Thoughts from a campus recruiter

Since we were talking about corporate recruiting visits earlier, I thought I would talk to MP, a mid-career chemist who visited a major research university as a representative of their employer, looking for people to hire. I asked for general impressions of what it was like to sit across a table and attempt to evaluate graduate students and their work. What follows is a mashup of the e-mail back-and-forth, lightly edited:

Should you dress up? Most people wore a suit and tie (or suit for the women). I would say how they were dressed was the least memorable thing about the interview unless it was extremely casual. I would recommend dressing up for the interview.

What's the best way to present your work? It was best when the interviewee came prepared with a short overview of their research. One thing that surprised me was how little some people came prepared to talk about things they wrote on their résumé. Least effective interviewees were ones who wouldn't elaborate on what they did, what were their duties, etc. IMO, shorter, concise resumes are better. Some people had appended other items.

Cultural differences: I interviewed both chem engineers and chemists and I noticed a big difference. The Chem Es all had some kind of industrial experience, either internships or actual business classes. This was very rare in chem students. Chem Es were also more clear in their duties, like saying they supervised these people, they were in charge of this group duty, etc. I'm not sure if this is a chem/chem e cultural difference.

What distinguished the students who got it right from those who didn't? The ones who got it right had more things to talk about than just their research. The ones who got it "wrong" we're unable or unwilling to elaborate on things or were perhaps a little too honest (like admitting to hating certain tasks which would be a big part of their jobs.)

Any other general comments? As far as other advice, I'd recommend trying to take interview training, I think that would help some a lot. I'm also rather indifferent to the follow-up thank you email but I suppose it couldn't hurt.

Thanks to MP for insight into what a scientist is thinking during a recruiting visit. 

Unemployment rate up 0.1% in October, U6 unemployment down 0.1%

Credit: Calculated Risk blog

Fresh electrons from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the unemployment rate in October was up slightly to 7.9%, from 7.8% in September. The broader U6 measurement of unemployment was down 0.1% to 14.6%.

Chemical manufacturing payrolls increased by 1,600 jobs to 802,700 for the sector.

The news will be about the total nonfarm payroll number, with an increase of 171,000 jobs for October. Less discussed, but equally significant are the upward revisions of ~80,000 jobs for August and September.

There are 12 million people who are unemployed -- best wishes to them.

Thanks, as always, to Calculated Risk for the graph. 

Link feast

In case you missed them - 10 of the best psychology links from the past week:

1. Sam McNerney published a thought-provoking essay about aesthetic judgments and expertise. Is the taste of a connoisseur in some way superior, more "correct" than the taste of a naive observer? I was reminded of the under-appreciation of Michael Jackson's later music by non-fans. I reckon this is because they weren't there for the journey, they can't feel the progression and maturation in his art.

2. Breaking habits with a flash of light - Ed Yong reports on a truly fascinating rat experiment. There are interesting insights about habits, AND you get the benefit of a handy intro to the revolutionary neuroscience technique of optogenetics!

3. We humans are not the only creatures that dance. Jason Goldman with a fun blog post that includes an assessment of Snowball, the cockatoo - is he really dancing to the Backstreet Boys?

4. We strive for the easy life, but sometimes harder is better - Ian Leslie surveys an intriguing mix of anecdotes and psych studies showing the benefits of a challenge (I also learned about the web service This is My Jam - going to check it out now!).

5. New Scientist features editor David Robson was impressed by a new book about the mental simulations triggered by language.

6. The Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths tested two mediums this week, using a procedure that all parties agreed was fair. Drum roll please ... did they prove their powers? Find out.

7. BBC Radio 4's wonderful All in the Mind programme returned for another series this week - you can catch the first episode on iPlayer, which includes a look at the work of the Anna Freud centre on its 60th anniversary, and an interview with Norman Lamb, the new government minister with specific responsibility for mental health.

8. There are a few days left to watch BBC Three's Stacey Dooley in the USA "Gay to Straight", in which we meet gay men going through "therapy programmes" that they hope will make them straight. The American Psychological Association published a detailed working party report in 2009 on so-called reparative or conversion therapies and found them to be ineffective and potentially harmful (pdf). Also, this week in New Scientist, psychologist Christopher Ferguson argues that, while these therapies clearly don't work, banning them would be unwise.

9. Labour leader Ed Miliband gave a high profile speech to the Royal College of Psychiatrists this week about mental illness, which he described as the "biggest unaddressed health challenge of our age" (full speech).

10. Podcast bonanza - Steven Pinker appeared on Social Science Bites this week, talking about violence and human nature; and Jon Ronson (author of The Psychopath Test) and Richard Wiseman appeared on Points of Inquiry (ht @vaughanbell).
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Post compiled by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

...And that's why I don't work retail

From the New York Times, the uncomfortable reality of attempting to work retail In Our Times -- that you'll be working shorter and shorter shifts:

At its store here, just east of San Diego, Shannon Hardin oversees seven self-checkout stations, usually by herself. Typically working shifts of five or six hours, she hops between stations — bagging groceries, approving alcohol purchases, explaining the checkout system to shoppers and urging customers to join the retailer’s loyalty program, all while watching for shoplifters. “I like it. I’m a people person,” said Ms. Hardin, 50, who used to work as an office assistant at a construction company until times went bad. 

But after nearly five years at Fresh & Easy, she remains a part-time worker despite her desire to work full-time. In fact, all 22 employees at her store are part-time except for the five managers. She earns $10.90 an hour, and with workweeks averaging 28 hours, her yearly pay equals $16,500. “I can’t live on this,” said Ms. Hardin, who is single. “It’s almost impossible.” 

