Hello everyone,
As I’m sure you’re aware (probably because I’ve been boring everyone who’ll listen with the details) I’ve been involved in a number of (largely fruitless) job/PhD searches over the past couple of months. Well, it gives me great pleasure to inform you all that, last Wednesday, I finally had an interview for one of these positions (as a lab monkey for Pfizer, just so you know) in every militant Muslim’s favourite tourism destination; that’s right, Britain’s, erm, “fair” capital city, London (which I think goes some way to explaining a title containing so many ridiculous Mockney affectations that it makes Kate Nash sound like a posh, public schoolgirl, which in reality she probably is…)
Anyway, to the interview itself, the most pleasantly surprising (if somewhat disconcerting) aspect of which was the fact that one of the interviewers was someone I actually knew; the person in question being Hayley Jackman (someone I knew not only from my university days, given that she did both her MChem and PhD at Leeds, but also from my placement year at AstraZeneca in sunny Macclesfield, which overlapped with her 3 month stint there as part of her PhD.) Rather unsurprisingly, given that fact, it was a bit intimidating answering questions of a technical nature from her (after all, what’s worse than being asked a question you can’t answer by someone you know?); thankfully, the scientific portion of the interview went relatively smoothly.
Rather more fraught, if you like, was the more general portion of the interview, where the 2 people conducting the interview pored over my CV. It’s probably worth pointing out at this point that I have a rather worrying tendency to freeze when it comes to interviews (as well as metamorphosing from the witty, sophisticated, urbane author of this blog into a gibbering buffoon); in the case of this interview, it led to me blurting out that one of the reasons for choosing Leeds as a university (as well as choosing the AZ Macclesfield site as the place to do my industrial placement year) was the fact that both of them were in the North, allowing me to be fairly near to friends and family. Unfortunately (but rather predictably) this then led to one of the interviewers asking, “So why do you now want to work for Pfizer in Kent?” Faced with this, I could only reply, “Well, you go where the jobs are, don’t you?”
The 2nd awkward point of the interview came when being quizzed about PhD’s. Having not yet developed the ability to lie convincingly, I found it impossible to deny that I had been searching for suitable PhD’s for the coming year (though I managed to stop short of stating that that option had been my 1st choice all along.) This prompted 2 slightly tricky follow-up questions:
1. “What stopped you doing a PhD this coming year?” (Not overly difficult, this one, as I had a few well-rehearsed answers for this one: “The projects I would like to do, and the researchers I’d like to work for, weren’t available”, “At this stage, I’d just be throwing myself into something just for the sake of doing a PhD” etc.)
2. “If you were to get the job at Pfizer, what kind of work would stop you from going back to university to do a PhD?” (This was probably the most difficult question I was asked in the entire interview, as the answer, in truth, is probably “Nothing, you’re going to lose me after a year”, but, acutely aware that my chances of getting the job even for 12 months would vanish altogether if I said that, I opted instead for “Being challenged in my work, and being able to do lots of varied, interesting chemistry.” Not an unreasonable statement, I would say.)
Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ve been assured that I will find out whether or not I will be invited to a 2nd round interview (at Pfizer’s site at Sandwich) within the next week or so; the outcome of the 1st round interview (good or bad) will be posted on this thread; in the meantime, keep on visiting, my loyal blog readers, as I’m sure that I will get round to penning a blog on Fernando Torres/Liverpool’s other prospective summer purchases at some point (while the announcement of the nominees for the Mercury prize will be made in just over a week’s time, which is bound to provoke a length, venomous diatribe from yours truly.)
Later,
L.I.am
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5 comments:
Nice one, Prof - hope the second interview comes through. Sandwich (not far from me in Folkestone) is fairly remote from any town action; you'll need a car, otherwise it'll feel as if you've been marooned on the Pitcairn Islands. It's a nice enough place, apart from the horrible premises of some disgusting corporate chemical giant on the outskirts... oh.
Your interview answers were fine, and the "challenged in my work" one is exactly the kind of box-ticking bullshit that they want to hear. Feel free to add any of the following if you get the second interview - "I love working in a team" / "I love solving problems" / "I don't care, as long as you give me a shit-load of cash". Well, maybe not the last one.
BTW, when you say "lab monkey", will you be the one doing, or being subjected to, the experimentation?
Thanks for transferring that comment over to this site, Michael/Shit; I've heard that said about Sandwich, too.
As for working at said horrible premises of said disgusting corporate chemical giant, that's no longer an issue, as this morning I received an e-mail that has become worryingly familiar over the past few months (i.e. the one saying that your exercise in arse kissing was not enough to secure another interview.)
Re. the term "lab monkey", I would be the experimenter, though given that chemists usually have more depraved minds than biologists, we're not allowed anywhere near animals and would just be working with funny chemicals with hard to pronounce names.
Hard lines - but keep at it, I'm sure something will come up - can you live with / sponge off the olds for a while and do some un / low-paid relevant work experience oop naarth?
To be honest, Sandwich was probably always going to be an inappropriate filler between the bread of your life (MA and PHD)... as it were...
Sorry - MChem, obviously. Typical Arts student arrogance.
I don't think there's a problem with me living with/sponging off the folks, but relevant experience in the North (and quite possibly the South as well) might be difficult to come by. For all the bluster coming from the government, UK plc et. al. about the need for science/engineering graduates, jobs in science/engineering are actually fairly scarce. To be honest, I think it'll be a case of me submitting my CV to Monster and the like, which raises the uncomfortable prospect of a job in sales (but then I suppose a series of scientifically schooled drones to fill menial sales jobs may have been what the government has wanted all along...)
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