• Question: If someone where to take interest in your job what qualifications would they need?

    Asked by katie14 to Emma, James, Jayne, Kara, Sharon on 20 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Hi Katie,
      To do exactly what I do, you would need a-levels in biology and chemistry, a degree in some sort of biology and a phd. However, I work with people in my lab that have all sorts of qualifications, ranging from some with just GSCE’s to people with degrees in all sorts of things. Even if you dont go to university, you can still be a scientist, although it might be easier, and you will probably get paid more if you do!

    • Photo: Emma King

      Emma King answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Hi katie14. People get into science via lots of different routes but I think the best thing is to do a degree at a good university and make sure that you get some lab experience – either by doing a year-in-industry or trying to get lab placements over the holidays.
      What degree you do depends on what you are good at and what job you want afterwards – you could do a straight degree like biology or medicine, or one that combines different disciplines like biochemistry. You can also get specialist degrees like genetics or forensic science etc.
      After that you might want to go on and do a Masters (another year of study) or a PhD(another three years of study), or both!
      It all depends on what your long term career plans are!
      Hope that helps
      Emma

    • Photo: Jayne Charnock

      Jayne Charnock answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Great question, it can seem really confusing. Basically it depends what job you want to do- like all jobs there are different ‘levels’, from the people that make up solutions for the lab, look after animals or sterilise our equiptment, to the people that run experiments day-to-day, to people who run certain facilities (e.g. the microscopes or gene sequencing departments), to research managers who run the show, to Prinicple Investigators or Lab Heads who are the most senior scientists.

      A good place to start is good GCSES in science, followed by A-levels or equivalent in a science. In other countries they have alot of apprenticeships for people straight out of school but im not sure of the process here. Certainly there are lab technician jobs for people with college qualifications. After that, getting a degree and some experience working in a lab will help and those people useually become technicians or research assistants. To progress more quickly and further up the scale it is usual for someone with a good degree result to do a PhD (a 3 year research project) and they are thenon the path to becoming a more senior researcher.

      Where are you up to in school- are you thinking of a career in science? Feel free to ask any further questions about this as its a complicated topic!

    • Photo: James Chan

      James Chan answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      well, to do science, you’d need to study science at college or university first, so you’d need to do your science subjects for GCSEs and AS/A-levels. After that, you have loads of choices. If you want to carry on with doing cutting edge research, you’d probably want to join a lab and do a Master’s (MSc – 1-2 years) or a PhD (3 years – you get paid!). I personally studied medicine first, and that’s 5-6 years! But actually, it’s great fun cos you get to run around the hospitals in your scrubs and deal with patients and get involved in operations and lots of other things!

    • Photo: Kara Cerveny

      Kara Cerveny answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      Hi Katie — I’ve just started working as a science writer and editor at one of the top biology journal, Cell. Before that I was a post-doctoral researcher. For both of these jobs you need to have a PhD in a biological science, and in the case of science writer/editor, you need to be able to think and write about many different disciplines of science and you need to be able to work on quickly and meet deadlines. The pace in science writing/editing is much faster than in scientific research. When you are deciding on a career, I think the best thing to think about is to decide what it is you like to spend time doing and what sort of work environment suits you best. For instance, do you like to work mainly by yourself or do you like to work with other people. Do you like to focus on one thing for a long period of time or do you have a shorter attention span? What is your favorite subject, and can you think of something that will enable you to make society a better place? These are the sorts of questions that I thought about (and still think about) when deciding what I wanted to do for a job.

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