Science Careers Forum

Steven Z.

No one here is suggesting that a lifetime full of temp jobs is worth doing. All we've ever said about "temping" can be summed up by saying that it's OK to do for a short while, to solve a problem, to get off the job market, to re-orient yourself into a new career niche, and so on. Not a place to work as a career because the pay, the zero benefits, etc, all make a ding in your lifetime earnings and job happiness. But, certainly a temp stint is not worthy of the damnation you apply to it. Agree it doesn't look good on a CV when you go for more than a few months.

Dave Jensen, Moderator

I hire a lot of chemists and never use temp agencies. I feel the quality of the people that go through them is much lower than the one's that find us directly. There was a time that I did not have control over the hiring and my organization used a temp agency to staff with the idea that we could go temp to perm. The quality of the hires was way lower than what I was used to. The few good ones we made permanent within a few months and they will likely never need to go through a temp agency again. When I see a resume with multiple temp assignments, that is equivalent in my mind to an employee that has had multiple short term permanent jobs. I figured they are weak performers that either don't know how to get a job or how to keep a job.

There are many fewer jobs in organic chemistry than in analytical as a lot of synthesis is being done in China and India now. I find that organic chemists look for jobs and need to be retrained as analytical chemists. They often make good analytical chemists as they know how molecules are put together so they tend to be good forensic investigators. They often also come with an instrumental base skill set that we can build on.