I thought maybe someone here would know better...

ISSUE: So yes, I am jobhunting, as my lab is loosing funding end of Sept and I don't want to be stuck without a job. I'm not against hoping the pond, especially if it was temp for a few years or whatever.

DILEMMA: What the hell, UK? You ask if I have proof of right to work in the UK, of course, I do not. Everywhere seems to state that once I would get the offer, then company sponsors or whatever ya'all call it, I get one, bang. So why is every application being rejected because I don't have that piece of paper? So I go look on the country's immigration site for information. Thinking maybe it's just some sort of visa or somethingsomething I need to get first. Nope, I'm told I need to list the job in the application.

WHAT?

Yeah...so what am I missing? Or is this as catch22 as it seems? There are a few postings for assay development jobs I am *perfect* for. I have 4 yrs industry experience in assay design, they are asking for 2+ if possible. Ok that fits. They want a BSc or more. Yurp, I gotsta Masters of Science. So uh, basically I'm applying for jobs I surpass the minimum qualifications for and I reallllly miss the assay design work so I'd love to get back into it, but I keep getting dinged as I don't have this silly work permit thing.

You should try it the other way way round! I have arrived in the States with work permits, sponsors names and addresses to work for one week, just to have some officious tw*t try and turn me round stating that he didn't have to to give a reason. Only after hours of negotiation and a quick call to my employer to point out that a whole collection of military aircraft would be grounded if I wasn't let in did the border problem get resolved!

Dunno whether it's this, as I haven't been paying much attention - we have a massive unemployment problem at the moment. There is a belief that many of the new jobs being created are being taken by people from outside the UK. Therefore the government is trying to cut down on immigration, and has restricted the ability of employers to bring in workers from outside the UK for "unskilled" jobs (don't yell at me just yet...). It was considering that "skill" is indicated by salary, and of course research isn't going to come out well in this  ...  There's also something about having to demonstrate that you can't fill the post in the UK, so there may be a phase where you have to advertise and not accept applications from eg US

You might find it easier if US were to join the EU :tease:

Looks like you have come up against the UK immigration cap

The immigration cap for non-EEA workers for the year from April 2011 is 21,700 - about 6,300 lower than in 2009.

Of those, 20,700 are tier two skilled migrants entering graduate occupations with a job offer and sponsorship.

The other 1,000 are people allowed in under a new "exceptional talent" route - people like scientists, academics and artists. The former tier one general route - open to highly skilled migrants without a job offer - will be closed.

Ahh okay then. I am in science and when I looked 1-2 yrs ago I would have been tier two (grad student thing) but thought now I could get in on tier one (have my Masters now, defended back in March, and 8+ yrs experience split between biotech industry and academia labs...yes I started working in a lab when I was 16 so i'm young with lots of experience.)

Job market here really sucks for jobs too, if you want to jump to sales, there are a decent number of sales jobs in the biotech sector that actually aren't being filed so sallaries and benefits for that keep going up and up (entry level is now around $80k/yr, plus car/mobile/relocation expenses/signing bonus seems to be the standard) but that pulls you out of the lab and once out of the lab, hard to go back. And my "true love" is the lab work so while those dollar signs are sooooo damn tempting, I don't want to sell out Finding a research posting here though is turning out to be much harder than it was during my high school years, or entering grad school.

I will admit my backup plan is to just go back to grad school...I might hate myself if I did that too though. I just got my life back by dropping out of the PhD and just getting the Master's...I don't want to give my life away again... :read: 

Well hey if any of ya know of any labs or have friends or contacts or anything, let me know I'm molecular/biochemistry/neuroscience background but learn new techniques really quickly. In industry I was in product development/R&D and mostly designed assays (both chemical and ELISAs) prettymuch from start to final product on the shelf =) Two coolest things ever:
1) In grad school, in a lab I was in, they were using an assay kit I developed It wasn't my project though so I didn't get to use my own kit haha
2) In grad school one of my rotations was in a immunology lab that used the cornea for studies, and I was on a project looking at the effect of contact lenses on the cornea (studying inflammation and other various affects wearing contacts may have) which was on contract from a company. When I got contacts of my own a few months ago, that work 2 yrs ago I guess paid off - I'm wearing the exact lenses I studied.

Sorry Amy, but our ConDem government doesn't want Johnny Foreigner coming over here and taking all the jobs. Much as they really want to stop the Europeans flooding into the UK, thay can't because of our treaty agreements allowing the free movement of labour (that's labor to you) in Europe, so you'll jolly well have to stay put in the good old USofA.

Never mind, I suggest you settle yourself down and have a nice cup of tea (traditional English solution to any bad situation).

Tea I do have. I am a big tea fan =)

Too be honest Amy, I think you'd struggle to find a job in the UK now. The mol bio side is a shadow of what it was in the late 90s & what started as production being shifted overseas has now spread to major pharma R&D - the Pfizer Sandwich closure being the most high profile.
There is still quite a bit of mol/biochem activity in the Cambridge area, but pretty low scale now.
In the late 90s i was installing perhaps 2 Gilson prep LC systems a month for mol bio apps alone, plus perhaps 4 for general pharma R&D use  in central England. Last year I was made redundant - virtually all the customers had gone, mostly abroard.

Wow....

That sounds a little worse than what it is here. Funny though, Pfizer here in MI shut down as well not too long ago as well. Academia and hospital labs are being hit hard with very low funding rates (ex: va funding is now from something like 20% to 8.6% in just the last year). Oh and we no longer have a shuttle program. Maybe some day the gov't will figure out science and tech is...kinda important, and start funding research again. 

I think all our chickens are now firmly home.
Both in the U.S.A. and the U.K.
Will the last person still active in the Western World, kindly turn off the nuclear power plants
as they leave.

Clearly the beginning of the end of Capitalism as we know it . That predicted by any decent economist years ago. Capitalism is based on perpetual growth both in the economy and in sovereign debt, neither of which can be sustained for ever. Libyan wars and phone hacking are merely distractions from the terrible truth.

The Old Ruminator said:

Clearly the beginning of the end of Capitalism as we know it .

Click to expand...

Of course it isn't, its merely the end of capitalism in Europe/US. China, India, Brazil even Australia are doing fine thank you very much. We are led to believe there is a world problem, but there isn't. In Asia they call it the "North Atlantic Financial Crisis", but the governments here try to paint a picture of everyone in the same boat in order to cover their failings...

Capitalism has not ended, its simply moved to China.... 

AndyF said:

Capitalism has not ended, its simply moved to China....

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Given that China actually owns most of the US, they are probably laughing in Beijing now.

Alternatively

Given that China actually owns most of the US, they are panicking in Beijing now.

I just applied for a job at Oxford, what do you think my chances of it are? 

graham said:

Given that China actually owns most of the US, they are panicking in Beijing now.

Click to expand...

Graham, I think you can be absolutely sure that the Chinese have thought about the long term implications of this a lot more than their American counterparts have.

There are things which make the Chinese panic, but I don't think this is one of them.

Nick.

Oooooh just applied at Carslbad My fav part of the job posting is "Several of the tours are strenuous and require extended periods of time underground, crawling through tight passage ways and climbing on uneven and slippery surfaces."

HELL YES.

Paid to do off-trail tours, that include off-trail caving? I think this is a brilliant idea.

Nick

You will note that I gave two alternatives. I think that 'inscrutable' remains a useful term.

Amy

The weather is significantly better in New Mexico as compared with Oxford.