- #1
lanis
- 2
- 0
Hi,
I am a student in physics who completed his masters (5 years degree) in physics (fundamental and theoretical physics) and didn't have any success in finding a PhD position since then. I am still waiting for an answer from my last opportunity in entering a PhD by next fall, but my history of failure forces me to be pessimistic. I'm considering now really seriously in giving up this hunt for a PhD, accept once and for all that my life in academia is over, and looking for a job outside of it.
Still, the job market is really obscure to me and I'd like to ask you advice about how to attack it with my background.
Synthetically, it looks like:
- my degree was inclined towards fundamental and even theoretical physics (EM, QM, statistical physics, numerical physics, non linear physics, mathematical tools for physicists, general relativity, lots of QFT: QCD, Electro-weak theory, Susy, CFT)
-4 research internships in experimental high energy physics and semi-conductor physics where I used a lot of C++, Qt (on my own I coded a full program of roughly 10,000 lines of code using both and directly useful to the experimenters), also Mathematica, MATLAB and COMSOL (model building and simulation). I'm also familiar with Python and PHP.
I was (am) interested in physics as much by a genuine curiosity in learning how things work as for the challenge of solving problems, and it's this component that I'd like to find in my future job. Yet, I am not sure if I should look more into the fields of finance or software development (working for Google would be some kind of dream job, is it realistic?), or even industry. I would like to find this job in the UK but I'm flexible on that. Is it realistic to look directly for a job or should I aim first for an internship (paid or unpaid?)? I'd also take any advice on how to "sell my profile". I guess it is much more important to put emphasize on the tools I learned to use than on the topics of my research. Is it vital to create a profile on the websites for job seeking (linkedin, ...)?
I am a student in physics who completed his masters (5 years degree) in physics (fundamental and theoretical physics) and didn't have any success in finding a PhD position since then. I am still waiting for an answer from my last opportunity in entering a PhD by next fall, but my history of failure forces me to be pessimistic. I'm considering now really seriously in giving up this hunt for a PhD, accept once and for all that my life in academia is over, and looking for a job outside of it.
Still, the job market is really obscure to me and I'd like to ask you advice about how to attack it with my background.
Synthetically, it looks like:
- my degree was inclined towards fundamental and even theoretical physics (EM, QM, statistical physics, numerical physics, non linear physics, mathematical tools for physicists, general relativity, lots of QFT: QCD, Electro-weak theory, Susy, CFT)
-4 research internships in experimental high energy physics and semi-conductor physics where I used a lot of C++, Qt (on my own I coded a full program of roughly 10,000 lines of code using both and directly useful to the experimenters), also Mathematica, MATLAB and COMSOL (model building and simulation). I'm also familiar with Python and PHP.
I was (am) interested in physics as much by a genuine curiosity in learning how things work as for the challenge of solving problems, and it's this component that I'd like to find in my future job. Yet, I am not sure if I should look more into the fields of finance or software development (working for Google would be some kind of dream job, is it realistic?), or even industry. I would like to find this job in the UK but I'm flexible on that. Is it realistic to look directly for a job or should I aim first for an internship (paid or unpaid?)? I'd also take any advice on how to "sell my profile". I guess it is much more important to put emphasize on the tools I learned to use than on the topics of my research. Is it vital to create a profile on the websites for job seeking (linkedin, ...)?