Chemical & Engineering News Digital Edition - Institute of Materia ...

corporate team structures. In addition,
she found that “there are phases in the
process of making a semiconductor chip
that a chemist might understand better
than a mechanical engineer.”
Thinking outside the lab may create
multiple opportunities for some chemists
like Huynh. For others, exploring nontraditional
job possibilities may serve as a strategy
for finding a first job in a market where
demand for chemists has been fluctuating
(C&EN, March 3, page 37).
“I sometimes felt that my only career
path led to a seat behind a laboratory
bench,” says Rachel Wooley, now an associate
editor with Holt McDougal, a division
of textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt. “But as my own job search began,
I realized that many fields require the expertise
of a scientist,” she says. “I just kept
asking myself, ‘Okay, who needs a chemist
today?’ ”
Wooley began her job in August 2006,
about three months after graduating
magna cum laude with a B.A. in chemistry
and a minor in professional writing from
Texas A&M University. Currently, she is involved
in editing the chemistry chapters of
a middle school physical science book.
Job seekers need to be open-minded and
creative in their search, Wooley says. Although
she was most interested in scientific
writing, she applied for employment in a
variety of fields, including forensic science,
public relations, and teaching, she says.
IT DOES NOT PAY to be too selective during
the job search, says Nicholas Lewellen,
a senior associate scientist for quality assurance
at Pfizer in Groton, Conn. “Don’t
forgo applying for a job or turn down an
interview simply because you don’t believe
you want that particular job,” advises
Lewellen, who earned a B.A. in chemistry
from the College of Wooster, in Ohio.
“Even if the interview does not result in a
job, it can expose you to different industries
and help you gain a perspective on
the culture of a given company,” he adds.
“Knowing what you do not want to do can
be as valuable as knowing what you want
to do.”
Being open-minded is critical for jobhunting
chemists outside the U.S. as
well, according to Ng Ru Hui, a scientific
associate in the chemistry laboratory at
Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases
in Singapore. She advises undergraduates
to remain receptive to positions “that
might not be your first choice.” Some-
times that starter job might be just the
ticket for new chemists who need to gain
“domain knowledge” before they land a
dream job in their desired industry, says
Ru Hui, who received a B.S. in chemistry
with honors from the National University
of Singapore. “Companies tend to prefer
candidates with experience working in the
laboratory,” she adds.
That experience can come through
internships and temporary work. Some
would-be industrial chemists gain experience
before graduation. For example, Eric
Hendrickson, a product technologist at
GE Water & Process Technologies in The
Woodlands, Texas, took on an internship
at the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s
office in Fort Worth, working with
their analytical teams in trace,
drug, and toxicology labs.
In addition, while at Texas
A&M, where he earned a B.S. in
chemistry in 2005, Hendrickson
worked with a carbon-dating research
group and a nanotechnology
research group, which allowed
him to become familiar with using
a scanning electron microscope.
Having hands-on experience with
instrumentation, he says, gave
him an edge over other applicants
for his current position, which involves
performing analytical tests
for customers in the water and
hydrocarbon process industries
using techniques such as gas chromatography,
nuclear magnetic
resonance spectroscopy, and scanning
electron microscopy.
Instrumentation experience
is one attribute that really helps
candidates stand out in a crowd of
applicants, says Huntsman’s Van
Gemert, who worked last year at
the employment agency Manpower
helping to place chemists and
other scientists into jobs.
AMY STRONG
She also worked to hone her lab skills
both inside and outside of school. As part
of her university research, she has used gas
chromatography and mass spectrometry
in the characterization of tree resins and
in the analysis of a plant residue on prehistoric
tools. She also built her instrumentation
skills while working for a small, familyowned
analytical lab.
For some, internships or other temporary
jobs can lead to lucrative full-time
positions within the same organizations.
McLeod, for example, landed an internship
WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG 57 APRIL 14, 2008
with Dow AgroSciences over the summer
of 2004, and then secured a temporary job
there as a contract chemist. She held that
job throughout most of her senior year and
for nine months afterward, before being
hired into her current position.
Although it wasn’t easy to work while
earning her degree and “to pass up a summer
of reuniting with high school friends,”
the sacrifices paid off, McLeod says. The
temporary work allowed McLeod to sharpen
her technical skills and test the waters at
Dow, while the company evaluated her in
an “extended interview process,” she says.
“In the end, I was a very low-risk hire.”
In a similar move, Ru Hui got her foot in
the door at Novartis Institute for Tropical
Diseases by participating in
a training attachment pro-
TAILOR Duff helps
design molecules
to fill gaps in the
marketplace or
satisfy customer
needs at Esstech,
a specialized raw
materials firm.
gram, which was a collaboration
between the Economic
Development Board of Singapore
and biomedical companies
including the Novartis
Institute.
During the one-year “at-
tachment period,” Ru Hui says, she capitalized
on the opportunity to equip herself
with the skills and knowledge required to
be a full-time scientific associate with the
institute. As a result, she earned a permanent
position there in 2005.
Her work focuses on the synthesis of
organic compounds designed by the institute’s
principal investigators. “Depending
on the state of the research project we are
involved in, my projects can involve trying
out new reaction conditions for a novel
compound, doing parallel synthesis of
compound libraries, or optimizing reaction