the money anyway and still live a frugal life since I will only be supporting myself. So money is not a strong motivator. I did read an article by the ACS once saying ‘students with a B average should not have trouble getting into at least some school of their choice’ and I figure my overall chemistry GPA will be about a B average so I guess the opporunity is there, I just don’t know if I’ll take it.
The undergraduate research thing is a good idea and i’ve been looking into that. I cna’t do it in spring of 2004 but I still have 3 semesters and 1 summer. I’m also going to try for an internship in summer of 2006. Maybe I should joins SAACS (Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society).
Definitely become a student affiliate. The ACS does have a vested interest in the welfare of its members, after all, and has very useful information on its website. Also try posting a resume at www.cen-chemjobs.org. That is the online listing of jobs put in Chemical and Engineering News, where you can put up a resume. For example, there is an entry-level job in Palo Alto, CA listed there right now. Another option is one of the pharmaceutical companies; you can generally get a pretty good job there for at least a few years to build some experience. Though I have been told that you should either make sure you get out of the QC division or find a new job after a few years, as I’ve heard those jobs called being a human autosampler. There are lots and lots of little companies as well, depending on what you’re interested in.
I’m in the same boat here, but I’ve got to figure something out before I graduate in May. I think I’m going to go ahead and apply to a couple grad schools near home and look into picking up a Master’s.
Another fear I have is it taking waaaay too long before I find a job. If the stats above are correct I ‘guess’ you can assume that there are 4 applicants for every chemistry job. I hope that is not true because that would mean 3/4 are unemployed, which makes no sense if the unemployment rate is around 6%.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what I can do to keep myself ‘up to date’ while I try to find a job? If it takes 3+ years to find a job in chemistry and I have to work menial jobs in the meantime I need some way to keep my resume up to date. Do you think colleges would let me work for free in a lab for 15-20 hours a week to keep up to date?
I think a masters might be realistic for me (even though it offers few real career benefits), I don’t think a PhD is. Considering that 50% of PhD candidates drop out and get a masters, I assume strongly that i’d be one of those 50% since I don’t know if I have the heart for grad school. Besides, I have heard that graduate chemistry coursework isn’t much worse than 300-400 level undergraduate coursework and that kind of undergrad coursework, while challenging, is not killing me.
Absolutely, completely incorrect. Each person applies to many jobs and most get one eventually. Most people end up getting one if they stick with it and some land one very fast. For example, I have applied to IT jobs for the last year. I was in no hurry but I was discouraged by the fact that most positions were collecting 200+ applicants. Two days ago, I landed one and I assume most of the other people do the same. I have sent out over 500 resumes since I started.
Your statement was assuming that there was only one open position in the world and only 1 out of the four qualified people got it. It doesn’t work that way.
The 4:1 ratio does not sound bad at all to me. Most of people in your position will get one.
Yeah, I figured that people are applying to multiple jobs giving a false ratio of openings/applicants but don’t know enough about it to be sure. Plus like the 2 websites say the unemployment rate for chemists is somewhere between 3.5-7%, which is either really good or average compared to the US national unemployment rate. I hope hiring reaches 1998 levels again by 2007 (there were 2x as many openings then), or at the very least does not get any worse than it is now.
Just a grammar peeve here: you don’t “graduate college”; college graduates you (ranks, measures, certifies). “Graduate from college” is also acceptable.
It’s good that you are being realistic about your capabilities for graduate work. From my experience, there is only a modest increase in capabilities required to get a masters in a scientific field after a bachelors. But there’s a huge difference in dedication and capability to finish a doctorate. If you can do it, getting at least a masters will be an advantage in the job hunt and later in your career (contrary to what you stated). You say that you can live cheaply now, but you should not disregard what your requirements will be years from now when you might have a family.
As to your original question, the best way to find a job is to treat finding a job as a job. You have to use all the resources available to you – the college career center, friends, friends of friends, want ads, internet, research in the library, etc. Since you’re willing to relocate, that will make it easier for you. One thing to bear in mind is that your first job is not necessarily going to be your job for life, so it does not have to be your ideal job. You just want something that is reasonably close to your interests and will enhance your qualifications for the next job.
Do you know if masters programs offer assistanceships or some other means of income and tuition reimbursement while you go to school? I know PhD programs offer a variety of things like teaching internships, or research scholarships where you teach and do research in exchange for free tuition and a stipend, but I don’t know if a MS does.
If they do not, I guess I can try for a PhD with some kind of tuition waving internship then if I can’t handle it I can drop out and get a MS. But as I said, I don’t think I have the heart for it. I love chemistry, but to me a job is a way to make enough money to enjoy the rest of your life and graduate school for a doctorate has the opposite viewpoint (your job is your life). At the same time I can handle undergraduate level coursework and still have a life and not feel overwhelmed. And the extra income of a doctorate over a BS doesn’t really appeal to me since I don’t think i’ll have a family. That may change, but even if it does and assuming my wife works and I am a BS chemist our income should be sufficient.
Plus I asked ultrafilter
to work out a mathematical income distribution for a BS, MS and PhD once. the years required to graduate are a little off but evenso I think its still fair to say it’ll take almost 20 years for a PhD to overall pay more than a MS degree when you consider the extra 3 years of earning 19k as a graduate student. Plus you have to factor in taxes, 85k sounds nice but its really about 59k after taxes while 58k is 40k after taxes, so its really a 19k a year income difference between BS and PhD, not a 27k a year difference. Anway, this is just to show that the income itself doesn’t justify the workload, especially since I prefer being frugal.
