I have a Chemistry degree but I’m finding it hard to get a job because I have been doing a waster job for the last 3 years. Now I want a proper job, in an office or something like that. Need experience though, every employer seems to want experience. Any suggestions for coarses I could do to help me?
One that is not too coarse.
Oh shit my spelling. Course!
Well, all we know about what you want to do is that it’s “in an office or something like that”. Can you be more specific about the kind of job you want?
To be honest I dont want to be too specific. But maybe accountancy, finance, something along those lines. Something where I could actually get a decent job!
No offence, The Griffin, but you come across as not having a clue what you want to do. Is “a decent job” determined solely by the money, or do you actually want to get paid for doing something you like, value and are good at?
Does chemistry interest you? Do you want to build on your science degree, or head off in another direction altogether? What have you been doing for the last three years? Why? Did you like it? Why (not)?
Do you want to stay in Edinburgh?
Where did you do your BSc, and what grade did you get? (This may determine what courses you can and cannot get into now.)
No offence, The Griffin, but you come across as not having a clue what you want to do. Is “a decent job” determined solely by the money, or do you actually want to get paid for doing something you like, value and are good at?
Does chemistry interest you? Do you want to build on your science degree, or head off in another direction altogether? What have you been doing for the last three years? Why? Did you like it? Why (not)?
Do you want to stay in Edinburgh?
Where did you do your BSc, and what grade did you get? (This may determine what courses you can and cannot get into now.)
I swear I only posted that once.
Just an ordinary degree. I had to drop out due to personal problems. And it’s now really hard to find any job with prospects. I cant get a bottom of the rung job cos I appear over-qualified. But I have no experience.
I’d suggest looking into the environmental field.
Air quality, water quality, hazardous materials, site remediation - it is a huge and diverse field. I assume this stuff is a big deal in the UK?
And quite a lot of chemistry jobs are office type jobs rather than lab jobs. Mine is, to the extent I want it to be.
I have a friend who has a bio-chemistry degree but headed into an Executive Recruitment firm in Edinburgh. It is non- degree specific (but a 2:1 or higher required), they provide all the trraining, you are office based and can make shed loads of money if you are any good. Starts on a basic of about £18K, but you ould make £50K commision on top / year. And you get to wine /dine clients on a company tab.
But you have to be pretty flash, an articulate talker and very good at kissing ass when required, as it is basically human sales.
That the sort of thing you are after?
Something I learned from observing my friends in college:
If you honestly want an office job, then go ahead, major in business or accounting. But if you have no desire to be in the field or do the work involved, you’re wasting your time and money if you do. You’re better off finding a field you’re interested in and pursuing that.
See, what happened with a lot of my friends was that they majored in business or accounting because they figured that there’d be tons of jobs available when they graduated. Somebody said so, or it was common knowledge that everyone always needed accounting or business people. So even if they didn’t care about the field, they majored in it anyway. Having come from relatively poor families, they couldn’t be blamed for planning this way.
When they graduated, it turned out that very few of them could find jobs. Since everyone who entered college heard that business majors were in demand, a good chunk of those students majored in business. So when my friends graduated, they were competing with four prior years’ worth of business graduates. At 500+ per year, that’s a lot of competition.
Consequently, my friends are either pursuing MBAs (anything to set them apart from the BAs), in grad school pursuing what they were really interested in, or have jobs that are unrelated to business. One recently voiced his frustration at having to spend money on his graduate education when all he’d planned on was the undergraduate one. Spending two additional years in school wasn’t great, either.
The economics and numbers of this may only apply to the US (or even just my state, Hawaii), but I think the lesson’s universal: plan for the long haul, and plan realistically. Take a look at a university’s course catalog and see what interests you. Do you want to go further into science, or try something else? Have you considered teaching? How about the social sciences, or the arts? Other sciences? Think less about which degree will net you more money in the near future, and more about which field/job you could do for the next 40 years. Not to say that you’ll be in the same field all your life, but IMO it’s a better approach as it has the long-term in mind.
Check out course directories and university prospectuses, or see the Prospects (British university career service) website at http://www.prospects.ac.uk/ which has a lot of information about postgraduate studies and jobs.
There are a lot of areas that someone with a science background can go into (food science, environmental studies, specific areas of chemistry/biochemistry…). And a vast range of postgrad conversion courses for computing/IT, science, accountancy, business, etc. If you really want to work in business/management, doing a masters in business or similar will be very useful, but don’t do it unless that’s what you really want to do.
Off to IMHO.
DrMatrix - General Questions Moderator
Thanks everyone!