What’s the worst thing about interviews for chemistry jobs? With recruitment for the Chief Editor of Nature Chemistry in full swing, I’ve been thinking about this recently – and no, that doesn’t mean that I’ve applied for the job…
In particular, I was thinking about one of the most contentious and feared aspects of chemistry interviews (in the UK at least) – the technical questions. This is where interviewees are grilled about any aspect of chemistry; for organic chemists this usually means that you’re presented with a target molecule and asked to come up with one (or more) synthetic routes on the spot. In many respects, this is fair enough. But the whole thing can be very arbitrary.
As regular readers may know, I was unlucky enough to work at an industrial site that was closed down, so my colleagues and I suddenly found ourselves going through lots of technical interviews. Several trends immediately became apparent. The first was that we would always be asked about the pKa values of acids and bases. We’d also frequently be asked to write out mechanisms of reactions such as the Swern oxidation. Many people felt that this sort of thing had no bearing on how they performed in a lab, it was just a memory test.
But the worst thing was when interviewers were inflexible on synthesis questions. One company in particular asked people how they would make a certain diamide. There are, of course, many ways to do this, but if the hapless interviewee didn’t suggest an Ugi reaction, they were deemed to have got the answer wrong. Now the Ugi reaction is a wonderful thing, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first option that springs to my mind for such a target.
So, what do you think – are technical questions a reasonable way to assess chemists for jobs? Or should candidates just be asked to put on a lab coat and do a recrystallization? And what’s the most bizarre thing that you’ve been asked at an interview? The most random question I got was about redshift and the expansion of the universe…
Andy
Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)
My weirdest interview ever, actually, was with our own Josh Finkelstein. He was one of the people I spoke to when I interviewed for this job (at Nature Chemical Biology), and he just talked the whole time. It was a little stressful because I wasn’t sure what he would possibly be able to say about me, given that I had only said about 12 words…
Er, yeah – for some reason, I tend to get nervous during interviews (even when I’m the interviewee). And when I get nervous (and caffeinated), I get quite chatty…
On the other hand, perhaps the twelve words you did say were the right twelve… Who knows what would have happened if you had uttered a few more?
I’d maybe stand a fair chance of getting hired if the interview just consisted of recrystallization. I can do that in my sleep!
The very first job I had was as a forensic analyst (and arguably it was also the most interesting) and the interview was both stressful and surreal.
There were spectra to interpret, a titration to perform (never once did I actually do a titration as part of the job), and I was asked about whether I was happy to drive a vehicle as part of the job.
I was so flustered at this point that it did not occur to me that all they were asking was whether I could drive (a car!!), and I answered something like: “Well you would have to show me how to drive a tractor…”