I graduated with a B.S. in Physics in '94. I had a hell of a struggle getting real employment. Almost without fail, the feedback that I received from employers (including all the typical JPL, Boeing, Bell, Northrop, HP, TI, etc) was that while they found the degree impressive and admirable, it was too “…generalized for what we’re looking for. Now if you only had an engineering degree…”
My big mistake (and possibly yours in your original post) was believing the departmental and school advisors talking up the value and appeal of the degree. I did, and skipped many internship and part-time opportunities during school that could have helped me gain valuable references and experience, mistakenly thinking that my degree was “gold, baby, gold!”
If you still have time, jump on those internships now!
I’ve since worked my way up from the inside into an aerospace/electrical engineering career, but it has been a long struggle having to defend and justify my degree’s applicability when competing against EE’s and ME’s.
I’ll add, though, that the Physics degree has been very highly admired and respected by my EE/ME/CE peers who perceived it as a much harder academic path. It is the managers, MBAs, and Human Resources people doing the hiring that can’t seem to fully grasp how to relate it to employment and skills.
Your advisor apparently piles “technical sales,” “quality control” and “environmental (manager)”, all of which can and do go to the managerial level without an advanced degree, into “cube farm.”
I keep being amazed at how little career advisors (both from schools and from professional services) know about the jobs out there.
For the school advisors, I think it’s because they have been buried in academic settings for years, and have rarely (if ever) actually worked in that field out in industry. So I think that their advice, resources, and tactics are geared to how academics and post-docs interface and collaborate together, but not at all how industry human resources or management operates.
They are great about tailoring you for a grad school application letter, but terrible at helping you gain valued experience or skills that an employer would want to see in a resume letter.
Wall Street used to hire a lot of Physics grads to be traders - the ability to handle large amounts of numerical information is key to those jobs.
Others have posted actuaries, etc. - anything financial could work (Controller, Audiing, Accounts Payable & Receivable for a starting point).
GOOD marketing uses SPSS / SAS on a regular basis. If you can handle running anovas, regressions, etc. even in Excel then there is a marketing job for you out there.
Hardware product marketing works as well - Dell, HP, etc.
You just need to paint your training in their lingo.
“Presented complex data analysis in an easy to understand format”
“Recommended future actions based on an analysis of the results of the prior experiment” = “Looked at the numbers and told management what to do next”
As a graduate physics engineer I would hire you in heart beat! I am a start up engineer for an oil and gas major. You can run simulations for me, check calculations ( am apparently near numerically dyslexic!!:p) verify designs. With your grounding in physical science you would be an asset while you are gaining practical experience. Smart choice of degree, the world is your lobster!!
by the way I saw what you did there! Did they add course on god’s will to physical science study? (tongue firmly in cheek!)
(tongue firmly in cheek!)