Dear Readers,
I have been reporting extensively about the current state of corruption in biosciences and the consequences to your health and well-being. It is important to document the current state of affairs so that we can finally admit the daunting problems we are facing and go about the business of making the world a better place. It also gives the guilty parties (e.g., the false leaders who take credit when things go well and blame others when things go bad) a chance to repent and make amends before their final judgment.
This story illustrates the role of science recruiters in the downfall of science in the USA to the point where our status as a superpower is being questioned in other countries.
My now ex-husband, Michael, has taught Biotechnology and Biology at a community college for over 10 years and has worked extensively with science recruiters to find jobs for scientists like his students and me with my PhD. The only people who ever got jobs got a year or less contract. Michael only knows of two people who ever got an on-going position at the company that the recruiter got them the temporary job at.
Science recruiters have never been able to help me or Michael get a job with our PhD degrees. Our superiors were wrong when they assured us during graduate school that if/when STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs became scarce, over-qualified people with higher degrees (that we dedicated our lives to achieving) would be prioritized over candidates with less education. Now that there are so many under- and unemployed STEM professionals, especially PhDs and especially the most experienced PhDs, it is clear that over-qualified candidates are not prioritized for STEM jobs. In fact, the opposite is true. All the propaganda and oppressors vehemently denying the reality of the country’s most educated people proves that science has been corrupted to the point where it has to go to great lengths to try and hide its corruption from the general public.
A science recruiter linked in with me recently on LinkedIn. She even posted that there were jobs in pharma and biotech, which is the area in which I have extremely successful experiences. But when I messaged her and sent her my CV, all she could come up with was one clinical research scientist position in ophthalmology and any candidates had to have experience in ophthalmology specifically.
But what do you expect from a science recruiter who is not a scientist herself? She is a phlebotomist with a surgery technician certificate and a degree in marketing! The fact that the science recruiter for science jobs all over the country is not a scientist shows that the job market in science is about marketing and not merit. It is about nepotism, cronyism, and favoritism, all of which lead to group mind, lack of innovation, probable corruption, and inevitable failure. There are so many examples of catastrophic failures now that I will just list a few here to prove my point and continue to raise awareness: contamination of most of our drinking water with PFAS in addition to many other toxic molecules, carcinogens in our food supply, the ongoing opioid epidemic along with all its related atrocities, the J&J COVID vaccine and multiple other J&J failures including asbestos in the baby powder that has caused ovarian cancer in women and sunscreen containing a known carcinogen, and infections with antibiotic resistant superbugs by Olympus duodenoscopes that have the largest market share.
I asked the science recruiter whether or not I was eligible for jobs for which I am over-qualified. I am still waiting for an answer. I take her non-answer to be the same answer I have always gotten from science recruiters for over 10 years, namely that they don’t place many PhDs into jobs at all. Age discrimination is illegal, but the practice of advertising for recent graduates only is age discrimination in most cases. Or they just don’t want to hire the most competent people because favoritism, cronyism, and nepotism are more common and powerful than merit. Especially when people need to bend a little and look the other way, as we have been told multiple times, in order to get or keep products on the market, it is no wonder corrupt corporations do not want to hire people who know what is going on and have ethics. That is religious discrimination that is also rampant in the USA and is often framed as a test of your loyalty and ability to be a team player.
Based on years of experience with science recruiters, this is what Michael has to say about the dismal job opportunities in the biosciences in the USA over the past decades and the role of science recruiters in the downfall of science in the USA that we have been witnessing for decades:
If companies recruit directly, then they have to advertise and consider diverse candidates directly and are held accountable. By using recruiters, companies are able to selectively choose from candidates who the recruiters propose to them. By making the jobs temporary, they can easily remove anyone who does not fit in with the culture of the employer without being accountable for discrimination that is supposedly illegal. People from different cultures, races and religions tend to have different viewpoints on honesty and work-life balance and prioritization of money over living beings and the environment. Lack of diversity means lack of true innovation and that is evident in the current and past state of our economy.
The temporary job market also makes it easier for companies to have personnel more than willing to do whatever it takes to make their boss happy by showing loyalty and ability to “bend a little” and tolerate corruption.
Michael went to teach at a diverse school to try to diversify the science and healthcare workplaces for better leadership and innovation. He has seen that the cronyism, implicit in the networking required to get a job, results in discrimination against the diverse graduates, who are not already part of the network. Interestingly, when he worked at a large Midwest pharmaceutical company, they were not allowed to hire by networking. Apparently, a federal judge decided that if an almost all white company does most of its hiring by networking, then that is racism. What does that say about LinkedIn? At that time, hiring for that company was done by a human resources staff composed of mostly scientists who were burned out, wanted a better work-life balance, and/or who had developed a work-related allergy and/or repetitive use injury like carpal tunnel. Now, by using recruiters, all of those scientists are out of their alternative careers and the company can go back to hiring through the grapevine without the legal liability they had. Another way to get around the legal requirement against discrimination is to write super specific job descriptions that are so specific that they are guaranteed to best fit the candidate they had already decided on before they even advertised the job. That candidate is unlikely to be diverse or even based on merit.
Science recruiters are also helping to propagate the lie that there are 2 job openings for each unemployed job seeker. For example, note that Olympus Corporation has been looking for a Principal Sterilization Microbiologist for months now. How many times has this one job been posted over the last months? The Olympus recruiter suggested that I apply because she was impressed with my qualifications. I did apply, but the job is still open and getting reposted. When I followed up with the Olympus recruiter, she said I didn’t have the required 10 years of specific experience. But she was the one who suggested that I apply in the first place!
This makes two different science recruiters who have contacted me recently. They both obtained my CV and even a cover letter that I spent precious time on, only to find out that they were channeling false hopes. Some recruiters have to have a certain number of resumes turned in for the client employer by a certain deadline, so I wonder if I am a recent victim of this type of common abuse of scientists and other professionals as well.
Why don’t we see the payroll and self-employed numbers from the IRS as compared to the number of adults of working age living in the USA from the census? Then all this propaganda about the strong economy and low unemployment and need for STEM can be put to rest. In Europe, they are talking about the Great American Recession and how it is threatening the world. But here at home, only propaganda and denial like they taught us about communist countries when we were in grade school.
If we cannot at least be honest about the current situation, then we cannot expect any improvement because of the denial that there is a problem in the first place. It will continue to get worse until enough people are damaged to where more people stand up and demand action. How far things have to go depends on how damaged people have to get before they are willing to stand up against the widespread corruption that is in control of our necessities worldwide.
Love, Marie