{"id":480,"date":"2006-08-10T12:44:16","date_gmt":"2006-08-10T12:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/08\/10\/wanted-nonacademic-physics-typ\/"},"modified":"2006-08-10T12:44:16","modified_gmt":"2006-08-10T12:44:16","slug":"wanted-nonacademic-physics-typ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/08\/10\/wanted-nonacademic-physics-typ\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanted: Non-Academic Physics Types"},"content":{"rendered":"

The discussion surrounding the recent post about jobs<\/a> continues to bubble along nicely, both in the original post, and the follow-up<\/a>. I love it when a plan comes together.<\/p>\n

There’s been a lot of discussion of following the advice in the Katz letter and seeking non-academic careers, but Jeff F. (who I know from my post-doc days) puts his finger on a major problem with this plan: The faculty who advise students on career choices don’t know, well, much of anything<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Unfortunately, I was mostly on my own in making the jump from academics to industry. I chose to do a postdoc on a project with my former PI (that’s usually death in academics but then again, I knew at this point I wasn’t staying in academics) that had a lot of exposure to industry and government. This is where I made the contacts to learn about job opportunities for someone with my background. Being in the purely academic environment as a grad and undergrad student, no one ever really talked about working in industry. And when they did, no one could adequately define what “work in industry” entailed. Unless a professor collaborates or consults with a specific industry sector, how could a professor talk to a student about a career outside of academics?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is absolutely true, and a really severe deficit in my education. So, here’s your chance to educate me– if you’ve got a physics degree (BA\/BS, MA\/MS, or Ph.D.), and you aren’t a professor or trying to become a professor, tell me about yourself: What do you do for a living? How did you get your job? What should a physics student do if he or she wants to go into your line of work? (Sample advice, from Jeff’s comment, below the fold.)<\/p>\n

If you’re wondering whether this information will actually be used, I’m teaching our senior seminar this fall, meeting weekly with our senior Physics majors to discuss topics of interest to them. If I can get my hands on good information about non-academic careers, it will go directly into that class. So, help me do my job better.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is a decent example of the sort of advice I’d like to have to give to students:<\/p>\n

\n

Based on my lessons learned, my advice for undergrad physics students would be to follow the advice given above and join an engineering society to form contacts. Also, adjust your academic curriculum to make you more attractive to an industry sector. Take a broad exposure of physics courses and take a number of non-physics but science related courses as well. Also, think about getting an MS degree, because that will always make you more hirable. For grad students, and I think this mostly applies to CM\/AMO experimentalists, try to attend SPIE and CLEO type conferences where you will get more exposure to industry based research work and develop contacts as well. I think that something similar may be said for Nuclear\/Particle physics. Theorists: You’re mostly out of luck here, unless you like hedge funds. I’m not saying theorist can’t get a job in an industry sector. I’m saying that usually lab\/bench experience is often desired because it demonstrates that you can tackle real world problems.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’d also love to have some description of what it is that people with a physics background end up doing: What’s the job title? What’s the work like? What are the long-term prospects (for example, do you need to get another degree to advance in the company)? Special bonus points for anybody in the Northeast who would be willing to come to Schenectady and talk to students in person about this sort of stuff (email me, we’ll talk).<\/p>\n

I don’t know if I have enough non-academic readers for this to really work, but it can’t hurt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The discussion surrounding the recent post about jobs continues to bubble along nicely, both in the original post, and the follow-up. I love it when a plan comes together. There’s been a lot of discussion of following the advice in the Katz letter and seeking non-academic careers, but Jeff F. (who I know from my… Continue reading Wanted: Non-Academic Physics Types<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-education","category-physics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}