Job options
- Analytical chemist
- Biomedical scientist
- Healthcare scientist, clinical biochemistry
- Clinical research associate
- Forensic scientist
- Research scientist (life sciences)
- Scientific laboratory technician
- Toxicologist
- Less Obviously
- Chartered accountant
- Health and safety inspector
- Quality manager
- Science writer
Also with the above, your decision will involve going public (e.g. government) or private companies. The former used to be very stable, but given budget fluctuations it sounds like going corporate is more lucrative and of a similar level of risk.
If you are willing to write consistently, continue to do research or delve into areas of scholarly concern, then you can choose to carve your own path.
A small note to my science candidates, but also anyone with a serious area of expertise.
No matter what you next choose to do professionally, people will search for you online. If you are stumping for science, they want to see your name + science content pop up in search results for you. It’s still early enough in the online world (model T days versus the Porsche that’s coming) that folks looking you up will be delightfully surprised to see that you’ve produced this stuff: white papers, data sets, blog posts, ??, since too few do. It gets the doors open and helps you create a loyal following. Get your friends involved with getting the word out. A single inspiring post can generate tons of traffic once the search gods have found it. For example, there’s a single prepwise post that explains high level how GMAT scoring works. It generates a few hundred hits/day on this relatively tiny site and a few comments from potential clients each week.
If you are in the hunt for cash, it becomes even more important to have a visible presence. You may choose to tutor to supplement or replace a “normal career path”. Some visibility serves as a credibility marker that allows you to charge more and maintain more stable hours. So you can tutor for 15-20 hours a week at $100/hour (specializing in science!), maintain your science writing 10-15 hours a week and deal with running a business 5 hours a week.
That gives you baseline 6-8k per month or $72-96k/year.
Or you can do something else with your regular work hours, but start to differentiate yourself.
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