After spending almost every year of our early lives studying, jumping right into your first chemistry job can seem scary, stressful, or even terrifying for some!
This said not all people actually have the luck of being able to study through college without working on a part-time job. This highly depends on the country you are living in, or on the wealth of your family.
I was one of those lucky guys. This approach lets you focus on simply getting your degree(s), which is nice. But there’s always the downside of not having any real work experience. That’s why you should start looking into building a career. Especially when you are close to graduation.
In this post I wanted to share the story on how I got my first research internship. And how this led me to another one, and then to my PhD without even having to interview.
Disclaimer: My career is purely academic, but I will try and finish the article with several tips that can help you land into your first job, either in industry or academia.
Getting Your First Working Experience
Getting research or industrial experience is key for building up a career in chemistry. This is clear. But is not equally easy in every part of the world.
But in any case, working as an undergraduate in something related to chemistry, will definitely help you. Always. It’s not just about having something to put in your CV. It will help you greatly in your transition from being a student to working full time.
If you can combine studying chemistry with working on you first chemistry job, you are off to a great start of your career!
I am aware that doing undergrad internships is quite common in the US. I worked here and know many people that studied chemistry here at the US, but I grew up in Europe. As a matter of fact, having some sort of experience is usually a requirement for most gradate programs.
But the world is quite big, and it doesn’t work like that everywhere.
How Did I Land into my First Job Experience
I grew up in Europe, and did my undergraduate studies in a very small university. Education was great, but job opportunities are pretty poor to say the least. Most people graduate without any job experience, which is average for people here.
However, if you plan to build your career outside, having no experience at all can be a problem. Both for getting industry positions or joining academic graduate programs.
Here undergraduate chemistry studies take 4 years. So during my third year, I decided to make a move which defined entirely my career. I wanted to check out how a research chemistry job looked like.
For this purpose, I applied to an internship program offered by my university. Only two positions were available each year for the entire university, and I got one of those.
But still, those positions are not great at all, because they are kind of “rotations” in which you spend one or two weeks (no more than 10 h) in each of the 8-10 different labs on the department. This is simply not enough to get a flavour of what doing research in that lab looks like. Not even close.
So I decided to approach the head of one of the organic chemistry labs. I simply showed my genuine in their chemistry. I loved o-chem, so I figured doing research in organic chemistry would be great!
As a matter of fact, I was right. I got to work only in that lab, and I immediately fell in love with research. I my first lab a lot! My first chemistry job and the gate to open up my passion for research.
Bonus tip: Always be learning new things! An example of where you can do this is on this post reviewing some of the best online chemistry lectures. Also, keeping up to date on new methods of science communication and outreach can always be a plus.
Approach Professors: They Love Seeing Students Interested in their Chemistry!
I talked with many chemistry students who tell me that it doesn’t feel right to them approaching professors and ask them to join their labs. If you feel the same way, I would like to encourage you not to be scared!
Almost every professor who works in research love what they do, and also love sharing it with others! Even if you don’t quite understand what their research is about, just go and ask!
Many research groups have a website set up in which they have, not only a complete list of publications, but also a fairly accesible summary of what their research is all about. To go even further, if you enjoy what they teach, you will most likely enjoy what they do too.
On my case, I simple knew the professor that taught one of my favorite chemistry courses had a research group. I showed my interest and that was pretty much it.
I got a full paid internship on his lab, where I was given the opportunity to start a brand-new project for myself, in collaboration with a 4th year grad student. This student taught me enough to continue the project by myself over a bit more than 1 year.
After this time, I was fluent on a synthesis research lab, got the maximum grade on my undergrad dissertation, and got a first author publication. And I can tell you that this doesn’t happen to >95% of the people that graduate there. Not even close. And the key was just going ahead and showing interest!
Where Do You Go From Your First Chemistry Job?
In my case, I applied for another internship in a different European research group. In this case, one of the biggest European groups in organic chemistry. Thanks to my first experience on my university, I got the second internship, that directly led me to joining a graduate program over there. Not even an interview required. Just a bit experience, which showed that I dared to go a bit further ahead than my peers was enough.
