Applying to the IT Giants

One of our postgrads commented on the last post (thanks, Martin) with details of an article in PC Pro about “How to get a job at Google, Apple or Microsoft”. It’s an excellent insight into:

• the application process these companies use
• the selection process, including interviews – it even includes some example interview questions and different ways to tackle them
• the difference (and similarities) between the software giants, particularly in terms of company culture

If you’re thinking about applying for the Microsoft PhD Internships (from the last blog post), or for any other major IT companies, I’d strongly recommend:

• reading the article
• turning up dressed smartly (even if casual is the order of the day for employees, you need to get the job first)
• checking your on-line presence – what will they find if they Google you?

PhD Internships @ Microsoft, Cambridge

Thought this was worth more than a tweet – Microsoft Research Labs at Cambridge are offering 12 week internships for PhDs. (They will very occasionally consider super-talented UGs and Masters but prefer candidates with 2 or 3 years experience at PhD level.)

They take applications all year round, but if you want a summer internship, you should get your application in now. Their website says “before March” but an ad currently posted on Monster says 21st Feb. I’d get in well before either of these dates if you’re interested. Internships are paid, with some help towards accommodation and other travel costs.

In addition to a CV, you’ll need to write a Personal Research Statement, which is a critical part of the selection process. Even more importantly, you’ll need to get your supervisor, and potentially your PhD funder, on board before considering this opportunity – there may be restrictions from your funder, and your supervisor may have other ideas of what you should be doing with your time (like getting some results…) However, this is just another of those heaven-sent opportunities to develop your negotiation skills.

Turmoil in Pharma-Land

There have been announcements this week from both AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline about increased profits – and large scale restructuring and redundancies. These companies are both major employers of researchers so this will have caused dismay for many of our postgrads.

Reports still coming in sound grim, whatever way you spin it, with uncertainty over which plants will close (including R&D plants at AZ) and locations of redundancies not yet released. We’ll need to hold our breath to see the impact on the massive AZ R&D site  at Alderley Edge and their Macclesfield manufacturing plant.

A complicated picture

As ever though, there isn’t a simple story of “no jobs in pharma”. On Chemistry World, part of the Royal Society of Chemistry website, a spokesperson for AZ is reported as pointing out that although they have announced reductions in headcount of 15,000 since 2007, with a further 8,000 just announced, in the same timeframe they have also created 8,000 positions in areas such as biologics.

It’s not just research and manufacturing jobs which are at risk. The Financial Times points out that in the Western world generally, there is a move to more centralisation of decision making about prescribing drugs (eg. NICE in the UK and health insurers elsewhere) with individual doctors having less scope to make their own prescribing decisions. This means fewer marketing and sales staff will be needed.

On the other hand, Computer Weekly pointed out that as both GSK and AZ had largely outsourced their IT functions, these would be unlikely to be as badly affected as other functions by the job cuts.

Reshaping how pharmaceutical research is done

Some common patterns have emerged over the years. The massive pharmaceutical companies have been moving from employing their own R&D scientists directly, towards scanning the horizon and developing collaborations or licencing deals with small, nimble high-tech drug discovery companies. These SMEs (small and medium enterprises) may have been spun out of universities or be closely located to other small research companies, often on science parks. The recent announcements from AZ seem to point to an acceleration of this strategy, but it’s happening all over.

This means that if you want to do cutting edge drug discovery or related research, you may be better targeting the small company (possibly on your doorstep) which you didn’t realise existed, rather than the large, supposedly “safe” corporation which everyone has heard of.

Where are all these small high-tech bioscience companies?

Luckily, we have a cluster of them in the North West of England, and an organisation, BioNow to support and promote them. BioNow has an interactive map of biotech companies in the region, and we’ve got our own Careers Service list of local bioscience employers (pdf).

Further afield, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has a database of pharma companies, also categorised by region, on their excellent careers website.

So, no-one’s going to kid you that it will be easy to find a job in the pharmaceutical sector, but if you modify your job search strategy, you might still strike lucky.

GSK still recruiting

And after all this, we got two more prompts this week from GSK to remind us that they are still recruiting for their Graduate development programmes in Science (as part of Global Manufacturing), Engineering, Health Outcomes and Finance. Closing date – Friday 12th February.

Tesco China – Inside Info Before You Apply

Did you know that Tesco employ over 20,000 people in China? They’re currently recruiting for their Fast-Track China Graduate Scheme, particularly for :

• Store Operations (Northern China)
• Buying (across China)
• Merchandising (Shanghai)
• Marketing (Shanghai)

The programme starts in China in September, followed by a 7 month development programme in the UK, before a permanent move back to a role in China with Tesco.

The closing date is 12th Feb (next week) – but you can get real inside info before you submit your application by talking to Tesco directly on our Tesco China webchat this afternoon:

• Time:      2-3pm, Wednesday 3rd Feb
• Where:   Wherever you can get on-line (PC cluster, train, bed …)
• How:       Go to our webchat page for all the relevant links

You should register beforehand for our webchat system if you haven’t already done so (easy to do using your university login details), choose a nickname you want to use (ideally something professional – these are real Tesco recruiters you’re talking to), and then you can get that inside info which will give you the edge over all the other applicants who haven’t talked to them.

If you’ve missed the webchat, you can view the transcripts on-line, but you lose the chance to ask the right questions.

So, go on – when they ask you why you want to work for Tesco China, I’m sure they’ll be impressed by talking about how they answered your questions in a live webchat.

What Would You Do With £100 Cash?