Another problem is getting to job interviews (if I relocate), are professional job interviews like service job interviews where you may need to go through 30+ face to face interviews to get a job? If so then the cost of plane fare will really start to ad up and that sounds really unrealistic for employers to expect everyone to pay 5-10k in airfare while they look for a new job.
It depends on the school, but I think masters level assistantships are fairly common. Where I did my masters, there were assistantships available not just through the academic departments but also through various offices throughout the university. For example, one of my classmates had an assistantship in the graduate admissions office. There was no academic credit for them, but there was a stipend and a tuition waiver.
That is good, because I couldn’t afford grad school tuition and living expenses. Or either. Come to think of it my older brother had an assistantship during is MA in advertising. I just don’t know if science and chemistry programs have the same offers.
In the lab where I work now, we have some folks working as technicians who just graduated from college. Some work full-time. Others are part-time and taking graduate classes. They get paid an hourly wage (not minimum wage, but not “high-rolling”). They are in the process of applying to grad schools/medical schools.
If you can find a university lab that’s doing a ton of research, you might be able to get a paying gig right there.
I think it would be good for you to look around now for a lab. Go up to a respected professor and ask if you can get some research experience in his/her lab. If they’re broke or cheap but nice, they’ll set you up as a volunteer (which is still good). If they’re doing some great research and have lots of money, they might set you up as an employee. If you can’t find someone at your school, go to a nearby school and ask around there. Undergraduate research experience is extremely valuable. Having it makes you competitive.
You have to work harder to hunt them down, but yes–some departments offer assistantships for Master’s students. Where I went to grad school, the biology department was so desperate for TAs (particularly English-as-a-first-language TAs) that they were throwing tuition waivers at just about anyone who wanted to teach intro classes.
I would look at job announcements on society websites. Look at the skills and qualifications being sought and try to grab some of these before you graduate.
[QUOTE=Wesley Clark]
The median pay for a Ph.D. in 2002 was 85k, M.S. was 68k, B.S. was 58k and A.S. was about 38k. /QUOTE]
With the possible exception of a Law or Business degree, people don’t get graduate degrees for the money. Taking your numbers to be accurate (and they seem reasonable to me) the difference between an M.S. and B.S. is $10k/year but in the two years it takes you to get the M.S. you would have made $116k with your B.S. It’ll take a while to make that up.
On the other hand, the M.S. will open up a few more doors for you and give you an edge that could easily make the difference between getting the job or not.
I think I mentioned this in your other thread (something about “what did you do after college,”) but getting some lab experience in now will help you so much later. If you can’t get a lab job during the semester, there are lots of summer jobs available. I did one of these NSF-sponsored programs the summer before my junior year and did research at my college the summer before my senior year and during my senior year. Other people did similar things, and those that wanted them have jobs. Some pharma companies offer summer internship jobs. Doing something like this makes you more desireable because future emplyers know they don’t have to train you much.
Doing research (or some other lab work) on campus or elsewhere will also net you some recommendations, which will help w/either getting jobs or grad school.
My brother works as a chemist, and, as I recall, it didn’t take him terribly long to find a job (granted, this was eight and a half years ago). One thing to consider, though: his job partially paid for his master’s degree. From what I understand, that’s not uncommon in the field. You may be better off trying to do both. Also, a couple years “real-world” experience might give you a more practical grasp of chemistry, which may or may not help you with graduate work.
That being said, I don’t know how many resumes he sent out. Getting a job isn’t usually a cakewalk, and it definately isn’t as easy as it was six or seven years ago.
Also, as others have suggested, getting some during-college experience could also be helpful. I graduated a year and a half early from college, and the only thing I regret about it now is that I didn’t have enough time to do a long-term internship. I have less experience in my preferred field than I would like, and, as a result, am working something unrelated to my interests simply to pay the bills. Another six months interning, and I might’ve been able to get a job in my field. It’s something to keep in mind.
Would you be interested in teaching high school? My cousin was a chemistry major, and after she graduated she went back for H.S. certification, and was able to find a job really fast. High schools are in desperate need of science and math teachers. The money isn’t great, though, certainly not as high as 58k a year.
If you;re interested in the pharmaceutical industry:
If you can, do an internship or co-op, that will give you and “in” at a company. I got a summer job at a pharmaceutical company, and now work there full time (hired 4 months after graduation). There are a LOT of pharmaceutical companies out there. Take every single medicine name you hear about, find out who makes it, and send in a resume. Get EXPERIENCE. Do a thesis/research project at school if you can, and if you can manage, get some good analytical chemistry skills, and experience with HPLCs and GCs (HPLCs in particular). The two common softwares are Waters Millennium and Agilent Chemstation, so if you can tell people you’ve worked with it, that’s a bazillion bonus points for you! No worries if you don’t get that experience, every company knows that schools don’t teach you what you need to know to work in the real world anyways. I had no experience when I started.)
I don’t know about in the US, but the schools I know in Canada do offer pay for graduate studies. They range in the 14-18K (cdn) per year range, more if you have additional scholarships, more again if you TA more than one class per year, etc. Different programs, different pays. Tuition comes out of that (I know at one school its about 4000 a year) and the rest is for you to live on. Some people work in addition to that, most don’t.
If you were to consider Canada, I’d look at the GTA(particularly Mississauga) or Montreal. Both are large pharmaceutical hubs, and have good universities.