Some bright graduates may find relevant job vacancies without the need for specific career advice, but the search is not simple. Many jobs, where physematicians might expect to be hired for their direct skills, are listed using the title “engineer”.
“At graduate recruitment fairs, large companies have told me that they don’t employ physicists or mathematicians when I know otherwise,” Hall says. “The same companies bemoan the lack of physematicians applying for graduate positions.
“The root of the problem may be in HR teams. Many don’t know the difference between maths and physics. And after graduates have been with a company for a few years, there’s little to distinguish between graduates in physics and engineering.”
Equally, mathematicians move “seamlessly into multi-disciplinary teams”, according to MSOR, the Maths Stats & Operational Research Network. No wonder then that this misconception leads to a poor choice in wording job titles and recruitment clarity.
Employers tell the IOP that they want “a combination of good technical and analytical skills combined with good team-working and communication skills”.
Technical skills are seen to be abundant in young scientists but those ‘soft’ team-working and communication skills are often lacking, employers say. Graduates have little experience of commercial skills, with employers calling for improved social, interpersonal and team-working skills plus improved business awareness.
Many universities now offer enterprise elements in the curriculum as an attempt to overcome this shortcoming. However, employers rarely give credence to college-taught courses, preferring these skills to be learned outside the lecture theatre.
Students can gain these skills on sandwich-courses, including one year in industry. But the scope of sandwich courses in maths or physics is limited by comparison with business studies or engineering.
I myself have just graduated and ‘hit the void’ so to speak. The careers advice I received was poor, despite a designated course, with little information on placements, graduate schemes and other job specific details.
I graduated with a 1st class Hons MPhys and want to go into an industry where I can use the leadership skills I gained from extra curricular activities while utilising my degree, not go into a job in the financial industry; if I’d wanted to do that I would’ve done a finance degree, but sadly this is all I am advertised by recruitment agencies such as GRB.
It would be nice to have some form of guidance during the final few weeks of university AFTER exams and perhaps a number of placements, as you discuss, earmarked for physics and mathematics graduates.