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She holds a doctorate in Physical Chemistry with focus on UV-visible, fluorescence and transient absorption, XRD, TEM, AFM.
If you are in industry, know people in the industry, and live out West (CO, WY, NM) please let me know.
She needs employment in a big way.

I don't know any one looking for a chemist, but you might try Monster.com and careerbuilder.com.

Not to find a job, but to find a recruiter. My best luck finding jobs was with a recruiter.

Best of luck to you and yours, man!

All that expensive schooling and she can't find a job?

That's dissapointing

Is she interested in teaching?

kronk wrote:I don't know any one looking for a chemist, but you might try Monster.com and careerbuilder.com.

Not to find a job, but to find a recruiter. My best luck finding jobs was with a recruiter.

Best of luck to you and yours, man!

She's all over the recruitment sites, but most are skeevy head hunter types and she's looking for real employment.

Mattman154 wrote:All that expensive schooling and she can't find a job?

That's dissapointing

Agreed. She's Ivy League, and incredibly intelligent. Her job search has been nothing but fail for 6 months now. She's starting to freak out a little.

Hordini wrote:Is she interested in teaching?

I believe she is. What she doesn't seem to be interested in is teaching AND research. I think she would be happy doing one or the other, just not both at once.

My cousin ran into the same problem with biology. She got a doctorate in biology and then found there weren't any jobs available, so went back to school.

She can look for university and community college academic jobs pretty easily online. With a PhD she could qualify for an assistant professor position (which would entail both teaching and research). She could also look for a lecturer position which would mostly be teaching and she might have a leg up with a PhD as some lecturer positions only require master's degrees. The downside to being a lecturer is no tenure, but it could still be a pretty cool gig.

Just type chemistry instructor, or professor, or lecturer jobs into google and you should get some hits.

 matphat wrote:

kronk wrote:I don't know any one looking for a chemist, but you might try Monster.com and careerbuilder.com.

Not to find a job, but to find a recruiter. My best luck finding jobs was with a recruiter.

Best of luck to you and yours, man!

She's all over the recruitment sites, but most are skeevy head hunter types and she's looking for real employment.

While the recruiters might be skeevy head hunters, they are trying to put people into real jobs. I had good success with the ones that helped me. Tell her to keep her chin up and keep looking.

 matphat wrote:

I believe she is. What she doesn't seem to be interested in is teaching AND research. I think she would be happy doing one or the other, just not both at once.

Then, as far as teaching goes, she's limiting herself to community college. With the caveat that working at a community college and not doing research severely hamstrings your ability to do anything else in the field of education, or the field of research. I'll admit that teaching sucks, and my experience with it is limited to working as a TA/GA, but an important thing to realize is that it doesn't stop there; because your job search shouldn't stop just because you found a job.

Get a headhunter.

Has she considered taking a job not in a related field until she is able to find a job?

Mattman154 wrote:
Has she considered taking a job not in a related field until she is able to find a job?

I know she's interested in branching out if it means interesting work.

matphat wrote:She holds a doctorate in Physical Chemistry with focus on UV-visible, fluorescence and transient absorption, XRD, TEM, AFM.
If you are in industry, know people in the industry, and live out West (CO, WY, NM) please let me know.
She needs employment in a big way.

Considering the rampant problem of crystal methamphetamine across the American midwest, I really do not understand how your S/O cannot find work.

Joking aside, unless she wants to teach at a high school or community college for wages that will probably never pay off her student loans, she should not put too much hope into the idea of trying to teach without doing research as well. No respectable academic institution will hire on professors without putting them into a publish-or-perish situation unless they have long-established credibility already.

 azazel the cat wrote:

matphat wrote:She holds a doctorate in Physical Chemistry with focus on UV-visible, fluorescence and transient absorption, XRD, TEM, AFM.
If you are in industry, know people in the industry, and live out West (CO, WY, NM) please let me know.
She needs employment in a big way.

Considering the rampant problem of crystal methamphetamine across the American midwest, I really do not understand how your S/O cannot find work.

Joking aside, unless she wants to teach at a high school or community college for wages that will probably never pay off her student loans, she should not put too much hope into the idea of trying to teach without doing research as well. No respectable academic institution will hire on professors without putting them into a publish-or-perish situation unless they have long-established credibility already.

Agreed, and she knows this. It's why she's trying to stick to industry work. She has a friend who has a Doctorate in some type of laser research, but then decided to go in to education development. Needless to say, the question arises "Why did you do something so hard and expensive only to go in to a field where you only need a bachelors?"
I mean, I had to ask. I don't think she liked me asking her that.

Anyway, yeah, she's painfully aware of the whole teaching/research thing.

 matphat wrote:
Needless to say, the question arises "Why did you do something so hard and expensive only to go in to a field where you only need a bachelors?"
I mean, I had to ask. I don't think she liked me asking her that.

