Webinar!

There is a "Nontraditional Careers: Opportunities Away From the Bench" Webinar being held on April 28th, 2009 by the AAAS/Science Business Office.

Registration is free, but mandatory to participate.

Please visit this website for more details and to register!

Alternative Careers workshop

For those of you in the Toronto area, you may be interested in this workshop:

Exploring Career Options: Tracks Don't All Have to Lead to Tenure: This HCTP professional development workshop is designed to explore various career options for those who wish to pursue alternatives to the tenure-track positions offered by the academy. Panellists: Darrel Bricker (Ipsos Reid), Cheryl McLean (CCAHTE Journal), Shaun Young (Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care), and Roger Chafe (Cancer Care Ontario). Moderator: Raza Mirza (HCTP Fellow 2007-09 Pharmaceutical Sciences).

If anyone goes to this, report back in the comments section to let us know what you learned!

Medical Technology Blurbs

A couple of interesting bits concerning Medical Technology/Clinical Laboratory Science.

1. Went to Monster.com today and typed in "medical technologist". This brought up 575 hits. Not all of them are Med Tech jobs, but a large portion of them are. As I've said before, it's a job which does not have a lot of people competing for those positions. As of a recent study, over 15,000 Med Tech positions remain unfilled.

2. If you plan on getting your Med Tech B.S. degree, Arizona State University might not be the place you want to do it. They're in the process of cutting almost 4 dozen programs, with their MT program being one of the unfortunates. I've blogged about it, and posted a letter from the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (ASCP) advocacy branch which is asking ASU to reconsider. If you think this vital source of training for good jobs needs to remain open ... click on the link, fill out your information, and have the advocacy group send out emails to the relevant ASU officials for you.

Looking for an Alternative Science career?

Now might be your chance! While lots of jobs are being lost elsewhere, the US government continues to hire.

A report released in January by Christina Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, an economic policy adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, predicted that more than 90 percent of the 3 million to 4 million jobs that Obama proposes to save or create would be in the private sector.

But the report also estimated that 244,000 government jobs — some at the federal level, but more at the state and local level — would be created or saved.

A federal job comes with some nice perks.

... job security, health and life insurance, a federal retirement program, paid vacations and leave and other benefits.

I'll blog more on life as a federal employee in the near future. I promise!

An amusing take on the biotech experience

Richard Grant of The Scientist blog recently posted a highly entertaining three-part series detailing his experiences as a senior scientist in a small UK start-up.

Part One covers the application process, the project, and the first warning signs that "would have made a more mature head send insistent ‘run away, quickly’ signals to its legs and ‘scream, loudly’ signals to its mouth."

Part Two outlines the evolving project, "tinkering with the machine, making sure it was as good as it possibly could be, and wondering how Marketing were going to cock this one up", and the inevitable meeting and management frustrations.

The Finale covers Richard's escape from an ailing company as "things started moving in even more disturbing directions."

Richard's story highlights the risks inherent in working for a small start-up. Although the biotech company I worked for was much more mature, I recognised some of the issues caused by scientists left in charge of business endeavours. Having said that, the right company, and the right people, can turn a small start-up into the ideal employer.

Read, enjoy, and please be patient while the contributors to this blog work get around to more posts. The second of my "interview a friend over drinks" series is in the early planning stages, and I see a few other draft posts in the back end of the blog.