Then I worked too in the US, mainly in an academic environment, but also in close collaboration with industry. From a position like this, with you PhD under your arms, you are in a pretty great position to move towards any industrial or academic job you want to pursue. Chemjobber here does an amazing job on gathering and publishing job opportunities and analyzing the job market in chemistry.
Getting The Technical Details Right
I might have made it sound easier than it is, since I didn’t comment on any technical issue, such as CV or email writing. When you are getting started, or if you know the guy you want to work with, the approach process is definitely easier.
But for any further application, you obviously need to know a bit how to write a CV or a cover email. Or how to tackle interviews.
Writing Your First Chemistry CV
If this is your very first CV, and have an average almost-zero experience, I wouldn’t go further than writing one page.
The structure that I like is as follows:
- Essential data: First state your name and essential data. Nationality, place of birth, current address, phone number and email (which is just your name, with a gmail or university domain). Depending on the place, you might have to include age (date of birth), or in some countries, your picture (definitely not in the US or UK).
- Two lines description: Then I usually follow with a two-three lines description of who you are or what are you aspiring to do. For example “XXX YYY, chemistry undergraduate student looking forward to developing a career in process chemistry. Looking for an entry job or internship in industry”.
- Education: Unless you have strong and related working experience, education comes on the top. If you are already an undergraduate in college, I would not include any education data below high-school. Even high-school, I wouldn’t include it you don’t have anything to highlight there. If you got any prize, or had some experience, or joined anything such as a science club, make sure to add it. Anything that shows your interest on what you do/study, will be positive. About grades: If yours is above average, by all means add it. If it’s below average, not be scared not to include it. If they want to know, they can ask, but no need to show something bad for no reason.
- Working experience/history: Try to fill all the gaps possible. It’s understandable that you have spent student holidays just as holidays, but once you graduate from college, blank gaps of more than a couple of months raise red flags to employees.
- Language proficiency: This is usually most important for non-English native people, since English is the universal language of science. State clearly your English proficiency if you are not a native. And of course, if you can speak other languages, it’s always a great bonus, especially if you want to join an international working environment.
- Prizes and other achievements: If you participated or joined the chemistry olympiad, or organized events on your science club at high school, you can add it to your CV.
- Other skills and hobbies: You could add skills such as having a driving license, or playing a musical instrument. Or being a part-time high level athlete. Don’t bother including interests such as “reading”, “listening to music”, “traveling”, or “watching TV shows”. Everybody does this and no employer cares.
Don’t go crazy with colors. Black and white works just fine. A simple design such as this one, is more than enough. Just make it as easy to read as possible.
Cover Letters/Emails and Interviews
Your CV can go almost identical for any position that you want to apply to, but your cover email/letter needs to be tailored.
You can extract the main ideas for writing an email for your first chemistry job from the first sections of this article. Just show interest about the job, and include a couple of highlights from your CV.
As for interviews, they can vary largely between country to country, lab to lab, and company to company. I’m not going to go into details. You can go and check some great advice in this Reddit post.
If you are a chemistry student looking for your first job, I really hope you found this post useful.
On the other hand, if you are already past this point, please, we invite you to share your experience in the comments, so other people can learn from it!
Thanks for the article, but what would you have done if no professors in your faculty’s chemistry department were involved with research in subjects you were interested in? I am asking for myself, if maybe I should fake interest just for the sake of getting something on my CV. It’s been many years since I’ve been truly passionate about something; nowadays nothing quite interests and excites me, at least not within my reach.
That can seem as a tougher situation, but you can still try to show interest in their research. I can tell you that actual research in chemistry can be very different to what most people might think of from the outside (i.e., undergraduate students with no research experience at all).
I’d give it a shot anyway, just ask some professors that you think you’d be comfortable working with, they might get your interest if they explain their research directly to you.
If they do offer you an opportunity, I would go ahead and take it. It would most likely be something temporary, and if you indeed end up not enjoying it, worst case scenario you gain some experience for your CV.
Alternatively, look for other universities or research centers in your country (or outside) which do something different, and see if they offer some internship programs that you could potentially join during school holidays, for instance.
I myself kind of ended up studying chemistry by “fortunate mistake”, and I wasn’t really passionate about it until I started working on a research group. You might experience something similar if you try. Best of luck!