Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Tate and Lyle: "Ph.D. Organic Chemists need not apply."

Via a longtime reader, this joyful tidbit from Tate and Lyle (italicized by me):
Director of New Product Development 
Date: 11-Mar-2015
Location: Hoffman Estates, IL, US
Company: Tate & Lyle
Based in our new purpose built Hoffman Estates office, an exciting opportunity has arisen for someone to drive our New Product Development.

You will lead the scientific efforts and innovation in Health & Wellness by developing a world class NPD platform from which Tate & Lyle can commercialize products, applications and process technology for its customers. You will deliver significant growth to the Specialty Food Ingredients business unit through development and commercialization of new ingredients that make great tasting food and deliver scientifically supported health benefits.

You will also promote business opportunities to company senior leadership, interact with the business personnel and develop and manage a staff of from eight to ten direct reports.... 
Who we are looking for 
Your background will be within the food industry, where you will have grown a reputation for being a champion of developing innovative new products. Ph.D. in Nutrition Science, Medicinal Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering or Food Processing Engineering. Ph.D. Organic Chemists need not apply.
Interestingly, this is the only place that Google can find where this sentence appears on the internet. Congratulations, Tate and Lyle!  

11 comments:

  1. I didn't want your stupid job anyway!

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  2. So they're looking for inorganic med chemists, apparently. That should be a huge contributor to their applications load.

    Seems like an interesting statement on the errr....shortage of organic chemists: "No, you can't have this job, either."

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  3. We don't need your stinkin' tacos!

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  4. In fairness, the PhD organic chemists in pharma tend to advise grad school applicants against thinking about medicinal chemistry PhD programs because the biological training that those programs entail aren't seen as necessary for whatever entry-level positions doing synthesis exist in pharma ("They will teach you all you need to know about pharmacology on the job" is the statement I've seen more than once). So the two programs are not exactly fungible. It's a sign of the times, I suspect, that graduate medchem programs are tending to either merging with their arts & sciences colleagues or rebranding themselves with less semantically fraught names.

    MG

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  5. And the sign said: "PhD Organic People Need Not Apply"

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    Replies
    1. So I pretended to have an MBA instead of an MS, and went in to ask him why. He said, son, you look like a doltish business major, you really do. So I put on my labcoat and said imagine that, me, working for you!

      Delete
  6. The irony will be that they'll still get 100 CV's from people with PhD's in organic chemistry.

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    Replies
    1. But that's okay if they say that they are fast learners and have very good problem solving skills in their cover letter.

      Delete
  7. I suspect they may be trying to get around rules about discriminating against the currently unemployed - most of the PhD organic chemist applicants they get are probably layoff victims from Big Pharma, so this is a handy little way to filter them out without explicitly saying "no unemployed people need apply."

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  8. The "chemical-free" food lady would go absolutely NUTS reading their product list.

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  9. Hi - I'm the guy who sent you that depressing advert in the first place. Here's another one which I just spotted: https://bn.craigslist.org/sci/4924599629.html ("**Please no PhD candidate applications."). That's in addition to http://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=06ca55e832578964&qd=QQmL6ToAPw5l0M7dX_70KsH1r3VP-94P72uhS8swl77zHKBgF0J_o1eEX58EqZieaJRnCSo4dDu6gYb4hw7SALvZP_Mn39JwCLjV8UNnrhY&chnl=en_us&atk=19glm684o0kd149q&jsa=8935&inchal=apiresults&utm_source=publisher&utm_medium=organic_listings&utm_campaign=affiliate
    ("DUE TO THE ENTRY LEVEL NATURE OF THIS ROLE NO PhDs WILL BE CONSIDERED OR CONTACTED")

    ops, this is kind of getting out of hand....how many PhD students are reading this right now?

    ReplyDelete

looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20