Get Involved! - - Chromatography Online

Get Involved!

Sep 1, 2009
By: John V. Hinshaw
LCGC North America

John V. Hinshaw

To much the same degree as in any other technical field, as the global economy shrinks and metamorphoses, chromatographers are challenged by the changing professional landscape. Although the overall unemployment rate among chemists who responded to an American Chemical Society (ACS) survey remained quite low at 2.3% in 2008 (1), beneath the surface of these corporate sea-changes are the recently unemployed, recently employed, or still employed technical professionals. The recent announcement of the pending acquisition of Varian, Inc. by Agilent is the most dramatic shift in the analytical instrument business so far this year; eventually, the changes that result will impact a large number of analysts.

I was unable to find any published job-change data for analytical chemists, but the number of analysts who have changed jobs recently, either internally or by moving to a different company, was made evident to me informally when I belatedly got around to sorting through my pile of new business cards acquired at conferences and during business trips. While entering what seemed like many more corrections and updates to my address book than I had expected, I asked myself how individuals whose affiliations and email addresses change might keep in touch with other professionals.

One answer is online professional networking sites like LinkedIn ( http://www.LinkedIn.com/), which allow members to update their employment and contact information and maintain established member-to-member connections. Such sites also can be excellent sources for job leads and professional contacts, bearing in mind of course the ever-present concerns for online security in public forums. Sites such as LinkedIn provide good tools for maintaining contacts, publishing resumes, and affiliating in special-interest groups with other professionals. There, you will find affiliate groups for the American Chemical Society, LCGC, Pittcon, the BioTech & Pharma Professionals Network, alumni associations, and other interests both technical and nontechnical. Generally, however, communications on these affiliated networks lack technical depth and are limited to discussions of upcoming events, employment, commercial offers, and general topics.

Chromatography Discussions

While sites like LinkedIn provide a convenient contact point for professional networking, those analysts who want to engage in more detailed discussions of their workplace technologies, learn more about parallel or related techniques, or just want to follow interesting message threads can turn to a number of topical online discussion forums. Chromatographers in particular can make good use of the Chromatography Forum ( http://www.chromforum.org/), of which LCGC is a sponsoring organization. Here can be found in-depth topical discussions on liquid chromatography (LC) and gas chromatography (GC), mass spectrometry (MS), and data systems, as well as other threads on employment, reviews, and announcements. The site is quite active: over 50,000 postings from nearly 7500 members can be found there. LCGC's own website ( http://www.chromatographyonline.com/) is another excellent source for chromatographers, not only for material from the magazine's North American, European, and Asia Pacific editions, but also for news items, announcements, and links to many other valuable chromatography resources.

Face-to-Face

Table I: Chromatography discussion groups

LinkedIn and the Chromatography Forum are two examples of virtual meeting places. None of these, however, can provide the face-to-face contact offered by getting involved with and attending meetings of the various societies and forums for chromatography and analytical chemistry that exist around the U.S. and also overseas. These are topical associations that were formed long before the Internet existed. Some have only a local scope, while others attract regional participation and some have gone international. A number of them are listed in Table I. Most are in the U.S., but there are a few with overseas affiliation as well.

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