Apparently our market research shows that no-one responds to

“Tell us what you think of our services yada yada”

- but over 4000 people responded to our last survey when we lured them in with this pitch:

So, if you want to eat this month, how about filling in the survey of our on-line services?

www.manchester.ac.uk/careers/win100

It’s a general survey for the whole Careers Service and seems to have omitted any mention of the Postgrad Twitter feed, so if you do use that, you might want to mention it in the survey …

Spring Careers Events

The latest programme of Spring career events has been advertised (if February counts as spring – well, it’s sunny today).

Although this isn’t a peak time for employers to do the rounds of campuses, some finance institutions are visiting and Rolls Royce will be running a session specifically aimed at international students.

There is a full programme of skills workshops and talks, some from Careers Consultants, some from employers such as BT (Interviews), PWC (Tests), and Manchester City Council (a Mock Assessment Centre).

We’ve also got a number of discipline focused events, such as workshops for Humanities students, and a careers event (including some employers) for Physicists in the Schuster foyer on 9th Feb.

And that’s not all. There are a number of big events for those interested in careers outside the corporate/business world coming up later in the Spring – but that’s another blog post (or click here for details as they’re released).

Investment Management Team Competition

If you want the chance to show your potential as an investment manager, Morgan Stanley are looking for students to represent the University of Manchester in a team competition, Portfolio in Peril.

It will take place on 28th April 2010 at Morgan Stanley’s London offices, and will simulate the performance of an investment portfolio over a 4 year period (all done in 2.5 hours, luckily).

Those who get invited to take part will get the chance to meet a number of Morgan Stanley representatives before the competition. If you’re in the winning team, you’ll share £2,500 (so, not a bad bonus for 2.5 hours work…), a behind the scenes look at how Morgan Stanley works, and lunch with some of their European board members.

To apply, visit the website for more details and send your CV and covering letter to them by 15th March.

Careers Service “Country Pages”

Did you know that the Careers Service website has pages devoted to around 60 countries? Whether you use them regularly or have never heard of them (until now), we’d love your feedback by completing our poll below.

They’re about to undergo a revamp so let us know what you do and don’t like about them and our International careers supremo, Amanda Conway, will factor that into her update. She’s also got the same poll on her International careers blog, so if you’ve voted there, obviously, there’s no need to vote here as well.

Here’s a bit more detail, shamelessly stolen (mainly)  from Amanda’s International Careers blog:

Careers Service Country Pages – Feedback

We are conscious that the page layouts are not that inspiring, the content may not meet your needs and the awareness of this resource amongst you, our students, is mixed. So, in order to set us on the right track, we just need a little bit of input from you – our target audience to help us with our upgrade.

If you have one minute to spare, why not take part in our poll above?

If you have 5 minutes to spare, please also make a comment on the Intenational Careers blog (this is the link to the relevant post). All comments are anonymous, and all feedback is welcomed, such as:

• Which country page have you used – was it useful?
• What else would you like to see on there?
• Anything that you did not like?

What we know already:

1. We know that the pages are not specifically tailored to international students returning home. That’s because we also cater for non-nationals who wish to explore work in another country. However, if there are particular things you would like to see, please do tell us.
2. We know that a load of the good stuff is currently hidden on the second page – on the “work & relocation section” (did you?). That will be changing!
3. We know that we do not have a comprehensive list of jobs in each country. Although that would be nice, it’s unrealistic to try and offer this. Instead, we try to give you links to sites which can help you do this for yourself. If you know of good sites we don’t mention though, please do tell us.

If you haven’t seen the country pages before, they can be found under the continent groups here:

http://www.careers.manchester.ac.uk/students/jobsearch/overseas/countryinformation/

Postgrad Funding and Fellowships – ResearchResearch.com

Did Santa leave you a nice $30,000 scholarship at the bottom of your stocking this Christmas? No? OK, here’s an alternative to relying on the generosity of Coke-fuelled mythical creations for funding your postgraduate study or further research – www.researchresearch.com

The University has a subscription to this site so you can access it while you’re on campus (click the “Enter” button under “Campus access” – the image below links directly to the site, so you can have a go).

(Quick update: Within minutes of posting this, @jamespevans tweeted me to say Manchester postgrads can also sign up to get off-site access – the power of the Twitterverse, eh? Any problems with signing up, contact james.evans@manchester.ac.uk)

There follows a series of screens which, frankly, I initially found quite confusing, so here’s my pictorial guide to finding funding using ResearchResearch.

NB. The rest of the images are all just screenshots of the site. You’ll have to go to the site itself to actually click on all the buttons and drop down lists.

The first page you’ll see when you get Campus access is this (click on the image to view a larger, clearer version):

I’ll just focus on the funding search, which you can access by clicking on the “Funding”  link on the top left hand side, and choosing “Funding Search” – or just clicking the direct link on the right hand side of the screen.

This is an extract from the next screen you’ll see:

Bank of England PhD Internships

If making cups of tea for Sue Barker and the “Question of Sport” team isn’t quite what you were aiming for (see previous blog post), how about an internship at the heart of the UK financial system instead?

Based in London, these are two or three month projects of real value to the Bank of England, as part of their annual PhD internship scheme. I was going to try and give you examples, but as I’m not a PhD economist, frankly, I couldn’t make head nor tail of most of them, so you’ll need to look at the profiles on their website for more details!

Suffice to say I think you need to be an economist to stand any sort of a chance. In particular, they’re keen on the following specialisms:

• monetary economics
• open-economy macroeconomics and international finance
• applied econometrics
• macrofinance and asset pricing
• financial economics, including banking theory/regulation and credit risk modelling
• economics of payment systems and networks

They also have lots of “interesting datasets” which you can get your hands on. This also means, of course, that you have to go through security clearance (and immigration clearance – but they do genuinely seem to welcome international applicants).

If you’re within two years of submitting your PhD thesis, you can find all the details on the Bank Of England PhD Internship website. Closing date is 5pm, Friday 22nd January.