Wait, did she pay for her doctorate? If so, ouch.

At least it's not a Liberal Arts degree

My girl is in the same boat but for Mechanical Engineering. Try temp agencies. They could possibly get her work in her field even if it's not glorious, which will get her some experience on paper which will allow her to get something glorious.

Might look at Eli Lilly, or any other pharmaceutical company. Willingness to relocate will help as well I imagine.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:My girl is in the same boat but for Mechanical Engineering. Try temp agencies. They could possibly get her work in her field even if it's not glorious, which will get her some experience on paper which will allow her to get something glorious.

This. I had to temp right out of college. Hated being a temp, loved the work. Temping was what lead to a full time job.

Ahtman wrote:Might look at Eli Lilly, or any other pharmaceutical company. Willingness to relocate will help as well I imagine.

Pharma is really good for employment of chemists. Relocation may be helpful to expand employer pool. Look at biospace.com for employer hotbed regions.

The problem she may find is a lack of "real world" experience. That is where temping helps. It let's you demonstrate you're employable. It also let's you check out the company. Consider it a long, paid interview. I used LabSupport, a division of OnAssignment. What was nice was they specialized in tech placement. Oh, and by "you" I mean her, of course.

Does her most recent university have an employment office? She should also talk to her professors and PhD advisor for leads, companies or agencies they've collaborated with, etc.

The other option is to go on Usajobs.com if she's interests in federal employment. With that much education she could get in at a relatively high level with the right agency. Look at FDA, NIH, CDC, NIST, NSF, NOAA, PTO, for example, and theres all the various military civilian positions too. Lots of this stuff is going to be in the DC area though. There are some post-doc and fellowship type programs, but all vary by agency.

There will also be state and local public health labs. Applying to those are all unique. In California I had to apply and take a test to get on a list for state microbiologist positions, and by the time my name came up, I had a better paying job in industry.

Anyway, hope this helps, and tell her good luck! Most important, a temp job or a headhunter is just a foot in the door... Get a year or two of experience and SHE can call tge shots! That is a great feeling.

PS- sorry for typos and autocorrect fails...

Edits- corrections and additions.

Thanks all for your replies. We appreciate it. Happy to hear more!

 Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:
My girl is in the same boat but for Mechanical Engineering.

Let me guess...

Industry: we need more engineers. There just arn't any being trained!!!!
Your partner: Hi, I have an engineering degree! I'll work for you!
Industry: well, i'm sorry but you don't have the right experience.
Your partner: yes, well without working for you I can't get it.
Industry: we need more engineers. Why arn't there enough engineers to fill the jobs!
Your partner: aaarrrggggg!

Sorry... Pet peeve of mine since leaving uni with an engineering degree and being told by company's they were desperate for engineers but unwilling to actually invest in training anyone, so I became an accountant where they were more than happy to pay for training for anyone with good maths and an analytical mind.

 matphat wrote:
Thanks all for your replies. We appreciate it. Happy to hear more!

Has she considered cooking Meth?

 AustonT wrote:

Has she considered cooking Meth?

We keep a solid stock in the fridge for personal use during those Apocalypse games, but our apt wont allow a full time operation.

 matphat wrote:

 AustonT wrote:

Has she considered cooking Meth?

We keep a solid stock in the fridge for personal use during those Apocalypse games, but our apt wont allow a full time operation.

According to my research you just need and old Winnebago.

Steve steveson wrote:

 Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:
My girl is in the same boat but for Mechanical Engineering.

Let me guess...

Industry: we need more engineers. There just arn't any being trained!!!!
Your partner: Hi, I have an engineering degree! I'll work for you!
Industry: well, i'm sorry but you don't have the right experience.
Your partner: yes, well without working for you I can't get it.
Industry: we need more engineers. Why arn't there enough engineers to fill the jobs!
Your partner: aaarrrggggg!

Sorry... Pet peeve of mine since leaving uni with an engineering degree and being told by company's they were desperate for engineers but unwilling to actually invest in training anyone, so I became an accountant where they were more than happy to pay for training for anyone with good maths and an analytical mind.

Exactly it.

Job Title: Mechanical Engineer I (Entry Level)
Requirements: 2 years exp required,

...wha?

State and Federal crime labs hire plenty of chemists.

 Shadowseer_Kim wrote:
State and Federal crime labs hire plenty of chemists.

Hum.... This thread is starting to effect me... I read that as "State and Federal meth labs"...

Need more coffee...

The federal ones are a lot safer, but when they blow it's HUGE.

get her into watching breaking bad

I'll second the mention of USAJobs.gov. Sure, the federal government is in a budget crunch (has been for years, despite what the politicians would have you believe), but there's still openings. For instance, one of the DEA labs in California is hiring for a forensic chemist position.

But, forensic chemistry is basically "assembly-line: work. You're there to do a job and produce regular results with specific policies you have to follow.