Was wondering if anyone here could offer any input on possible career directions, as my situation is a little unusual and I’m getting more and more frustrated by the lack of progress. I’ve been out of work for coming up to two years now, although this has been complicated by issues regarding completion of my PhD. Regardless, that was finally sorted out in November 09 so, other than some voluntary work, I’m at well over a years gap in my CV even by generous standards
I have BSc Biomedical science, MSc Toxicology, and PhD which is technically Medicine (clinical science, basically)
One issue that hasn’t helped my job searching and which I’ve been struggling with for a long time, is my ADD which I finally managed to get diagnosed last year, this has always made it very difficult for me to actually work towards my own goals (although I’ve always found it easier when I have responsibilities I have to meet). I’m in the early days of medication now, and when it works it is making a massive difference, but we’re still zeroing in on the right dose.
As you can imagine this is the kind of thing that makes a PhD exceedingly tough to start with, and the department was pretty crappy, so I basically ended up just scraping through after an appeal, and I didn’t get anything in the way of publications. It probably wasn’t as huge a disaster as the last sentence makes out (my actual work was reasonably solid) but even if I wasn’t heartily sick of academia I’d have been a weak post doc candidate.
I started out job hunting concentrating on civil service positions, particularly with regard to drug regulation given my background, and was doing fairly well, there was a lot of competition but I was getting interviews and apparently making short lists, then the hiring freeze came along and most of those jobs evaporated. I spent most of the rest of the year chasing on the industry end, but the feedback I was getting was that although I am a reasonably solid prospect for that type of job, the pharmaceutical companies are doing everything in their ability to avoid offering entry positions right now.
I’m now broadening my search to basically “all graduate schemes that I might possibly qualify for”, but I’m struggling to meet the basic qualification requirements for a lot of them as my A-levels results were abysmal and a PhD isn’t worth any UCAS points.
The local careers advice and job centre feedback I’m getting is basically “we don’t have a clue what to do with you and can’t suggest anything you aren’t already doing”
Plan B at the moment is that if I don’t have anything by late march is to look for a low investment business plan and become self employed to stop the gap on my CV widening any further, and I think I’ve got a few reasonable ideas there. But I’d much rather get a job.
At the end of the day I’m a pretty smart person, I was able to get a PhD despite working with a massive disadvantage, and my doctor thinks I should be able to reduce that disadvantage significantly in the short term, I’m good at problem solving and creative work, I have an extremely broad general knowledge and I’m good at learning new stuff. I’m not really worrying too much about what area I want to work with especially given that specific knowledge isn’t really what I think I have to offer.
I’ve obviously got quite a lot of experience at technical writing and communication (and I have phone and customer service experience) although I’m a little hesitant about medical writing jobs because I know that this is playing to my weaknesses motivation wise at the moment (and even if I start getting better results with the medication I’m wary at embarking on a career path that depends on things staying that way). I’m willing to consider moving overseas but I want to try and get the treatment stuff a bit more settled first.
I’m think I’m interviewing fairly well at this point and I’m fairly confident that I can probably do well on most practical assessments, it’s just getting that far that is proving to be the problem.
Is there anything obvious here that I’m overlooking?, I’d been advised that it might be worth looking towards financial companies, especially on the analyst side, but I’m having trouble seeing them take my CV seriously, I’ve been looking towards advertising, and I’ve seen consultancy and think tank stuff that I think I could do really well in but seems ludicrously overoptimistic application wise.
I’ve obviously been wary about talking to employers and agencies about the ADD stuff, I don’t have to declare it as a disability unless I am wanting to request accommodations be made, and obviously I don’t want to make an issue out of it. I’ve fired off a couple of “I know I don’t look good on paper, this is why, I don’t think I am wasting your time” in the last week for graduate schemes at places that I am blatantly not going to get with a regular CV and covering letter, and who don’t offer anything I might apply for outside the scheme, but that seem a bit cowardly and pointless.
I know some people here are pretty hostile about long term unemployment, I’m not trying to say I’m blameless, but I assure you that no one in my life has ever been as consistently frustrated with me as I am :(. You can be assured that I am applying for casual work whenever possible, but frankly even the job centre is telling me that given my current location (Sheffield) I am better off concentrating on the longer term stuff, as there is a lot of local competition for casual work and most people are going to be wary about hiring a 31 year old when they could have a teenager who isn’t blatantly going to still be looking for a better job.
If anyone has any constructive advice at all I’d be very, very grateful.