While there have always been part-time workers, especially at restaurants and retailers, employers today rely on them far more than before as they seek to cut costs and align staffing to customer traffic. This trend has frustrated millions of Americans who want to work full-time, reducing their pay and benefits. “Over the past two decades, many major retailers went from a quotient of 70 to 80 percent full-time to at least 70 percent part-time across the industry,” said Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of the Strategic Resource Group, a retail consulting firm.

If you read further, large retailers like Jamba Juice have software that surges employees around lunchtime, and then cuts them shortly thereafter.

When I was coming up on the end of my postdoc, I thought to myself, "The worst case scenario is that I will work at the Walmart at the bottom of the hill." (the one next to the Fry's, for San Diego readers) But I am well-aware that retail is, in its own way, a terrible Wheel of Pain.

If that much is not clear, Mr. Flickinger, the retail consultant puts a little English on the ball at the end of the article:

Mr. Flickinger, the retail consultant, said companies benefited from using many part-timers. “It’s almost like sharecropping — if you have a lot of farmers with small plots of land, they work very hard to produce in that limited amount of land,” he said. “Many part-time workers feel a real competition to work hard during their limited hours because they want to impress managers to give them more hours.”

When you're comparing your workers to sharecroppers, you know that things aren't going so well for workers. Thank goodness that chemistry doesn't make people work part-time. Right? Right?

Corporate recruiting visits at Harvard Chemistry: The New Normal (?)

This is the 4th annual analysis of corporate recruiting at Harvard's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. As the graph at right shows, the recruiting season (so far) indicates a slight drop from 2011, but the situation more or less staying the same. (NB: the 2012 recruiting season is not over.)

It's surprising to me that corporate recruiting has not recovered back to 2008 levels. After 4 years, it appears that 10-15 companies is the new normal for Harvard. One presumes that full-bore large-company hiring of entry-level research chemists will be back for good when Harvard sees a big increase. It does not look good now.

(Those who want to see other universities' corporate recruiting schedules, click here for a look at Stanford in 2010 and here for MIT's corporate recruiting from 2002-2011.

Daily Pump Trap: 11/1/12 edition

Good morning! Between October 30 and October 31, 30 positions were posted on the C&EN Jobs. Of these, 9 (30%) were academically connected and 18 (60%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Ugh: Recently, it seems that there are more chemical engineering positions than chemist positions. Certainly, today, when there were 3 positions posted, one of them was for a chemical engineer.

Orange, TN: Invista is a polymer/fiber company; they're looking for a B.S. chemist to be a lab technician. 2+ years laboratory experience, experience with high-pressure equipment desired.

Richland, WA: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is looking for an Ph.D. analytical chemist to be a postdoctoral fellow (must be within 5 years post-graduation.) Program is "focused on the nuclear forensics applications of functionalized nanoscale materials. This position is responsible for collaboratively developing trace level organic and inorganic methods using advanced materials and methods." Hmmmm.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show 276, 685, 2567 and 11 positions for the search term "chemist."

That said...: It looks like the Army Research Laboratory is taking CVs for chemists (and other scientists with M.S. degrees or higher.) 

Introverts use more concrete language than extraverts

Your personality is revealed in the way you speak, according to new research. Introverts tend to use more concrete words and are more precise, in contrast to extraverts, whose words are more abstract and vague.

Many previous studies have looked at the links between personality and language, but usually this has been about the content of what different personalities choose to talk about. It's been shown, for example, that extraverts are more likely to talk about family and friends, and to use words like "drinks" and "dancing", which makes intuitive sense given that people matching that personality type are expected to spend more time socialising.

Camiel Beukeboom and his co-workers took a different tack, asking 40 employees (19 women; average age 34 years) at a large company in Amsterdam to describe out loud the same five photos depicting ambiguous social situations. Participants were told that "there are no right or wrong answers" and given as long as they wanted to describe each photo. Their answers were recorded and transcribed for later coding. Three days later, the participants also completed a personality questionnaire.

Participants who scored higher in extraversion tended to describe the photos in terms that were rated by an independent coder as more abstract. For example, they used more "state verbs" (e.g. Jack loves Sue) and adjectives, and they admitted to engaging in more interpretation - describing things that were not directly visible in the pictures. On the other hand, the higher a person scored in introversion, the more concrete and precise their speech tended to be, including more use of articles (i.e. "a", "the"), more mentions of numbers and specific people, and making more distinctions (i.e. use of words like "but" and "except").

The differences make sense in terms of what we know about social behaviour and the introvert-extravert personality dimension, with the introverted linguistic style being more cautious, and the extravert style being more casual and vague.

The researchers said their results have far-reaching implications because we know based on past research that the contrasting speech styles are interpreted differently. For instance, they said behaviour described in abstract terms, in the style of an extravert (e.g. Camiel is unfriendly), is usually attributed to personality, as opposed to the situation, and therefore interpreted as enduring, more likely to occur again, yet harder to verify. By contrast, behaviour described in more concrete terms, in the characteristic style of an introvert (e.g. Camiel yells at Martin), tends to be interpreted as situation-specific, and as more believable.

"Thus an introvert's linguistic style would induce more situational attributions and a higher perception of trustworthiness than an extravert's style," the researchers said.

The findings also complement past research showing how conversations between two introverts usually involve discussing one topic in more depth whereas two extraverts dance around more topics in less detail.

"By talking at different levels of abstraction, extraverts and introverts report information differently," the researchers concluded, "and induce different recipient inferences, memories, and subsequent representations of the information exchanged."

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Beukeboom, C., Tanis, M., and Vermeulen, I. (2012). The Language of Extraversion: Extraverted People Talk More Abstractly, Introverts Are More Concrete. Journal of Language and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1177/0261927X12460844

--Further reading--
The links between bloggers' personalities and their use of words.

Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.