On 6 March 2015 at 14:27, Jo Brodie <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hello all

As part of a jobs event 'thing' at work I'm going to run an activity and Q&A around jobs in science communication and how one might go about getting one. This will be primarily for sci / tech / medical undergraduates at QMUL, possibly there'll be one or two post-grads too.

While I've a reasonably good idea of the range of jobs and sectors out there it's been six years since I applied for one myself so I thought I'd ask people to... let me pinch their experiences :)

Also, I have never experienced searching for a science communication job as a new graduate (I had been working in various labs for 10 years before I got my first scicomm job and already had some experience and transferable skills) so I'm curious to know what it's like today.

I'm probably going to focus on London as that's what I can talk about sensibly but only too happy to hear from those based elsewhere, and how the scicomm job market is in other cities and countries.

My current beliefs / assumptions about getting one's first job in science communication include...

• it's very difficult to break into scicomm without some relevant experience, and that experience is hard to gain without working for low or no pay (and there are a lot of people wanting jobs in science communication) / there are very few entry level / apprentice jobs and the pay isn't all that great
• many organisations employ science communicators but don't necessarily 'tag' the jobs as that and it can make it harder to hunt them down (charities have got better at this but my first full-time job was in a charity, clearly scicomm but not marketed as such), so 'hunting skills' are important too
• that getting any job (for income) and doing a bit of science-blogging or similar on the side might be a good way to build a portfolio or gain experience while not starving
• that applicants are also fairly underskilled when it comes to filling in job applications (and I include myself in this!), I wrote this advice to applicants back in 2011.

If you've run a similar event what are people telling you or asking you?

Thanks :)
Jo

(psci-com owner)