After your post graduate where do you go?

pablohoney87

Hi guys,

Ive been working in recruitment nearly a year now. A huge problem I've seen is people who've gone and done Post grads (especially PhDs) are having problems finding employment in any sort of regulated environment.

I mainly recruit in engineering and quality staff (lab techs etc). and I am finding PhD students very hard to place.

Here is a typical example (a friend who came looking for help recently):

2.1 BSc degree in Chemistry went on to do his PhD in Neurochemistry.
Completed his PhD in October and received a number of awards and scholarships in the process. Interned in various engineering based positions and now cant find a thing. He's mainly looking for roles in the pharma industry.

Now even though he is willing to take the salary of grad roles as that is what he has been applying for due to companies telling him he wont be hired without GMP/GLP experience for anything but a graduate role. Yet he still cant even get an interview without any experience.

I am meeting him for coffee tomorrow to discuss the companies he has been applying for but I've found this situation quite typical.

Has anybody here had any similar experience and how did they get past them?

j4vier

pablohoney87 wrote: »

Hi guys,

Ive been working in recruitment nearly a year now. A huge problem I've seen is people who've gone and done Post grads (especially PhDs) are having problems finding employment in any sort of regulated environment.

I mainly recruit in engineering and quality staff (lab techs etc). and I am finding PhD students very hard to place.

Here is a typical example (a friend who came looking for help recently):

2.1 BSc degree in Chemistry went on to do his PhD in Neurochemistry.
Completed his PhD in October and received a number of awards and scholarships in the process. Interned in various engineering based positions and now cant find a thing. He's mainly looking for roles in the pharma industry.

Now even though he is willing to take the salary of grad roles as that is what he has been applying for due to companies telling him he wont be hired without GMP/GLP experience for anything but a graduate role. Yet he still cant even get an interview without any experience.

I am meeting him for coffee tomorrow to discuss the companies he has been applying for but I've found this situation quite typical.

Has anybody here had any similar experience and how did they get past them?

can't be of much help regarding the solution to this, but it's an interesting post so thanks for sharing as I think I'll be facing this problem soon as I just completed a PhD

he has no option but to take a graduate role (if he is lucky enough to get offered one) and get the GMP/GLP experience from that. there is no other way unfortunately. companies value qualification after experience

another thing you must be aware of is that most of the staff that these companies employ in labs, only are degree (if not diploma) qualified so placing a PhD qualified person (who would want to be paid more) creates social ladders that a company does not want to have. also the lab tech role is very routine-based work so there is always the fear that someone with research experience could get fed up of that very quickly and go to look for something else

what I would recommend to anyone reading and interested in this is get as much industry experience as possible after the degree and don't go straight into a postgrad. in this way you'll get rid of the over qualified excuse that seems so popular these days

then with some experience under the belt, think carefully about a postgrad

pablohoney87

j4vier wrote: »

can't be of much help regarding the solution to this, but it's an interesting post so thanks for sharing as I think I'll be facing this problem soon as I just completed a PhD

he has no option but to take a graduate role (if he is lucky enough to get offered one) and get the GMP/GLP experience from that. there is no other way unfortunately. companies value qualification after experience

another thing you must be aware of is that most of the staff that these companies employ in labs, only are degree (if not diploma) qualified so placing a PhD qualified person (who would want to be paid more) creates social ladders that a company does not want to have. also the lab tech role is very routine-based work so there is always the fear that someone with research experience could get fed up of that very quickly and go to look for something else

what I would recommend to anyone reading and interested in this is get as much industry experience as possible after the degree and don't go straight into a postgrad. in this way you'll get rid of the over qualified excuse that seems so popular these days

then with some experience under the belt, think carefully about a postgrad

hi thanks very much for the reply.
It turns out the guy in question had a little experience in the end and I may be able to help him out. (He wants to work his way into reg affairs)

Still doesn't really give me any ideas for the rest of the guys but hopefully I can talk a bit more to some of these companies about grad roles.

I have explained to them that they are likely to start on the same salary as candidates much les qualified than them but will probably progress through the ranks quicker. This has been accepted by most of them.

Good luck with your own Job hunt.

j4vier

pablohoney87 wrote: »

hi thanks very much for the reply.
It turns out the guy in question had a little experience in the end and I may be able to help him out. (He wants to work his way into reg affairs)

Still doesn't really give me any ideas for the rest of the guys but hopefully I can talk a bit more to some of these companies about grad roles.

I have explained to them that they are likely to start on the same salary as candidates much les qualified than them but will probably progress through the ranks quicker. This has been accepted by most of them.

Good luck with your own Job hunt.

with some experience anyway he should be alright for a graduate role at least!

companies will never really admit the real reasons why they avoid certain candidates, but those that i have mentioned are certainly some which i have learned from my past industrial experience

djpbarry

j4vier wrote: »

what I would recommend to anyone reading and interested in this is get as much industry experience as possible after the degree and don't go straight into a postgrad. in this way you'll get rid of the over qualified excuse that seems so popular these days

But someone interested in doing a PhD isn't going to be thinking of applying for graduate lab roles afterward - they're going to be thinking of a career in research. Otherwise, there really isn't much point in considering doing a PhD.

That said, some experience in a working lab looks very good on your CV when applying for PhD positions. However, in my experience, once people get a "real" job, they very rarely go back and do their postgrad, mainly because the pay cut they have to take is huge.

hidinginthebush

Speaking from my own experience (I have a PhD in bioprocess engineering), it was very difficult to find a position after graduating. What I needed to realise, and what a lot of PhD holders need to realise, is that you won't get a job doing exactly what you did in your PhD (unless you end up doing a post-doc with your old supervisor).

I found I was over-qualified / under-experienced for pretty much every position I interviewed for. It was a very frustrating process, and I ended up taking a graduate entry level role. Since then, however, I have been able to progress quite quickly in the company I am in. So tell your friend that (s)he may need to swallow his/her pride for a few months, but that's how it works. Internal opportunities arise that they may be able to apply for, or once having the few months experience they will be able to apply for external positions and hopefully make the advances into the desired area.

pablohoney87

hidinginthebush wrote: »

I found I was over-qualified / under-experienced for pretty much every position I interviewed for. It was a very frustrating process, and I ended up taking a graduate entry level role.

This is the typical experience I have been hearing from PhD grads.
Even worse for those who have done some post grad research and cannot cross over into the manufacturing world now

j4vier

djpbarry wrote: »

But someone interested in doing a PhD isn't going to be thinking of applying for graduate lab roles afterward - they're going to be thinking of a career in research. Otherwise, there really isn't much point in considering doing a PhD.

That said, some experience in a working lab looks very good on your CV when applying for PhD positions. However, in my experience, once people get a "real" job, they very rarely go back and do their postgrad, mainly because the pay cut they have to take is huge.

that's true. if someone is only interested in doing a PhD, they won't be interested in doing boring QC work however, if someone asked me for advice that's how I would do it. they might not see any advantages in the short term, but it is a bonus on any CV to have experience in a regulated environment.